John Blais, home

Studio work English & Español

Still in the room.

The studio is where I started, and I still keep a hand in it: I design, wire and upgrade rooms in Puerto Rico, and I write it all down so the next engineer can find every signal.

Rooms Puerto Rico

Rooms I’ve wired.

In the press

Río Piedras, PR

“the key studio in Bad Bunny’s global conquest.”

El Nuevo Día, on El Pasillo Sonoro (opens in a new tab)

El Pasillo Sonoro

Technical design · 2020 · 2025

Aug 2020

Designed the wiring and led the install of the room’s SSL AWS 948 mixing console.

From the patchbay layout to the full cable schedule.

Feb 2025

Came back for a full upgrade.

New AD/DA converters, patchbay updates and better networking.

Rooms Continued

Room by room.

  1. San Juan, PR · 2009–now

    Playbach Studio

    Studio assistant, then engineer and mixer, then consultant

    Album cover of La Dulzura by Cultura Profética
    La DulzuraCultura Profética
    • Started in 2009 assisting chief engineer Carlos Velázquez on Cultura Profética’s La Dulzura.
    • Worked my way up from studio assistant to assistant engineer to engineer and mixer.
    • Still consult every week with Ramón and Carlos on upgrades and maintenance.

    with Ramón Martínez, owner, and Carlos Velázquez, chief engineer

  2. Caguas, PR · 2012–2014

    Columbia Central University

    Professor of audio engineering · studio rebuild

    • Led the rebuild of the school’s recording studio around an SSL AWS 924 console and Pro Tools HDX.
    • Taught signal flow and Pro Tools to the audio engineering students.
    • SSL AWS 924
    • Pro Tools HDX

From 2011 to 2014 I was also Sonic Circus’s Latin America representative: consoles and system integration for studios and schools across Latin America.

The work

What I work on.

Example patchbay: 32-point, half-normalled TTTop row are sources, bottom row destinations. Mic preamps 1 to 8 are half-normalled to converter inputs 1 to 8. Two patch cables insert compressor 1 between mic pre 2 and converter input 2.MIC PRE → A/D · HALF-NORMALLEDOUTBOARDMIX · MONITORPRE 1A/D 1PRE 2A/D 2PRE 3A/D 3PRE 4A/D 4PRE 5A/D 5PRE 6A/D 6PRE 7A/D 7PRE 8A/D 8CMP 1CMP 1CMP 2CMP 2EQ 1EQ 1EQ 2EQ 2MIX LREC LMIX RREC R2TR LMON L2TR RMON R
Fig. 01 · A compressor patched between mic pre 2 and converter 2 Top: sources · Bottom: destinations · Dashed: half-normals
  1. Patchbay design

    Patch points wired the way the room really works, with labels a new assistant can read on day one.

    Half-normal · Full-normal · Isolated · TT · XLR

  2. Signal flow

    Mic pre to converter to monitors, drawn and written down so nobody has to remember it.

  3. Session setup and recall

    Templates and recall notes, so the room is ready when the artist is.

Working on a room?

It helps to have photos of the patchbay and its labels, a gear list, a typical session template and a note on what slows sessions down today.

Liner notes

Special thanks.

La Casa del Sombrero
Eduardo Cabra
Playbach Studio
Ramón Martínez & Carlos Velázquez
Diffusonix
Orlando Ferrer
AQ30 & El West Recording Studio
Harold Wendell Sanders
El Padrino Recording Studio
Julio González

Contact

Tell me about your room.

The room, the gear, and what isn’t working yet. That’s enough to start.