PsychoticStudio

Psychotic Studio

I'm Andy Romi, guitarist and composer in Psychos band, and this is my personal studio.

Psychotic Studio Mixing/Mastering room

My name is Andy Romi, musician for a long time, recording enthusiast ever since.
I've always been fascinated and involved in home recording since I was a kid, now I recently built my own personal studio to be able to record and completely follow my own projects, I got Avid Certified, followed professional classes and now I'm ready to wellcom who wants to work in my studio.
if you know me well and are among my friends call me: I'm always willing for new collaborations!

Under Construction

Actually everything is under development, so if you have any doubt check the contact page here and send me a messege!

About Andy

I began studying and playing guitar when I wasn't yet thirteen but my infatuation with music dates back at least five years earlier!

Indeed, when the "new romantics" were at their top is when my interest in music became something more and my urge to play an instrument started, it was keyboards at the time, but it was only when Heavy Metal came in my life that I really wanted and began playing and ever since Guitars have been my passion and my obsession!So I began playing in bands when I was only fifteen and few years later I experienced my first guitar recording in the rehearsal room of one my friends, Fabio Rugi. Soon I fell in love with that small device capable of multitrack recording on a classic tape, it looked easy too so i had to try!
This is how my passion for recording started: on a FOSTEX X18! I know, nothing special, but it was a good training both for playing and recording, it gave me the basics for what I was gonna do in the future.
I was still studying guitar at the time and my music school took my path cross the one of Fabio Pianigiani: that changed completely my approch to music, focusing my attention more on composition than playing itself and the need to play other instruments became stronger.
I was already playing bass on the tracks I was recording, but I startend playng some keyboards too and programming sequencers and with those new tools and skills I recorded a bunch of demo tapes with the bands I was playing in.
With time and bands flowing on I switched from tape to PC and got into the digital music world. Among good and bad points of digital recording, the virtually infinite number of tracks available was the most appealing thing to me as I could add all the layers and insturments I wanted!

When the band Psychos I was completely ready to record our own Demos with no problems. I pushed myself further when we had our third album, Dritto al Cuore, ready as we decided to record on our own, then mix in a good studio, and that's what we did: we reocrded all the tracks in our small rehearsal room and then mixed at Narada Studio and the result was really good!

Now my rehearsal/recording room began to feel too small, in few years I ran completely out of space so I had to move to a bigger place.
As my skills and my passion for recording were increasing I decided to find a better place and create a better production room.
Among the places I checked I found one that has two rooms beg enough for me: I thought I could make a single room from them and have my production room but logistics and projects borught me elsewere and it became clear that this place was perfect for building a real recording studio!
So the Psychotic Studio was born!
I just needed some time to check and see if it was really "working" and learn to fully use Avid Pro tools, known as the industry standard for audio recording and production.
So I attended classes, learned to mix, edit, master professionally with Pro Tools, and in a short while I got Avid Certified thanx to Percorsi Audio!

About Psychotic Studio

I've been dreaming of something like this for years, now I've had the chance and made my own recording studio!

The Studio

It's been a long while since my first experiences with the dear old Fostex X18 multitrack tape recorder! A newer, better version also came in my hands, a fostex xr5, when the first brocke, anyway, ever since, I went on recording my songs at home, while bands succeded one another.
When a band called Dejanira, were I sang and plaied guitars, was ready for the first demo we decided to record on our own
At the time I was recording on pc with Adobe Audition, so we bought an 8 channel audio device (a terratec phase88) and recorded our fist demo cd in our rehearsal room.

There was still a lot to learn for me and what I had was well far away from "studio gear", but it was a start anyway!
My needs changed fast: I needed a better place where I could do my stuff and do it the right way and the idea of arranging some "home studio" inside a rehearsal room took form!
That's how the Psychos rehearsal and recording room was born: I added a scond phase88 to reach 16 channels, got a good analog mixer and all the stuff I needed and Psychos were ready to record their first demo! It didn't take too long to find myself out of space and full of nice gear for playing and recording!

The small rehearsal room where we recorded two demos and our first cd under a label was no longer enough for my needs, both for the gear and the results I wanted to get, so I started searching for a new place to build a real recording studio!
To be honest I was planning to build a production studio, but I found a place that was perfect to have a live and a control room! The place turned out to be perfect: large walls isolating from outside, good space for gear and listening, lot of space! Finally my studio was ready to become true!
Took some time but I got me a good audio interface, an Anthelope Orion 32+ gen 3, granting all the inputs and outputs needed, and added new high level preamps and microphones to the ones I already had and the Psychotic studio was ready!

Gear

Now the main core of my studio is a Thunderbolt Antelope Orion 32+ Gen3, a very nice interface granting up to sixtyfour line channels with ultra low latency, 192k 24bit sampling... a big step from the old tape recorders!
Actually the Antelope is fed by a bunch of tube and discreet preamps amnog which: Two Fredenstein units, offer best clarity for condenser mics, a couple of Art tube preamps are also there for any use (two are in my main rack, two other standalone units are in the live room to keep cables as short as possible), a SSL PURE DRIVE OCTO PRE drives eight ultra clean channels that can be coloured with the drive switch, in a system 500 rack I have two RUPERT NEVE PORTICO 511 Preamps delivering the "Neve" vibe and typical analog sound, two GOLDEN AGE PRO units offers the typical NEVE 1073 sound.
This way I always have drums ready for recording: BEYERDYNAMIC TG D57 for the 10" tom, TG D58 for 12" and 14" toms and 16" floor tom, a sure beta56 and sontronics DM1-s on snare (usualy run thru the portico preamps), sure beta52 and akg d112 for kick (thru fredenstein preamps), two OKTAVA as oveheads and two SUPERLUX S241 for room ambiance.

I have a FENDER RUMBLE bass cab with a ASHDOWN LITTLE GIANT head: the head provides DI for bass while the cab is miced with a sure Beta52 i get thru the GOLDEN AGE 1073 clones.
Two guitar rigs are present: BLACKSTAR HT50 club head with a MARSHALL 1936 cab and an ENGL RITCHIE BLACKMORE with a BLACKSTAR 4*12 cab, both rigs have a G-MAJOR multieffect connected. I use to track the engl one with two GOLDEN AGE ribbon mics, on R1 and one MK3, as I love their warm and definite sound, and two room mics (SE ELECTRONICS), two Shure SM57, hanging on the opposite wall!
Keyboards are also present: Viscount db5 hammond clone, roland d50, daves smith prophet rev 2, roland alpha juno 2 and roland vr09, all ran thru a mackie mixer. Two condeser mics offer two different choice for voice recording: a akg C214 and a Rode Nt2-a complete the set.
In the live room there are two four channels headphones amplifiers/mixers to provide monitoring anywhere i the room, beyerdynamics, akg , sony and vic firth headphones are always available and ready.

A good selection of microphones is available at Psychotic Studio for every purpose!
BEYERDYNAMIC TG D58 and D57 for toms (I also use them for the bongos); two SHURE BETA 52 used for bass amp and kick drums coupled with a AKG D112; BETA 56 + SONTRONICS DM1-S for snare, a SONTRONICS STC1-MT for Hi-hat, two SUPERLUX S241 for drums room, two OKTAVA ME012 as drums overheads, GOLDEN AGE R1 TUBE and MK2 ribbon mics for guitar amp, RODE NT2-A and WARM AUDIO WA47 JR condenser mics, mainly used ofr vocals and acoustic guitars, a AKG C-214. A bunch of the old classic SHURE Beta58, Sm57, Beta57, a Superlux R102 ribbon mic, AUDIX OM-8 are also available for any need!