Westlake Pro Awarded Avid’s Top Audio Reseller | Americas 2021

Westlake Pro is proud to announce that we received the 2021 Avid Channel Partner Award for Top Audio Reseller in the Americas! For the fourth time, we are honored to be recognized with this prestigious award and humbled to be our customers’ go-to source for all things Avid. We sincerely thank you for your continued […]

Is Your Room Ready for Dolby Atmos Music?

For those who thought that Dolby Atmos for Music would never catch on, well, it might be time to reconsider that opinion. Apple’s recent announcement that Apple Music will now support Dolby Atmos, it’s clear that Dolby’s Immersive Audio format is here to stay and will soon be a must for music deliverables.

New UAFX | Classic UAD Sounds At Your Feet

Universal Audio has just announced their new UAFX stereo effects pedals. Using the power of the UAD-2 platform, these three pedals put classic analog sound right at your feet.

Introducing iZotope RX 8

iZotope RX 8 brings a lot to the table for music workflows while updating many of the most essential tools from previous versions. Check out the latest in iZotope RX8!

Studio Spotlight: Twelve3South Studios

An Interview with Donnie Reis founder of Nashville’s Twelve3South Studios How’d you get into the audio industry?  Actually I got into the recording industry out of necessity.  I’m a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and songwriter.  I started out as a violinist at the age of 10, and then over time picked up the piano and the guitar.  […]

Spotlight: Atmos Mixing Engineer Mills Logan

Mills Logan (Toby Keith, Luke Bryan, Josh Turner) tells us how he wound up mixing songs for Atmos, some of the creative and exciting methods he’s come up with to do the job well, and what Dolby Atmos might mean for music listeners in the future.

Spotlight | Brandon Proctor On Mixing Blockbusters In Dolby Atmos

Brandon Proctor is a CAS Award-nominated Re-Recording Mixer known for his work on Black Panther (2018), A Quiet Place (2018), Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey (2020), and A Quiet Place Part II, which is set for release in 2020. We had the pleasure of chatting with Brandon about how he used Dolby Atmos to make audiences feel like part of the action in Black Panther and A Quiet Place.

Spotlight | Tony Maserati

We sat down with GRAMMY-award-winning recording engineer Tony Maserati to get an inside look at his career, workflow, and outlook on the current musical landscape.

Spotlight | David Gnozzi of MixBusTV

In this Spotlight, we sat down with David Gnozzi of MixBusTV. The story behind his emergence as a YouTube Audio Guru begins all the way back in his home country of Italy, with several surprising turns along the way.

What’s New in Celemony Melodyne 5

The update includes an enhancement that focuses pitch-correction around tonal segments that the human ear picks up; plus new tools for reducing or manipulating sibilance, ignoring non-harmonic noise while tuning vocals or instruments, creating complex chord structures or harmonies, and much more.

Manley ELOP+ Demo Videos

In this video series, Manley recruited platinum producer Michael James (New Radicals, Edwin McCain, Hole) to showcase the versatility of the ELOP+ on some of his favorite sources: lead vocals, electric bass, and two different mix buss applications.

Gear Spotlight: The Eventide H9 Max Guitar Effects Pedal

A complete pedalboard in one stompbox, the H9 Harmonizer effects pedal is full of Eventide’s iconic reverb, chorus, delay, modulation, pitch-shifting and distortion effects. With the H9, you can evoke the sonic landscape of legendary albums and open the doors to the creation of new sounds never heard before.

Inside Look | Voxx Studios

Voxx Studios Voxx Studios in Glendale, CA, has earned itself a solid reputation for excellent work in foreign language dubbing, producing about 2000 hours per year of content in a multitude of languages.  Founders Andrei Zinca, Tunde Skovran, Karina Cruz, and Adrian Potinga began the venture together in 2015. Betting on Hollywood’s incredible source of […]

New From NAMM 2020!

Westlake Pro at NAMM 2020

Check out some of the latest releases from top brands. From new mics to next-gen monitors, audiophile converters, and studio essentials, read on to see the hottest items at NAMM 2020!

