Picture this: It’s 1991. I’m 14 years old, standing in the Exploratorium in San Francisco with my dad, about to watch Todd Rundgren—the Todd Rundgren—give a lecture on digital recording formats.
If you weren’t alive in 1991, let me set the scene: Digital recording was revolutionary and borderline mystical. Most people were still dubbing cassettes on their boom boxes. The idea that you could record music as ones and zeros—that you could manipulate sound without physically cutting tape with a razor blade—felt like science fiction.
And here was Todd Rundgren, rock legend and tech prophet, explaining it all to a room full of wide-eyed nerds and audio geeks.
After the lecture, something happened that changed my life forever.
Todd Rundgren spent fifteen minutes talking with me. Me! A kid! He didn’t have to do that. He could’ve signed an autograph, smiled politely, and moved on. Instead, he gave me his full attention. He treated my questions seriously. He showed me what it means to be generous with your knowledge and time. I don’t recall much of the conversation, but I do remember how it made me feel.
That conversation didn’t just teach me about digital recording—it taught me about being generous and respectful in a world that doesn’t really care all that much. It taught me that the best engineers and producers aren’t just technically brilliant; they’re approachable, invested, and genuinely passionate about passing the torch–raising all the boats.
It’s a lesson I carry into every session at Panama Sound.
The Long and Winding Road
Here’s the thing: after that magical encounter, I didn’t immediately become a professional recordist and live happily ever after. Life had other plans.
I was already recording by then—making mixtapes of my dad’s record collection at age 10, experimenting with whatever primitive recording tools I could get my hands on. But after high school, I took a hard left turn into a completely unrelated career. For 25 years, I did… other stuff. Important stuff, sure, but music remained this persistent itch I couldn’t scratch.
The whole time, though, I kept recording. GarageBand. A microcassette recorder before that (yes, really). I was the guy tinkering with sound in the margins of a life spent doing something else entirely.
And then, five years ago, something clicked. I got serious about REAPER. I started diving deep into researching pro audio gear, microphone techniques, digital audio workstations, acoustics and mixing theory. I jumped in headfirst, and the water here is deep.
A Brief History
Let’s zoom out for a second and talk about what recording actually is—because the entire history of audio technology is really just a desperate attempt to bottle magic.
The Acoustic Era: “Sing Louder Into This Horn”
In the beginning, there was the phonograph. Edison’s wax cylinders. You’d gather a bunch of musicians around a giant acoustic horn, and they’d play as loudly as humanly possible so the sound waves would physically vibrate a diaphragm that would etch grooves into wax.
No overdubs. No second takes. No mixing. Just raw performance, frozen in time—if you were lucky and nobody coughed.
The technology was primitive, but here’s the beautiful part: it forced musicians to be good. You couldn’t fix it in post. You couldn’t punch in. You either nailed the performance or you started over.
The Electrical Era: “Wait, We Can Actually Hear the Quiet Parts Now?”
The 1920s brought electrical recording—microphones, amplifiers, the ability to capture a whisper without requiring a brass band to blast your eardrums off. Suddenly, crooners like Bing Crosby could sing intimately instead of projecting like they were in a theater.
Technology didn’t replace musicianship—it expanded the palette. It gave artists new ways to express themselves.
The Magnetic Tape Revolution: “Hold On, We Can Edit This Thing?”
Then came magnetic tape in the 1940s and ’50s, and everything changed. Les Paul was literally slicing tape with razor blades to create overdubs and multi-track recordings. Suddenly, one person could sound like an orchestra. You could experiment. You could sculpt sound.
The Beatles and George Martin took this to another level in the ’60s, turning the studio itself into an instrument. They were bouncing tracks, running tape backwards, varispeeding vocals, and generally treating the recording process like a mad science experiment.
The technology enabled creativity—but it was still in service to the performance.
The Digital Age: “Wait, Where Did All the Tape Hiss Go?”
Which brings us back to 1991 and Todd Rundgren explaining digital recording to a room full of people who couldn’t quite believe it was real.
Digital recording promised perfect fidelity, unlimited tracks, non-destructive editing. No more tape hiss. No more generation loss. No more praying your 2-inch tape didn’t crinkle.
And it delivered. Today, I can run unlimited tracks in Reaper with plug-ins that emulate vintage gear my heroes could only dream of affording. I have tools in my mac mini that would’ve required a million-dollar facility in 1985.
But here’s the plot twist: all that technology still can’t make a boring performance interesting.
Here’s the thing about all this history: time is just a measuring stick we invented to pretend there’s a line between ‘then’ and ‘now.’ The truth is, Les Paul splicing tape in 1952 and a kid layering tracks in GarageBand today are doing the exact same thing—they’re just using different mirrors to see what the human brain has always been capable of imagining.
Technology doesn’t create new music; it reveals what was already rattling around in our heads, waiting for the tools to catch up.
