The finished Planet Hum mastering room, looking towards the desk and monitors
The studio

You can't master
what you can't hear.

The room, the monitoring and the outboard are why the decisions made here hold up everywhere else.

  • 16 × 14 ft488 × 427 cm
  • 9.5 ft290 cm ceiling
  • $40,000acoustic design
  • Custommastering workstation

Finished interior dimensions — measured inside the room after soundproofing and acoustic treatment.

Built from the ground up

Most rooms get treated after the fact. Ours was designed for mastering before it was built — soundproofed and acoustically treated from the floor up, with a $40,000 acoustic design behind every surface. The result is a quiet, balanced space where what you hear is the music, not the room.

At its centre is a custom-built mastering desk and workstation, laid out so the monitors, outboard and engineer sit exactly where they should.

3D acoustic design of the room
01Designed

Planned in 3D, from wall angles to speaker positions.

Framed walls with insulation and an isolation layer going in
02Isolated

Framed and insulated to keep the outside world out.

Suspended acoustic ceiling cloud installed
03Treated

Acoustic treatment, including a suspended ceiling cloud, to control reflections.

The finished mastering room
04Finished

A balanced, quiet room built for mastering.

The custom mastering workstation between Genelec 8351B monitors
The custom mastering workstation, centred between the Genelec 8351B mains.

Monitoring comes first

A master is only as good as the decisions behind it, and those decisions are made by ear. Genelec 8351B main monitors do the heavy lifting, with Neumann KH 120 and Yamaha NS-10 references alongside — all switched through a Dangerous Music Monitor ST, so a mix can be checked on very different speakers in seconds.

Genelec 8351B monitor
Dangerous Music Liaison and Monitor ST
Avalon tube EQ, API JDK R24 EQ, API JDK R22 compressor and MCI 500 channel strips

A real analog chain

The outboard is real and in the room: Bettermaker Mastering EQ and Darth limiter, Weiss Dione, SSL Fusion, SPL BiG, Empirical Labs FATSO and API JDK Vintage Series EQ and compression, summed through Dangerous Music 2-BUS+ hardware, with Dangerous Music CONVERT-AD+ and CONVERT-2 handling conversion in and out of the analog chain.

Digital tools give us precision and flexibility; analog hardware adds depth, character and musicality. That combination is how we like to work — it's our approach, not a claim that great masters can't be made any other way.

Digital precision, custom tools

Alongside the hardware: Universal Audio UAD, the Waves Diamond bundle, and Planet Hum's own custom-designed mastering software. What gets used depends on the song.

Equipment list

The full inventory.

Monitoring

  • Genelec 8351B
  • Neumann KH 120
  • Yamaha NS-10
  • Event Reference 6 (vintage)

Monitoring, routing, conversion & summing

  • Dangerous Music Monitor ST
  • Dangerous Music Liaison
  • Dangerous Music CONVERT-2 — D/A converter
  • Dangerous Music CONVERT-AD+ — A/D converter
  • Dangerous Music 2-BUS+
  • Dangerous Music 2-BUS LT
  • 32-channel analog summing
  • Antelope Audio Orion 32+ — 32-channel converter
  • Universal Audio Apollo Twin

EQ & dynamics

  • Bettermaker Mastering Equalizer
  • Bettermaker Darth Mastering Limiter
  • Weiss Dione bus compressor
  • SSL Fusion
  • SSL SiX Channel (500-series)
  • SPL BiG
  • API JDK Vintage Series R24 stereo EQ
  • API JDK Vintage Series R22 stereo compressor
  • Empirical Labs FATSO EL7X
  • Waves MaxxBCL

Preamps & channel strips

  • Rupert Neve R10
  • Rupert Neve Designs 517 mic preamps (pair, 500-series)
  • MCI 500 channel strips (vintage)
  • Avalon 737 tube channel strip

Software

  • Universal Audio UAD (with UAD-2 Satellite DSP)
  • Waves Diamond bundle
  • Planet Hum custom mastering tools

Hear it
for yourself.

Send one track and compare it with anything you've paid more for.