Artist Interview: Matt Boudreau at Broken Radio
Four UAD-1 Cards in a PT System, a Bill Putnam-Designed Room and Racks of UA Hardware. It can’t get much better than this.
By Marsha Vdovin
Matt Boudreau

I’ve written about Coast Recorders before, in March 2005. What's so special about the place? Well, it’s the only remaining Bill Putnam-designed studio in San Francisco. I interviewed the new owner Matt Boudreau, who now operates the facility as Broken Radio. So now Coast has a new name–Broken Radio--a new owner, a new control room, a rack of UA hardware and four (count ‘em: four) UAD-1 cards in a Pro Tools system. I figured that was worth revisiting the place and meeting Matt. I’ve always loved this studio, but I was pleasantly surprised by a redesigned control room and happy to see racks of UA outboard gear. Matt is a smart, super-personable guy and we immediately got talking.

How did you get into recording?
A future bandmate named Max Butler and I got into it together. We met in late junior high, early high school. One summer, I get this phone call, and he says, "Hey, guess what? My dad got a four-track." And we both were giddy. We were like, "OK. So this summer, all we're going to do is record." And I played drums and he played guitar and bass. He would come over, and we'd record all kinds of garbage. Years later, we would go on to form a band together, move to San Francisco, and get a record deal.

So it was from engineering your own bands that you learned engineering? Recording your own music?
The interest started then. But I put it on the back burner, because I wanted to be a rock star. I wanted to play drums in a band, and make it big.

What was your band?
We had a band called The Sextants. And we were semi-popular in San Francisco at the time of like Primus, 4 Non Blondes, Counting Crows, Faith No More, Sister Double Happiness, Mother Lode. It was like that late '80s, early '90s kind of scene.

That was a really good time for Bay Area music.
That was awesome. It was very exciting, it was a great time, because you could run up to the Haight, you could go to Nightbreak, or the I-Beam, or you could run down to south of Market and you could go to Slim's or Paradise, or DNA. There was just so much to do, and so many places to go see music. And you could go to like the Paradise night after night after night and go see really good bands.
The name "Broken Radio," where does that come from?
Long story. The condensed version is basically that the Internet was in its infancy, and I thought, "Wow, I could sell independent records on line. What a great idea." I started to put it up, and gather records from people, and people would send me records to sell. Then Amazon started doing the same thing. When I saw what they were doing, I realized that my heart was not into it. To do it properly, I would need to have a great amount of passion, money, and a great business head on my shoulders. And I didn't have any of that. So I abandoned it, but held on to the domain name. When I had my studio in Emeryville, one of my clients one day said "I think you should call the studio 'Broken Radio.'" I thought, “Duh. Why didn't I think of that?" I was concentrating on promoting myself as a producer and as an engineer, and really, I should have been worrying about the studio. So I completely shifted gears, and just concentrated on Broken Radio as a name. A lot of people liked the name, and to me it had some kind of hidden metaphor. You can read a lot into that with the music industry today, and I just thought, "I'm going to hang on to this." When I moved here, I came to a point where I realized, “OK, you gotta either go with the old Coast name, or you gotta like start a new thing.”

It must have been tempting to keep the Coast name …
It was tempting to stick with the Coast name, but I realized the Coast name had been through many histories. This building had been through a lot: Toast, Coast, Mercury. A little bit of confusion there--

The Internet was in its infancy, and I thought, "Wow, I could sell independent records on line. What a great idea." … Then Amazon started doing the same thing.

And Coast had been at another location.
Exactly. So I wanted to respect what was going on here, but at the same time I thought, "I need to move on. It's time to cut loose of that and move forward with my vision."

It's so great. I'm so happy that you understand the history of the building, and how incredibly special it is.
It was a big responsibility.

This building should be a historical landmark.
You know, I've talked about that with the landlord, in the early part of the lease negotiation. Regardless of what happens with me here, it should happen. Because I don't want to see anything happen to this building.

There are so few Bill Putnam rooms left, and there's people that really do understand what it means. I just interviewed Phil Ramone and he talked about what he learned from Bill, and what's special about a Bill Putnam room. It was really exciting.
Well, it is important, and people need to know. Some people walk in and ask, "So who's Bill Putnam?" And I say, "Oh, OK. Let me just tell you this."

The father of modern recording …
He's kind of an unsung hero, really, in recording. And a lot of musicians don't know who he is. When I came over here, it was right after Tape Op 2007, and Joe Chiccarelli called me and asked if he could come by, so that I could tell him about what I was going to do. So he came in. And the funny thing is that in 1994, Joe produced a record of another band of mine here. That was my first exposure to Joe, and now more than ten years later, here we were, talking about what I going to do to the room. He asked, "You're not going to touch this room, right?" And I said, "Of course not, Joe." It was great just for him to stop by and give the encouragement.
Joe is a great guy. Why did you decide to change the control room, and how did you make the decisions you made?
A number of producers, engineers, musicians--everybody who had been here--said, "I love tracking there, but I hate that control room. Can't hear a thing. There's no room." And the console that was there needed a lot of work and money to get it up to snuff. I was going to have to be somewhat conservative about some financial decisions, to make sure that our overhead would be low so we could charge a low rate to everybody. I set out to change the control room, talking to Paul Stubblebine and Michael Romanowski. They both advised me to turn the room so it faces west. Then I brought in Bob Hodas, the acoustician, and asked him for analyses of the room facing the traditional way and of the room facing west. The number's don't lie. It was clear that it was going to sound better facing west. And it was going to create more space. So hearing Paul and Michael's suggestion and seeing Bob's information drove me to do this. Bob came in when we had it down to the cinder blocks, and we stepped through it, piece by piece by piece. We had to go down to the cinder blocks because we realized that the framing was just dried out, and it was time to go. We needed something that was up to code, something that would last. So we kept digging and digging and digging until we couldn't dig any further. "Let's rebuild it now and do it right. And do it economically."
Matt Boudreau in the new
Broken Radio control room

I think it looks fantastic. Do you enjoy mixing?
Oh, I love it in here.