Meet LUNA from Universal Audio!

LUNA recording system - Universal Audio | Westlake Pro

Universal Audio have just announced their latest software development – a DAW recording system designed specifically for flawless integration with your Apollo workflow. Featuring Accelerated Realtime Monitoring, built-in Neve Summing, Multitrack Tape Emulation, and new LUNA Instruments from Universal Audio, Moog Music, Spitfire, and more, LUNA promises a smooth and streamlined recording experience with the […]

Immersive Audio in 2020

Dolby Atmos is quickly becoming a required format for music, with many studios re-mixing their back-catalog for Immersive Audio while requiring new releases to include deliverables for Dolby Atmos.

Introducing the BURL B22 ORCA

Burl B22 ORCA

For fans of the Burl Audio Mothership, get ready for some great news: Introducing the B22 Orca Control Room Daughter Monitor Card. Providing the very best in quality monitoring, this Digital to Analog converter provides unbelievable sound quality for studio mixing and monitoring. Best yet, it’s designed to match with the B16 and B80 Mothership.  

Spotlight | Inventure Studios

When Steven Spielberg, Christopher Nolan, and Quentin Tarantino need sound on film, they go to one place – Inventure Studios in North Hollywood, CA. In addition to 35MM Dolby Digital, Inventure houses the only Datasat (formerly DTS) 70mm film encoder in the world to produce the film soundtrack for major motion pictures like Ready Player One, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, and Dunkirk.

Studio Spotlight: Producer, Engineer, and Inventor Henry Strange (Kanye West, A$AP Rocky, Lil’ Wayne, Drake)

Henry’s the founder of Strange Electronic, which has come up with all kinds of cool gadgets: there’s “Set List” (a live-performance software that’s been used by Post Malone, Mac Miller, Kanye West, Lady Gaga, A$AP Rocky, Lil’ Wayne, & more); a Wii remote he connected to Ableton for Kanye to use during his live performances; and the brand new “Lightstorm,” which combines creative lighting with a synthesizer workflow.

Introducing iZotope Dialogue Match

Despite the fact that ADR is a regular, if not essential part of a post-production workflow, anyone in the field knows just how long it takes to clean, match, and treat dialogue to create a seamless performance. Thankfully, iZotope is looking to fix that problem. 

Westlake Pro | Nashville Summer NAMM Party Recap

On July 20th, 2019, Nashville’s audio community celebrated Summer NAMM with Westlake Pro! After four long days of NAMM, Westlake Pro hosted their first Summer NAMM Party at their location in the iconic Berry Hill neighborhood.

Exponential Audio – Reverb in 3D

For years, Exponential Audio has been a go-to choice for the most discerning reverb aficionados. From Post-Production on the biggest blockbuster films, to the lush spaces heard on chart-topping records, Exponential Audio provides everything you need in a reverb and more.

Westlake Pro Welcomes Barefoot Sound!

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Barefoot Sound’s Founder and CTO Thomas Barefoot has produced some of the most innovative and well-respected monitor designs in the industry. Now located in Portland Oregon, the growing team at Barefoot put an emphasis on quality and craftsmanship to create a no-compromise solution for the best mixing experience possible.

Introducing the New Avid S4 and S1 Control Surfaces

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With the introduction of the S1 and S4, Avid has brought their world-class control surfaces to studios of every size! Perfect for mid-size post-production facilities, editing suites, smaller mix rooms, and home studios, these new controllers are sure to upgrade your studio workflow.

proSESSIONS Recap with Vance Powell and Burl Audio

Guests such as Butch Walker (Taylor Swift, Pink, Fall Out Boy), Sylvia Massy (Prince, Johnny Cash, Tool), Brian Vibberts (Lauryn Hill, Green Day, Mariah Carey), and Al Schmitt (Frank Sinatra, Quincey Jones, Miles Davis) have captivated attendees with their stories and techniques gained from decades of recording experience.

