By Danny Burns
Donnie Sundal with the Quad-Eight console
Local favorite, Donnie Sundal has been in the Florida Panhandle since 1994 serving up his own brand of R&B, Funk, and Soul. He lives in Destin with his lovely wife, Jennifer, and daughters Makensie, Allyson, and Kaya. You can hear him perform as Boukou Groove front man and keyboardist with his cohort Derwin “Big D” Perkins at venues along 30A and the Emerald Coast.
Sure, you may know all that… But did you know that Sundal owns and operates a recording studio in Destin?
The studio idea originated when Sundal was recording Dread Clampitt’s “Geaux Juice” album on his personal Pro Tools set up. For you non techno-geeks, Pro Tools is a computer based, digital multitrack recorder.
Sundal asked his friend, Mike Kent, for help in acquiring a better microphone to improve the quality of the recordings. As Sundal recalls it, “He (Kent) said yeah, yeah, we could do that. We could get the microphone… or we could open a studio.”
That idea evolved into the concept that created a partnership between Sundal and Kent, and a world-class recording facility called Neptone Recording Studios.
The SSL 6000G series 40 channel console
The studio opened in 2005 with a Pro Tools rig and a Digidesign control surface. To this all-digital recording set up, Sundal added Neve 1073, API 512, and Millennium microphone preamplifiers (mic pres) to capture a warm analog sound when tracking multiple instruments and voices.
The studio recently installed a vintage Quad-Eight console, adding 24 more mic pres to the mix. The console has been completely refurbished by Nashville engineers and the room redesigned and rewired to accommodate the new set up.
The main room can record 32 tracks simultaneously to Pro Tools. “When I’m tracking, I have 40 really good mic pres to use now,” Sundal said. “It’s great to have an old school analog mixer.”
“Mixing ‘in the box’ (inside the digital realm of a computer) actually sounds great, but now we can do a hybrid of the two. Rather than having Pro Tools crunch the numbers, we wanted an analog sound too. Summing it through an analog mixer was the main reason we wanted to get a vintage console,” Sundal said.
Boukou Groove
Just across the hall from Sundal’s main studio is the room where his partner in Boukou Groove, guitar guru, Big D Perkins does his recording. This studio features an SSL 6000G series 40 channel console and the same Pro tools 32 track layout. The room even has a working 24 track, 2 inch analog tape recorder in it!
Neptone has hosted musicians Junior Marvin, Dread Clampitt, Sam Bush, Duke Bardwell and a stream of local, Nashville, and New Orleans artists. Sundal made Boukou Groove’s latest album “A Lil’ Boukou in Your Cup” in-house at Neptone.
Nearby on Destin Pointe, there’s a four-bedroom, four bath beach house available for non-locals to rest after a big day of recording and eating seafood.
Located in the Destin Harbor area, the studios are conveniently close to incredible restaurants, the world’s luckiest fishing village, and the most beautiful white sand beaches you’d ever want to sink your toes into.
