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Questions Before You Book? Good. Here Are the Answers.

We’ve been doing this for nearly 30 years.

These are the questions we hear most often — answered honestly.

1. Getting Started

Yes, and we encourage it. Before any session is booked, we sit down and talk through your project — what you’re making, what it needs to accomplish, your timeline, and the right scope to get you there. We call it a pre-production meeting, and there’s no charge for it. It’s not a formality. It’s the foundation the project gets built on. Reach out by phone or email to set one up.

Nearly all of them. Over 27 years Cloud 9 has recorded rock, pop, punk, metal, country, jazz, and a cappella groups. We’ve tracked orchestral recordings in external environments, produced audiobooks for major publishing houses, cut commercial jingles, and recorded voiceover for broadcast. We’ve worked with first-time artists cutting their first demo and platinum-selling acts with world-class engineers. The common thread isn’t genre or experience level — it’s caring about getting the sound right.

Not at all. Jack and Joe have spent nearly three decades working with artists at every level, from musicians walking into a professional studio for the first time to seasoned performers with long recording histories. What matters is that you come in prepared — knowing your parts, having a clear vision for the project, and being ready to communicate what you want. The experience side of things is what we bring.

Yes. Cloud 9 has hosted some of the most accomplished engineers in the industry over the years, and we’re equally comfortable welcoming engineers who are earlier in their careers. The studio is set up to support whoever is behind the console. If you’re not sure whether you need to bring an engineer or want to work with Jack and Joe directly, that’s a great thing to talk through during your pre-production meeting.

2. Recording & Tracking

This is one of the most common questions we get, and the honest answer is that it depends on too many variables to give a number that means anything. A simple song can become an elaborate production in the recording studio — and an elaborate arrangement can come together faster than anyone expected when the preparation is right.

The factors that have the biggest impact on recording time are the readiness of the artists going in, the length and difficulty of the material, and how clearly the group can identify when the desired result has been achieved. A band that comes in well-rehearsed, with a clear sonic vision and decisive ears, will always work faster than one that’s still working things out in the room.

The best thing you can do to keep your session efficient is to treat pre-production seriously before you arrive.

Pre-production is everything that happens before you start recording — locking in your arrangements, establishing the sonic direction of the project, making sure all instruments are in proper working order, and having a clear enough vision that when you walk into the room, your studio time goes toward performing and capturing, not figuring out what you’re trying to make.

At Cloud 9, we say it plainly: pre-production, pre-production, pre-production. The studio is an environment that emphasizes performance — it doesn’t hide mistakes or cover up underprepared material. It reveals them. Artists who come in prepared make better records in less time and with less frustration. It’s that straightforward.

A few things make a significant difference:

Know your parts. Not almost — cold. The studio is not a rehearsal space, and every minute spent working out parts is a minute not spent getting a great take.

Have a sonic reference. If there’s a record whose sound points in the direction you’re going, bring it. Being able to play something and say “this is the feel I’m after” is worth more than a long description.

Make sure your gear is ready. If you’re a guitarist, check your electronics, your intonation, and any effects you’re planning to bring. Gear troubleshooting in the studio is expensive time.

Know what the project needs to be. A demo for a booking agent and a broadcast-quality master for label release are different projects with different scopes, timelines, and budgets. The clearer you are on the purpose upfront, the better we can structure the session around it.

Yes. Cloud 9’s rooms were designed specifically to give engineers and artists accurate acoustic feedback while recording — which makes them well-suited for live tracking situations where the interaction between players in the room matters. The floating room, non-parallel wall construction and diffusion tuning that define both spaces were built precisely for the kind of critical listening decisions that live tracking demands.

3. Mixing

Like recording, mixing time varies widely depending on the complexity of the project and the clarity of the vision going in. It is genuinely possible to spend days working through a single element — the right snare sound, the right amount of reverb on a lead vocal — if the direction isn’t established. That’s not necessarily wasted time, but it adds up fast.