Meet iZotope Neutron 3 | Modern Mixing Redefined

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Expanding the Frontiers of Modern Mixing iZotope has built a name for themselves making innovative audio software with assistance tools that allow users of all experience levels to achieve a polished, clean, professional sound. Award winning products such as RX, Nectar, and Ozone have all taken advantage of iZotope’s cutting edge digital processing to help […]

Congratulations to the 66th Annual Golden Reel Award Winners!

Silver Screen, Golden Reel Every year, the Motion Picture Sound Editors, or MPSE, gather in Los Angeles to award praise to talented artists who bring life to the big screen through sound. When it comes to editing audio, the goal is often to go unnoticed. This invisibility allows the audience to become fully immersed in the world shown on […]

Congratulations to our Top 5 TEC 2019 Winners!

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Technical Excellence & Creativity Every year, the NAMM show brings tons of buzz surrounding countless new product announcements. While this gives us a glimpse of where the recording world will be going in the year to come, the TEC awards give us a chance to look back at some of the most innovative tools from […]

Meet the New Apollo Twin X and Apollo x4 from Universal Audio!

The Acclaimed X Series – Right at your fingertips Universal Audio has just released the latest in their acclaimed Apollo X series – the Apollo Twin X and Apollo x4! With class-leading Elite A/D/A conversion and an incredibly low noise floor, the new Apollo Twin X and Apollo x4 give you rich, studio quality sound […]

Vintage vs. Virtual Microphone Shootout

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Have you ever wondered what it would be like to own a vintage AKG C12? What about the recently re-issued Neumann U67? Are you curious to explore the modern forefront of microphone technology? Here at Westlake Pro, the answer to all three questions has been an emphatic YES, so we decided to hold a side-by-side […]

2018 – Thanks for Another Great Year!

2019 is here, and before we get caught up in the new year, we’d like to reflect on the numerous highlights throughout 2018. Read on to check out some of the highlights.

Special Financing Offers from Westlake Pro!

Up to 12 Months Deferred-Interest Financing on Your Favorite Gear! If you’re in audio, you know that there are countless tools needed to make great-sounding records. From microphones, preamps, interfaces, headphones, monitors, EQs, compressors, controllers, and cables, building a studio can certainly put a strain on the budget. Add on the latest in recording and post-production […]

5 Questions with Composer / Sound Designer Anthony Baldino

Whether you know it or not, if you’ve been to the movies lately, you’ve heard the work of Composer/Sound Designer Anthony Baldino. He’s responsible for composing the action-packed music featured in the trailers for many of today’s biggest blockbusters, including Interstellar, Star Wars: Rogue One, Zero Dark Thirty, Avengers: Infinity War, Prometheus, and Ex-Machina. Obviously, a soundtrack must match or […]

Spooky Sounds from Vintage Synths

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Since the late 70’s, the synth world has seen an explosion of new technology, from the advent of digital synths like the Yamaha DX7, to the dominance of Digital Recording, and Software Synthesis. Despite this, the past decade has proven that musicians, producers, and sound designers have never lost their love of the classic, warm, […]

Demo a FULLY LOADED UAD-2 Satellite in YOUR STUDIO Today!

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Experience 50+ Years of Sonic Innovation True Classics For the better part of the last 50 years, Universal Audio has pioneered some of the most important advances in recording technology, producing the first modern recording console along with two of the most popular compressors of all time – the LA-2A and 1176. Through that time, […]

Thank You Nashville!

Nashville certainly knows how to welcome new neighbors, and we had a blast getting to know Berry Hill’s Pro Audio community!

Explore the NEW Universal Audio Apollo X Series at Westlake Pro!

