One-Stop Shop Recording and Restoration Facility: Perfectly combining his major/minor of Chemical Engineering/Electronics and Music at Cal State Northridge, Charles Laurence had a brief flirtation with the aerospace industry before launching Charles Laurence Productions, a one-stop state-of-the-art recording, audio/video and production facility. His studio not only provides state-of-the-art recording production, audio/video and artist management, but also restoration and re-mastering services. While his main studio room is dedicated to new recordings, he also devotes ample space to vintage analog tape restoration, baking and transfer and legacy data acquisition and digital transfer via such technologies as Syquest and Jaz and Mac to PC Audio transfers from programs like Cubase.
Laurence also does 24 and 32 track music production (analog and digital), with synths, percussion and grand piano on site, and has an audio production studio with thousands of sound effects. Over the years, he’s also re-mastered hundreds of classic pop and jazz recordings (Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, Ike & Tina Turner).
Video Restoration and Production Services: In 2010, Laurence brought a diverse video component to his production and restoration business, offering such services as 8 mm, 16mm 3/4 inch, Beta and VHS film transfers to DVD; 1⁄2 video, mono 3⁄4 Umatic transfers; video editing, DVD Duplication and the creation of training videos. One of the key technologies he uses is the Final Cut Pro Editing with a Motion plug in. He also does video restoration, transfers, time base and color correction, which helps stabilize the picture and restore old videos for digital presentation on DVD. “The most dynamic part of transferring old to new technologies is using the best of what we had in the ‘80s and ‘90s, including pro VHS players and hi fi with newer technologies like the time base corrector,” says Laurence.
Innovations: Over the years, Laurence’s three-room facility has not only stayed on the cutting edge of technology, but transcended it through in-house innovations. Designing his own equipment for fidelity optimization, he has developed pre-amps, buffer amps and dual servo pre-amps, among many other new technologies.
- Jonathan Widran