The most effective thing you can do to keep mixing focused and on budget is to communicate your sonic vision to the engineer at the very start of the project — before tracking begins, not after. The mixing process works best when it’s the finishing stage of a well-planned recording, not the problem-solving stage of one that wasn’t.

Yes. If you’ve tracked elsewhere and want to bring your project to Cloud 9 for mixing, reach out and we’ll talk through the details. The more context you can give us about how the project was recorded and what you’re looking for in the mix, the better positioned we’ll be to hit the ground running.

It’s a phrase that gets used in studios when something isn’t quite right during tracking and the decision is made to move on and address it later. Sometimes that’s a reasonable call. More often, it’s a way of avoiding a harder conversation in the moment — and it almost always costs more time and money during mixing than it would have taken to fix the problem at the source.

Mixing is for polishing sounds that are already right. It is not a repair process. When the elements going into a mix are well-recorded and well-performed, the mixing engineer can focus entirely on the creative work of bringing everything together. When the session has accumulated a list of things to fix, that creative work gets buried under triage. Get it right in the room. The mix will thank you.

4. Mastering

Mastering is the final stage of the recording process — the step between your finished mix and the version of the music your audience actually hears. Think of it this way: you know that feeling when you peel the plastic coating off a new phone screen and suddenly everything looks sharper and more vivid than you expected? That’s what mastering does for a mix. All the subtle nuances that were there the whole time — the shimmer in the high end, the weight in the low end, the presence in the vocal — mastering brings them fully forward.

Or think of it as the sprinkles and powdered sugar on the cannoli. The cannoli is already made. This is what makes it finished.

A great mix and a mastered record are two different things. Mastering serves two purposes: the sonic one, which is bringing out the full clarity and character of your mix, and the technical one, which is ensuring that every song on a project is balanced in volume and tonal character from track to track, and that the final master translates correctly across streaming platforms, radio, vinyl, CD, or whatever format it will live on.

An unmastered mix — even an excellent one — still sounds like a mix. Mastering is what makes it sound like a record.

Yes. If your project is mixed and ready for mastering, reach out and we’ll talk through the delivery format and what the finished master needs to accomplish.

Mixing is for polishing sounds that are already right. It is not a repair process. When the elements going into a mix are well-recorded and well-performed, the mixing engineer can focus entirely on the creative work of bringing everything together. When the session has accumulated a list of things to fix, that creative work gets buried under triage. Get it right in the room. The mix will thank you.

5. The Studio

Cloud 9 runs a custom 32-channel inline analog console with 64 outputs available on mixdown, tied to a 32-in, 40-out Pro Tools HD system. For artists who want the warmth and commitment of tape, we also have a vintage 2″ 24-track MCI analog tape deck in the room. Digital precision, true analog workflow, or a combination of both — the setup accommodates all of it.

Yes. Our vintage 2″ 24-track MCI analog tape deck is available for projects that call for it. If you’re interested in tracking to tape, that’s worth discussing during your pre-production meeting so we can plan the session accordingly.

Both recording spaces at Cloud 9 were designed and built from the ground up using floating room, non-parallel wall construction — a method that physically isolates the room from outside sound and eliminates the parallel surfaces that cause standing waves and acoustic coloration in conventional spaces. After construction, both rooms were tuned using Omni and bi-directional diffusion until the acoustic response was accurate enough to trust for critical decisions.

What that means in practice: what you hear in the room is what ends up in the mix. Engineers and artists can make real creative decisions with confidence because the environment isn’t adding problems that have to be worked around later.

No. Cloud 9 is a professional recording studio. We do not offer rehearsal space, hourly room rentals, or self-operated sessions.

6. Booking & Logistics

The best first step is to reach out by phone or email and tell us about your project. We’ll set up a pre-production meeting — at no charge — to talk through what you’re making, what it needs, and how to structure the session around that. From there we’ll figure out scheduling together.

No. Every project is different in scope, length, and complexity, and a published rate card doesn’t reflect how sessions actually get structured. Reach out and we’ll talk through your project and what it realistically takes to do it right.

Cloud 9 Recording Studio is on Long Island, NY. Full address details are provided when your session is confirmed.

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