Are you happy with your Trident board?
You know, the Trident does not see a lot of action these days.

Because you're mixing in the box, basically?
Yes but at the old space, the Trident saw a lot of action because we relied on its preamps pretty much exclusively.

But now you've got the 2-610s. Oh, you have the 4110, too.
Everybody that walks in, their eyes go right to this rack, and they say, "Ooh, ooh, I want to try all that." They don't even want to talk about the board. This is potentially temporary, because we're discussing buying one of the new Rupert Neve-designed consoles.

Let's talk about your system. You've got this Trident. What is it, a 16?
Yeah.

And you've had that a long time?
This belongs to my former studio partner--who is still involved with the studio--a really great guy named Josh Roberts. He's has done some work in the past with Jack Dangers and Meat Beat Manifesto, Josh has always been there with me. He was the front-of-house sound guy for one of my bands, and we just have traveled the path together. He's here as moral support, as well as engineering and doing projects of his own.

So you're mostly mixing on the Command 8?
Yeah. I use the Command 8 to control Pro Tools. It was a small investment, and I have to say, one of the better pieces of computer-based gear I've ever bought. It really makes working in Pro Tools really a breeze. It brings the tactile feel back to Pro Tools.

You have the NS-10s, and what are those?
These are Klein & Hummel 0300s.

The Transient Designer is a great tool that has already helped me out on some mix situations, as well as helping to me to create sounds that otherwise can’t happen naturally.

And you've got two new 1176s, and the LA-3A …
Two LA-3As, an LA-2A, it’s a reissue but it's got an older faceplate on it.

And over here you've got the 4110 pre amp, two 2-610s…
And four 2108s.

One of Broken Radio's racks


Wow. A great collection of UA gear. This is a great room. Do you still work on tape?
We haven't worked on tape since June, since I moved in, but that will change since we have a Studer 827. Not to get off that topic, but we've also got four UAD-1 cards.

How do you have room for the UAD-1 cards, do you have an expansion chassis?
Yeah. I had a Pro Tools HD3 system, and I sold one of the cards so I could make room for an expansion chassis. So I had three slots, pulled one card out, and put the expansion card in there. That gives me four more slots in the expansion chassis, which holds all the UAD cards; the computer holds all the Pro Tools cards.

Why did you decide not to just do everything TDM, and to go for the UAD-1?
When I had the all-Pro Tools system, I was using the Bomb Factory stuff. One day I downloaded a TDM demo of the 1176, and I was thinking, "I wonder if these sound any different?" So I made the exact same settings, ran the exact same material through it, and my jaw hit the floor. I thought,” Oh my God, I have to buy this. It's affecting the signal in a more positive way.” So I bought the TDM pack, was using that, and then heard through the grapevine that UA was going to discontinue the TDM thing. Then I met UA’s Will Shanks at Tape Op, and he said, "You can do UAD cards; run them as RTAS." He explained the whole thing to me. I was a little skeptical, but then I just dove right into the pool. I got the cards, the expansion chassis, all within a short period of time, and just started using it, and it worked. And my TDM plug-ins still work, but I'm concentrating on using the UAD cards because I can get away with so many more plug-ins if I need them. I use about 30% TDM plugs and 70% UAD plugs in my mixes.

Which are you favorites?
The 1176. The LA-2A. The Cambridge EQ, the Pultec Pro, the Plate 140. I use them every time I mix.

So the big problem, delay compensation, how do you work with that?
It took me a couple phone calls, initially, but I got it working in the end. It's actually pretty simple. When I track, I never track with any plug-ins. It's only when I'm mixing. So that's when I turn the delay compensation on. I've discovered the settings in the playback engine that are the magic numbers that work with the UAD set up, and the Pro Tools set up, and it's not a problem. Once I arrived at the magic numbers, I realized, OK, this is how it [delay compensation in Pro Tools with UAD] works, and it works well this way, so let's just stay on this path.

Are you able to run the UAD-1s through RTAS at the same time as TDM plug-ins?
Oh yeah.

And that's seamlessly? That's kind of amazing.
Oh yeah. It's just another plug-in.


How many 1176s are you able to run? Have you used the Neve plug-ins?
I can run quite a few 1176s, but I split the load up depending on the goals for the mix. I just got the whole Neve pack and the Transient Designer as well. The Neve stuff is excellent. The sound compared to the real thing is impressive. I love the EQs. The Transient Designer is a great tool that has already helped me out on some mix situations, as well as helping to me to create sounds that otherwise can’t happen naturally.

 Do you produce a lot of people that come through the studio?
I do. I selectively get involved with my friends, primarily.

You have to read the Phil Ramone book, then. He talks so much about what makes a good producer. I just love people like that.
They're like a beacon out there. I get drawn to people like that, who are accessible, cool, experienced. There's no room for bullshit there. In fact, a lot of my inspiration stemmed from being involved with the Tape Op. From the first Tape Op conference in Sacramento, I walked away changed.

They pioneered this whole world of recording. And they're still doing it.
We're all walking in their footsteps, at this point. I think it's cool that we're doing this interview, because number one, it's a Putnam room here, and number two, we've got a ton of UA gear. I’m surrounded by history.
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