Apollo X Universal Audio has just announced the Apollo X series, the latest in their line of groundbreaking interfaces! The sleek, Thunderbolt 3 design fuses elite, class-leading conversion with the new HEXA Core processors, which offer 50% more DSP than previous Apollos. This allows recording of multiple tracks through UAD’s award-winning plugins with near-zero latency, […]

iZotope VocalSynth 2’s New ‘Biovox’ Module: An In-Depth Look

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iZotope VocalSynth 2 – Biovox Along with their new Creative Suite, iZotope recently released the second iteration of their vocal effects plug-in VocalSynth 2, and with it a brand new interface, effects, and a groundbreaking new module called Biovox. Biovox uses the scientific modeling of a human vocal tract to allow you to manipulate your […]

Westlake Pro Nashville – Now Open!

Westlake Pro is growing with a new brick-and-mortar storefront in Nashville, TN. This storefront is in addition to Westlake Pro’s iconic Los Angeles location.

Located in Berry Hill, our neighbors include House of Blues Studios, Addiction Sound, The Trace Horse, Blackbird Studios, and Sputnik Sound.

Stop by and check out our showroom, where everything you’ll see is indicative of what you’d find in a studio designed by Westlake Pro—from the furniture to the recording equipment, to the instruments, to the room acoustics and wiring integration.

Also keep an eye out for our proSESSIONS and SOUNDBITES events series, showcasing the newest tech from top audio brands and presented by award-winning industry giants and product experts. To get an idea of what some of these highly-acclaimed events look like, take a look at some of our recent proSESSIONS in Los Angeles—like our recent event with Genelec and Sylvia Massy. Each proSESSIONS and SOUNDBITES has gear giveaways, exclusive discounts, plus you’ll get to chat one-on-one with some of the biggest names in the industry.

From massive post-production studios to music recording studios, to everyday audio gear, Westlake Pro has Nashville covered.

Chad Evans, executive account manager at Westlake Pro Nashville, has this to say:

“Nashville’s music community has been in need of a full-service pro audio retailer for many years. This is why I’m excited to be a part of the team at Westlake Pro and help bring them into the Nashville market. Westlake’s 50-year history of designing studios and selling equipment is exactly the kind of experience the professionals in Music City deserve.”

Give Chad a call at 615-806-7556 or swing by the store.

Westlake Pro Nashville
515 East Iris Drive

Nashville, TN 37204

Located in the iconic Berry Hill neighborhood.

