About

Before relocating to Colorado, Dave Richardson founded Compact Recording Systems in San Gabriel, California in 1997. Mr. Richardson is a professional musician who has recorded several albums over the years and performed in numerous venues. His interest in recording goes back to early childhood when he recorded plays, shows, and interviews with his young friends. At the age of 9, he was writing scripts, editing analog tape, and recording his dad’s music on a Webcor reel-to-reel tape recorder.

Mr. Richardson became interested in acoustic music at an early age and played guitar and 5-string banjo in his teenage years with various folk and bluegrass groups. In college, he recorded his first record on Century Records entitled “The Other Half.”

After graduating from Ripon College, he moved to Hawaii where he accepted a 5-year position playing guitar, Dobro guitar, and 5-string banjo with the Don Ho Show. In 1978 ABC picked up the show for a daily series on television. In 1980, he moved to California and appeared with several musical ensembles. Mr. Richardson also worked for 28 years in the broadcast and aerospace industries designing intercommunications systems.

What We Do

The range of services for the acoustic artist includes audio recording, music videos, AI enhancement, virtual instrument work, and production type services. We love our work and is why we can help you progress toward your dream. In short, tell us your story. Compact Recording Systems exists simply to help you sound and look your best.

While recording, editing, mixing, mastering and video production are included in our offerings, we do not provide mass CD disk replications. Backup musicians can be provided at extra billing, and we will provide a finished CD video or audio master to help further your career. We work exclusively with individuals who are bluegrass, classical or folk artists but also consider voice-over artists.

Monitoring System

Our microphones and monitoring system help you achieve a crystal clear rendition of your effort. The recording area is physically separated from the control room which allows us to talk to you via our panel microphone without the need for headphones in the control room area.

Recorders

We have an array of recorders including Samplitude, Sonar, Reaper, Waveform, Mixbus and Logic Pro. Upon request, we can also use our vintage PARIS recording system for audio recording. The PARIS system was designed by the late Stephen St. Croix and Edmund Pirali to duplicate the warm and musical quality of a very expensive SSL audio console that Stephen had been using. The acronym PARIS means Professional Audio Recording Integrated System. Although no longer available, you can learn more about the sound of the vintage PARIS system by listening to some of our sample CD’s. Our main workstation in recent years has been Cubase. This platform is highly customizable which assists in the faithful reproduction of acoustic music. We also use Cubase coupled with high end plugins to provide a very smooth and finalized master for you.

Remote Recording

Using our portable recording system, we can provide remote recording by personal visit. The system has many of the features of our main studio including headphone monitoring, microphones, reverb, equalization, and multi-track playback and recording.

We can record up to two channels simultaneously, and the recorder has unlimited tracks. If you have a nice quiet area such as a closet to record, the results will be wonderful. After you have recorded several takes of your instruments and vocals, we will return to the studio for post production of your project.

Please contact us for further information and/or a price quote for your particular project.

Music Videos

One of our specialties is music videos. These may involve a bit of acting and of course music skills. The first step in the process is to produce a good quality audio CD master either in our studio or completed elsewhere. After the CD is completed, we are at the starting point for the video portion. We lay out a story board which describes what videos to include and where they will be shot. When we have decided on the places that will work for us, we write a director’s script. We refer to this script to help the performers decide whether they will be playing inside a certain venue or outside or just walking or simply looking at the camera. Most of these considerations are dependent on the content of the music to tell the story. In almost any classic musical movie you may have seen over the years, the songs are not performed live. Instead an audio playback of the taped performance is used. The performers then sing and use their instruments as props to enhance the illusion of a live show. Our studio has a battery powered playback machine that can be used in an outdoor setting. Back in the studio, the video editing suite provides the final touch for special effects and perfect production of your music video!

Our revised price list has reasonable rates!

Let’s make you sound the best that you can be!

Virtual Instrument Enhancement

Sometimes acoustic artists request background ambiance to enhance their acoustic performance. Compact Recording Systems has a number of string libraries played by real musicians on real instruments at your disposal. Whether it be single or double violin, string quartet, chamber strings, or complete symphonies, we have the ability to add these Virtual Instruments in a non intrusive manner.

Some of the fine sample libraries that we employ are Spitfire, Cinematic Studio Strings, Berlin Strings, and LA Scoring Strings. These libraries are recorded in world class rooms with multiple microphone positions to achieve the perfect sound for your effort.