Young Avenue Sound has an intangible vibe — it’s a feeling you have to experience to understand. Our goal is to create a space that’s comfortable enough for you to be creative, where you’re fully supported in that creative effort and working with professionals whose sole goal is to help you realize your creativity.
We offer real acoustic excellence, experienced staff and top quality gear. We believe if you’re serious about your music, you should be serious about how it’s recorded. That means working in a space that can deliver the quality you need – just like most of the music you listen to on the radio or download! It means that if you’re serious about your music, you need to get real about how it’s recorded. Record labels don’t release singles or albums that don’t meet their sound quality requirements, and neither should you!
Young Avenue Sound: GET REAL.
History of Young Avenue Sound
We are located at 2258 Young Avenue, in the Cooper Young district of midtown Memphis. This residential neighborhood is home to art and antique stores, record stores and some of Memphis’ best restaurants and bars.
Young Avenue Sound opened in the 4th quarter of 2001, so we just celebrated our 10th Anniversary. The original mission, which remains unchanged, was to provide a resource and focal point for the local music community. A place where young and established artists could meet, mingle, interact and create. Today, almost every Memphis recording studio seeks local artist sessions because of the steep decline in label work across the music industry. The difference is that Young Avenue Sound was created to serve this market and to grow with our local clients as their careers evolved and progressed.
While we are focused on the local market, Young Avenue offers a world class recording environment. Studio A was designed by Alan Stewart, who is one of the top acoustic designers in the world (see Studio A page for more details). It offers an enviable selection of mics and vintage analog recording gear coupled with contemporary ProTools digital systems. The combination of Neve and API consoles offers professional engineers and producers an amazing scope of recording options. The studio’s Yamaha C7 grand is generally acknowledged to be the finest piano in the city and, according to Chuck Leavell, who used it for a recording session, one of the finest anywhere. Studio B is fully digital (with the exception of some killer mic pre’s) and offers a perfect environment for urban artists, who have made it a hotbed of creativity over the past 10 years (see Studio B page for more details).
Artists and recording professionals also appreciate the on-site kitchen and private artist’s lounge, shower facilities and even a private garage attached to Studio A, for those sessions where the artist would prefer a discrete presence.
Studio Electrical Grid
The entire studio (A & B) utilizes a 60/120 groundless tech power grid with isolated transformers, completely separate from the regular house power grid. These outlets are identified by orange receptacles and and are used only for amplifiers, mics and all other recording gear. The advantage of this system is a complete lack of “noise” from the power grid because there is no ground circuit to transmit it. This emulates the electrical circuits used in Europe, which are known for their quiet and is particularly important for digital recordings, which are very sensitive to electrical line noise. Young Avenue is the only studio in Memphis with this special electrical grid and is one of fewer than two dozen in the United States.