And then music pushes back, demanding technology evolve to capture sounds we can suddenly hear in our minds but can’t yet make real. It’s a conversation that’s been happening since someone first blew across a hollow reed and thought, ‘What if I could make that louder?’ The gear just shows us where we are in that conversation—not where we’re going, because the destination has always been the same: trying to bottle the unbottleable, to freeze the moment when sound becomes feeling.
The Paradox:
More Tools, Same Mission
We live in an age of embarrassing technological abundance. I can emulate a Neve 1073 preamp, a Fairchild compressor, a Pultec EQ, and a plate reverb from Abbey Road—all in software, all running simultaneously, all for less than the cost of one piece of the original hardware.
It’s incredible. It’s revolutionary. It’s also completely meaningless if the performance isn’t there.
Because here’s what 60+ years of recording technology evolution has taught us:
The gear is just a really fancy butterfly net. If there’s no butterfly, you’re just waving a stick around.
You can have the most pristine signal chain in the world, but if the singer is nervous, distracted, or uninspired, that $10,000 microphone will perfectly capture a bad take. Meanwhile, some kid with a SM58 and a dream can record something that makes you feel something—that’s the entire point.
This is why “Vibe Is King” isn’t just a cute tagline at Panama Sound. It’s a survival strategy in an age of technological overkill.
What I Learned
When Todd spent those fifteen minutes talking to me, he wasn’t just explaining digital recording. He was modeling something deeper:
Technology should serve the people, not the other way around.
Todd was famous for embracing technology—he was one of the first artists to use synthesizers, drum machines, and digital recording. But he never let the technology overshadow the music. He used it to expand his creative vocabulary, not replace his artistic vision.
That conversation taught me that being a great recordist isn’t about having the most expensive toys. It’s about:
- Being present with the artist and the moment
- Being generous with your knowledge and attention
- Being human in a space filled with machines
- Being of service to the song, not your ego
It’s why I don’t just explain what I’m doing technically—I explain why it serves the music. It’s why I make sure artists feel comfortable, heard, and valued. It’s why the technology at Panama Sound is designed to be invisible until you need it.
Todd showed me that the best engineers are also the best teachers, collaborators, and people.
Where We Stand at This Crossroads
So here we are looking at 2026. I’m running a home studio with professional-grade equipment that would’ve been impossible to own 20 years ago. I have microphones that cost thousands, preamps that emulate legendary circuits, an audio interface that’s more powerful than entire studios from the ’80s.
And yet, the philosophy is the same as it was in 1877 when Edison first etched sound into wax:
Capture the performance. Everything else is decoration.
At Panama Sound, the technology is deliberately designed to get out of your way:
- The signal path is clean and simple so we’re not troubleshooting patch bays when inspiration strikes
- The room sounds natural instead of sterile, so you feel like you’re making music, not taking a test
- The workflow is invisible so you can focus on playing, not waiting
- The vibe is comfortable so your nervous system can relax and let the creativity flow
On this site you may see “aerospace-grade this” and “professional-grade that,” but the truth is simpler: we have tools that work reliably so they never interrupt the creative process.
Because here’s the secret that 130 years of recording technology has been trying to tell us:
The microphone doesn’t care if you’re nervous. The preamp doesn’t know if you’re inspired. The DAW can’t tell if you’re making art or just filling time.
Only you know that. And my job is to create the space where your best self shows up.
The Detour Was Actually Perfect
Looking back, I don’t regret those 25 years doing something else. I needed to live life, make mistakes, learn things outside of music. I needed to understand people, psychology, collaboration, and what makes environments feel safe or stressful.
Because being a great recordist isn’t just about knowing where to place a microphone or how to dial in a compressor. It’s about understanding people. It’s about reading the room, knowing when to push and when to give space, recognizing when someone needs encouragement versus when they need a break.
The detour made me a better engineer because it made me a more complete person.
And now, at this crossroads where technology can do almost anything but still can’t replace that spark, Panama Sound exists to honor both sides of that equation.
We have the tools. We have the knowledge. We have the space.
But most importantly, we have the philosophy: Vibe Is King. The performance is everything. The technology is just the net we use to catch it.
The Invitation
So whether you’re a solo artist with an acoustic guitar, a band ready to track live, or a songwriter with a voice memo and a vision, here’s what I promise you:
You’ll walk into a space where the technology works flawlessly—but you’ll never feel like you’re in a laboratory. You’ll have access to professional-grade equipment—but you won’t feel intimidated by it. You’ll work with someone who geeks out on microphone topologies and preamp design—but who cares infinitely more about capturing your magic than showing off technical knowledge.
Because at the end of the day, Todd didn’t spend fifteen minutes with a starstruck 14-year-old because he wanted to talk about sample rates. He did it because he understood something fundamental:
Music is people connecting with each other. Technology is just the bridge.
And 35 years later, that’s still the whole game.