The Closest You Can Get to Analog Recording Without Winding Tape

The Closest You Can Get to Analog Recording Without Winding Tape
If you made it to NAMM 2018, you probably saw Universal Audio’s Analog vs Digital shootout. Audiophiles donned a pair of headphones and pressed a button to listen to an analog compressor or EQ unit, then another button to hear the UAD-2 digital emulation of them with the same settings and source audio. Then you’d press a third “mystery button” and guess which one you were hearing. Each person would hear four different pieces of equipment and their digital counterparts and write down four “mystery button” guesses.
I went through each one and listened carefully before writing down my best guess. I was surprised to find that most of them completely stumped me. I’d listen to all three buttons again. And again—am I hearing an original piece of analog equipment or an imposter?
It turns out I wasn’t the only one feeling a little less confident with my ears than usual. A Universal Audio rep kept a going tally of responses vs. correct answers from the scorecards and the ratio of those told me that, for all intents and purposes, we listeners were practically screaming “WE HAVE NO IDEA!” as we filled out the scorecards.
Now if UA had set up a booth in the mall, I wouldn’t have been as surprised by that result. But there we were, in the biggest pro audio event in the country! Practically everyone in attendance was an audio professional in some capacity. And most of us were stumped. Audio engineers are not typically humble or shy about their opinions of audio quality.
To put it into perspective, this would be like putting a bunch of car guys in a room with a genuine, all-original 1969 Camaro SS and some kind of newly-manufactured clone that costs less than 1/10th of the price. Most would scoff that you’d even think they wouldn’t be able to spot the real thing! But then when you ask them to tell you which is which, some head-scratching begins and there are quite a few wounded egos.
It was quite a clever and convincing hands-on demonstration—and one that worked beautifully. I ordered a Universal Audio Apollo 8p the next week!
Once I sat down with my newly-acquired piece of UA hardware, was blown away all over again when I tried out some of the Unison preamp emulations. Using the same ingenuity that created the UAD-2 signal processing plugins, Universal Audio’s Unison technology manipulates the gain structure, harmonics, and characteristics of the preamps in the actual hardware to emulate vintage microphone preamps with stunning accuracy.
Controllable within the UAD Console, you can set up a Neve 1073, Bill Putnam’s 610A, or a number of other iconic vintage mic preamps, and capture the harmonic qualities that propelled their names into the audio history books. Heck, throw one on each track of your stereo guitar, or different ones for each signal of your drum tracks! Just like any other UAD-2 plugins, you quickly realize the expanded capabilities of your rig when all of the processing power is handled within the interface or other external DSP processor rather than bogging down your computer.
I thought of all these possibilities, and suddenly dropped or reprioritized thousands of dollars on my “must-have” list of studio hardware.
Maybe you’ve already known about all of this for a while, but the barrier-to-entry has remained just outside of reach for your ever-growing audio career.
Well, as they say—the times, they are changing.
With the release of the Universal Audio Arrow, entry into the world of UAD-2 plugins is more affordable than ever.
At just $499, you can get an Arrow interface and 14 incredible UAD-2 plugins!
The Arrow is UA’s newest interface, designed for musicians and engineers on the go, home studios or anywhere you need top-quality audio recordings. It uses the same Unison preamps as its big brother Apollo and features an ultra-fast Thunderbolt 3 connection to your computer. (Note that it requires native Thunderbolt 3 connections, so adapters won’t do the trick).
For 14 UAD-2 plugins—nevermind the Unison preamps and legendary Universal Audio AD/DA conversion in the hardware—well this is a deal that just can’t be beaten
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You Get Even More UAD-2 Plugins When You Bundle
With each purchase of an Apollo Thunderbolt Interface, Arrow Thunderbolt Interface, or Satellite DSP Processor, you can bundle more UAD-2 plugins at the time of purchase and choose which ones you want later on. 
With a new Universal Audio user account, you’ll get a 14-day demo of each and every UAD-2 plugin in their entire collection. Since you have 45 days to choose which plugins you want to grab in your bundle, you’ll have plenty of time to try out a bunch of them and find the ones that work best in your own DAW setup.
It can get a little overwhelming (there are tons of awesome plugins in their library!), so we recommend trying them out in groups rather than unlocking 14-day demos for all of them at once.
Below are the UAD-2 plugin bundles that are available for purchase with any Apollo Thunderbolt Interface, Arrow Thunderbolt Interface, or Satellite DSP Processor. Remember, these additional plugins are on top of the plugin bundles that are already included!

Avid Releases Pro Tools 2018 Update

At NAMM this week, Avid released its newest iteration of Pro Tools software. Let’s dive in a take a look at some of the new features. MIDI in Pro Tools Gets an Overhaul This update will be especially useful for songwriters and producers. It includes retrospective MIDI recording, easier transposing/trimming/velocity changes, and useful shortcuts. Learn […]

Tube vs Solid State: Battle of the Buzz

Guitar Amps: Tu-be Or Not Tu-be   “Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to gig with a tube amp or a solid-state guitar amp and suffer the slings and arrows of capacitor-sniffing tone snobs” It’s pretty much a given that your more militant guitar tonemeisters prefer tube amps to solid state. According to Professor Alexander […]

How To Set Up An Analog-Style Mix Bus With Plug-ins

Now that more mixers are moving inside the box, we’re going to focus on a mix-bus plug-in setup that will give you excellent results. Since plug-ins now model the behavior of analog equipment, a good starting point would be to set up a mix bus the way you would work in a studio with a […]

The Abbey Road Reverb Trick

One of the techniques that make up the “Abbey Road Sound” is referred to, colloquially, as the “Abbey Road Reverb Trick.” Before we discuss the how-to, let’s talk about the results. If you listen to plate or chamber reverbs in their natural state, there’s a lot of information going on throughout the frequency spectrum. In short, […]

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