RSR523 - Chris Andrews - From Basement to Atmos Mixing, SSL Sigma, and Building a Studio with Purpose

Recording Studio Rockstars

Lij Shaw

Music

4.8 • 543 Ratings

🗓️ 12 September 2025

⏱️ 116 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"Music's too fun not to have fun making music." In this episode, I talk with Chris Andrews, a seasoned producer, mix, and mastering engineer who has worked with artists across the globe. From his Dolby-approved Atmos studio, Monument Sound, nestled at 7,400 feet in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, Chris delivers stunning immersive mixes that compete at the highest level of the music industry. His story begins in a basement studio in Virginia and evolves through years of military service, technical refinement, and relentless creativity. We talk about Chris's current studio setup, his go-to tools like the SSL Sigma, and how Forte AI and Soundflow are revolutionizing his workflow. He shares advice for audio professionals on avoiding debt, maximizing creativity, and treating music as both an art and a business. This one's packed with insight and inspiration!

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My guest today is Chris Andrews, a 25-year veteran producer, mix, and mastering engineer based in Monument, Colorado. He got his start running TBR Studio—The Basement Recording Studio—for seven years before moving to Denver in 2007, where he balanced a day job while refining his craft by night. That dedication led to the creation of Monument Sound, a private studio set 7,400 feet up in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

In 2022, he leveled up his studio with a Dolby-approved ATMOS mixing room, allowing him to deliver immersive, three-dimensional mixes that help artists compete in today's evolving audio world. While he's worked with artists all over the globe across many genres, his heart is in rock, pop, and country. And when he's not mixing music, he's lending his post-audio talents to indie film projects.

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Listen to the podcast theme song "Skadoosh!" https://solo.to/lijshawmusic Listen to this guest's discography on Apple Music:

STEREO: https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/monument-sound-mix-master/pl.u-XkD0vN0C2vbYx3g

ATMOS: https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/chris-andrews-atmos-mixes/pl.u-zPyLl9LCer95vy8

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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,
0:06.7	Adam Audio, and S-A-E Institute. You're hearing my voice right now mixed through isotope,
0:13.4	ozone, and velvet on atom audio monitors and headphones. Make sure to get my free mixing course
0:20.0	at Mixmasterbundle.com, and please check out our
0:23.7	awesome sponsors using the links in the show notes. And please like and subscribe to this YouTube
0:29.6	channel because it's a great way to help support this show. Now get ready to rock.
0:34.7	Like I've created a bunch of different decks where, like, as an example for a mix prep, I had a button where I'd bring all my tracks to the right of my template. I put them in the order that I'd highlight all the drums. You have to drag them over one at a time and organize and all that. Time consuming. Yep. Yep. So for this guy, what I can do if I bring in a track, I could go in, I think I got it down
0:57.0	to five minutes on a mix prep even with just sound flow.
1:01.0	But you highlight all your tracks, and what I had set up for my specific template is I'd hit a button,
1:06.0	and let's say you had 20 drum tracks.
1:08.0	It would color code them, set the routing input to nothing. It would set the output to my drum bus.
1:13.6	It would create a VCA called drums if it wasn't already created. And then I would move it to a drum folder that it would create as well.
1:21.6	And then it would close that folder up. And that was with one button within sound flow.
1:38.6	Welcome to Recording Studio Rockstars.
1:46.4	I'm Lid Shaw, and this is the podcast created to help you become a rock star of the recording studio.
1:57.0	From synths to strings to studio guitars, Complete 15 has it all.
2:02.6	Native Instruments flagship bundle gives you everything you need to create pro music in any genre with cutting edge instruments like Contact 8, MassiveX, battery, guitar rig, and session
2:09.7	guitarists for lifelike electric and acoustic guitar parts. Use our code Rock 10 for 10% off at native
2:17.0	instruments.com or get started with complete start totally free.
2:22.6	Howdy Rockstar?
2:23.5	Howdy Rockstars?
2:24.4	It's your host, Lidshan.
	...

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