Perfect Sound’s control room houses an SSL AWS 900+ SE console and (pictured at right) a Neve 8014 console.
Producer/engineer Norm Kerner teamed up with producer/multi-instrumentalist Jake Rodenhouse to convert a 4-bedroom, 3-bathroom house on a secluded estate in the Hollywood Hills into a full-service music production facility, Perfect Sound. Kerner reports that since opening in December 2009, Perfect Sound has hosted sessions for Band of Horses, Sum 41, Murder Dolls, Rob Zombie, Ryan Adams and Tenacious D.
The studio property includes 180-degree views to the Pacific Ocean, a pool and decks. “We are offering artists this type of retreat literally three minutes from the action in Hollywood, and we have made sure that from equipment to staff to maintenance, we can stand up to the best studios out there,” says Kerner, who in the 1990s owned and operated Brilliant Studios in San Francisco while working with alternative rock artists such as Spain, American Music Club, Sky Cries Mary and Imperial Teen. “This is my third major studio and [Rodenhouse’s] second, so we had lots of ideas and seemed to agree on just about everything.”
Perfect Sound’s control room features a 24-channel SSL AWS 900+ SE console alongside an early ’70s analog Neve 8014 console; Barefoot MM27 Micro Mains, ADAM Audio Sub12s and Yamaha NS10Ms for monitoring; a Pro Tools HD3 system with Apogee conversion; and Pro Tools and Logic Studio software. “We fully embrace both present and past technologies in the pursuit of recording new, important music and having it sound as full and powerful as it can,” Kerner says. “That’s always the mission, isn’t it?”
