At first I thought my experience at Charleston Sound was going to turn out to be a good one. The…read moreengineer was a really nice guy and brought a chill vibe to the session. His assistant was also a nice guy. The studio is comfortable, clean, and has some nice gear, such as a grand piano and a couple blackface Fender amps. I was a guest musician to a recording project, so not only did I play on a couple songs, but I got to hang out and observe the whole process. We left the session that night, after a full day of recording, feeling great about everything.
Now the horrible parts. The girl who does the scheduling at the studio originally said via email that mixing was included in the whole recording package that we signed up for, thus there was no additional charge. However, we found out after we paid for the recording session that unfortunately she had misrepresented the deal, and in fact, mixing was additional money. Wow. I would have taken my tracks elsewhere right then and there if I was in charge, however the bandleader of this project that I was involved with apparently has a higher tolerance for BS than I do. So, we decided to stick with the studio for mixing/mastering, even though they had just lied to us about what was included in their original price.
Well, after that, believe it or not...after the session was "mixed" and "mastered" about a week later, for an additional $500, the music actually sounded much worse than before it was mixed. That's right, the raw tracks sounded superior to the "mixed" tracks. To charge $500 for something this unprofessional is absolutely unacceptable. I wonder if the guys at the studio even are aware of how bad it sounded, otherwise why would they have allowed such a piece of crap to go out their door with their names on it? Subsequently, the musician who was spearheading this musical project that I was involved with kindly requested that he be given the raw tracks so he could take them elsewhere to have them mixed properly. And the studio's response? They charged an additional $75 just to give him WAV format copies of the tracks on a CD!!! That should have been FREE after they ripped him off by first misrepresenting their deal, and secondly with their pathetic mixing job!
The takeaway about Charleston Sound is as follows: It's a good place to do some recording, as long as you are very clear and upfront about costs, and what the costs include. I recomend a contract to avoid confusion. However, don't even consider using these guys for any mixing or mastering, unless you want to get majorly ripped off. I live in Boston and have had the pleasure of recording, mixing, and mastering in various studios with many different people, and even in the overpriced northeast of the US, there are options that are cheaper than Charleston Sound that are 1000 times better in quality. I hope I never step foot inside their studio again after they ripped off the bandleader of the project I was part of.
