RSR508 - Ben Sabin - Rick Rubin's Shangri-La Studio & Trace Audio

Recording Studio Rockstars

Lij Shaw

Music

4.8 • 543 Ratings

🗓️ 30 May 2025

⏱️ 129 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, Lij Shaw chats with Ben Sabin, founder of Trace Audio, about his journey from Shangri-La Studio with Rick Rubin to wiring up some of the best studios in the biz. They dive deep into the mystical world of cables, the magic of patch bays, and why good studio wiring is like rock 'n' roll feng shui — get it right, and everything just flows! Ben shares cool stories from his intern days, working with legends like Neil Young, and the hard-earned lessons of studio troubleshooting. They break down balanced vs. unbalanced audio, why your patch bay might be sabotaging your creativity, and how to future-proof your studio setup. Plus, if you've ever wondered how to avoid a spaghetti mess of cables, this episode is for you!

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My guest today is Ben Sabin. He got his start at Shangri-La with Rick Rubin, where he saw top artists and engineers work at the highest level. He then split time between Shangri-La and Groove Masters, helping rewire tie lines, patchbays, and converters—sparking his passion for cabling and studio workflow. He also worked alongside legendary studio tech Pat Schneider on servicing and repairs.

In 2018, he helped LA producer Colin Cunningham set up patchbays and streamline his growing outboard gear collection. He then worked in live sound, gaining hands-on troubleshooting experience. In 2019, he founded Trace Audio, focusing on CAPI gear and custom cabling, relocating to Nashville, where it's now a full-time business serving top industry clients.

Ben also rewired my studio, The Toy Box Studio, and I quickly saw how much we could learn from him—so I had to invite him on the podcast to talk about creatin the best setup for your studio. In fact, you're hearing our voices right now through Trace Audio cables!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode of Recording Studio Rockstars is brought to you by Isotope, Native Instruments,
0:06.5	Adam Audio, and S-A-E Institute, Nashville.
0:10.4	You're hearing my voice right now mixed through Isotope, R-X, Ozone, and Neutron on atom-audio monitors and headphones.
0:19.7	Please check out our awesome sponsors using the links in the show
0:23.1	notes below and like and subscribe to our YouTube channel and leave us a comment. It's a great way
0:28.6	for you to help support this show. Now get ready to rock. So the beauty about normaling is there's a
0:33.6	couple terms. The two that you'll see the most are full normal and half normal.
0:38.2	A full normal.
0:39.3	I think I'm half normal.
0:41.2	We've got a shirt. So there is a full normal means if I take signal flows from the top to the bottom, but if I take a patch cable and I patch the top row or the bottom, it breaks the normal.
0:52.9	Meaning the second I plug into the top or the bottom,
0:55.9	signal no longer flows from output to input, and it shows up at the tip of that cable that you've
1:01.1	plugged in. There is a cool thing that I personally only use in a couple instances. Some people
1:06.6	think of it as like a free molt or like a free copy of the signal. But a half normal,
1:13.0	it doesn't break on the top row.
1:16.2	It only breaks the normal at the bottom row.
1:18.3	And then what's cool is you could do like some parallel compression
1:19.6	or like parallel processing
1:21.0	with that free mold.
1:22.6	Music Welcome to Recording Studio Rockstars.
1:35.8	I'm Lid Shaw, and this is the podcast created to help you become a rock star of the recording studio.
1:48.1	Okay. become a rock star of the recording studio. At Isotope, mixing just got even smarter.
	...

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