Lounge Recording Studios, located in the heart of Times Square, is made up of 11 professional multimedia and recording rooms, many of them now equipped with Neumann KH series monitoring, including a newly built 7.4.1 Dolby Atmos immersive space dubbed the Solaris Room.
Recording established and independent artists across R&B, rock, Latin, pop, gospel, and hip-hop, Lounge served as the East Coast recording studio headquarters for Atlantic Records and Warner Chappelle from 2013-2016. Today, the studio records indie musicians and their major label counterparts.
CEO Walt Randall founded Lounge Studios in 2003, not long after arriving in New York City with only $50 in his pocket. However, his journey really began years earlier, when his promising college football career ended after a series of knee injuries, leading the athlete to embrace his creative side and reignite his long-held passion for music.
“I grew up hearing my grandmother sing in our church choir, and everything changed when my mom bought me my first keyboard when I was 12,” Randall says. “So, when football was no longer an option, I decided to try music out. I turned our dorm room into a makeshift studio where I recorded local artists and fell into a good groove.”
After returning to his hometown of Cleveland following graduation, Randall built a studio in the attic of his childhood home where he honed his skills while planning for the next phase of his career. At 23, he moved to New York City, where he spent his first year working at the Department of Juvenile Justice helping at-risk youth, while saving all the money he made. “That first year, I didn’t go partying. I didn’t go to the movies. I was eating whatever the cheapest thing was. It wasn’t the healthiest, but it was the sacrifice that I was making to achieve my dream. While I worked, I saved up all my money and started looking for spaces to build a studio.”
After months of searching, he was able to find the right space for Lounge Studios in the heart of Midtown Manhattan. The raw space needed to be built from scratch to accommodate the recording facility that Walt was envisioning, but it was not that simple.
“I realized that I couldn’t have an apartment and pay rent on a studio I would be building,” Randall explains. “For my first 12 years in New York, I was homeless. I lived in my truck while I did the initial construction on the studio space, and then I moved to a 5 feet by 8 feet closet in the studio.” Over the years, he handbuilt all the studios. “I didn’t have a lot of money to start with, so I would go to Barnes and Noble and read books on acoustics, construction, electric work. I couldn’t afford to buy the books, so I would sit there and read all day, and then I would go back to the studio and start putting it together.”
The hard work paid off, with Randall opening Brown Sugar Recording Studio in May 2004, the first of many hand-built studio spaces that make up Lounge Studios. Relying on a Neumann U 87, the facility opened for business. Not long after, he recruited Mikaelin “Blue” BlueSpruce straight out of New York University to join him as Lounge Studios’ head engineer.
“Most engineers start their careers by sitting under a big engineer and doing all the assistant work for years and then, when it becomes their turn, they get to step into the engineer chair,” BlueSpruce says. “My story was a little different. I was able to sit in the head engineer chair from day one, at 22 years old. As I grew, the studio grew. It became this symbiotic relationship. There was this great synergy between me and Lounge Studios, and we grew together.”
From the outset, Randall sought the highest quality equipment available: “When I opened my first studio, having a Neumann U 87 was essential for credibility. We’ve been loyal to the U 87 for a long time, emphasizing consistency in our gear.” Since then, Lounge Studios has multiplied with new rooms being built to accommodate the growing client base.
Recently, Randall and BlueSpruce decided it was time to upgrade their monitor, with Neumann being one of the contenders. “I had a set of monitors that I was using for a long time. They were classic studio monitors that were no longer in production, so sourcing parts was not feasible,” BlueSpruce says, “a few years ago, I started looking for an upgrade to future proof the studio and I kept seeing posts about Neumann monitors. Initially, I was a little skeptical because I only knew the brand for their microphones, but I should have known that given the history and the craftsmanship that goes into Neumann products, they were going to be good. We decided to outfit all our rooms slowly with the Neumann monitors.”
Randall adds, “We met Jose Gonzalez, our Neumann sales rep, who recommended the KH series. His positive experience using them in his personal studio, and the consistent praise for Neumann monitors convinced us to try them.” Once they tested out the monitors, the choice was clear for Walt, “I had never heard this much clarity in the details. I was hearing new details in our Grammy winning mixes that I’ve listened to a million times. We were so blown away that we decided to switch all the rooms at Lounge Studios over to Neumann. Currently, we have 11 rooms in total, but six of them have a monitor section. Our largest studio, Ivory, has already switched from a different brand to the KH 150s, and we’ve had amazing success there. Our smaller room has moved to the 120s, and it’s received rave reviews so far.”
The new Solaris Room, a Dolby-certified studio, is outfitted with 12 KH series loudspeakers, and Lounge Recording Studios continues to grow, including a secondary Dolby Atmos certified studio called the Eclipse Room will be outfitted in Neumann KH 150 and KH 80 monitors that’s set to open later this year.
