David Amlen Bio

David Amlen started as a freelance musician, having earned a BA in mathematics and music at Oberlin College before founding his first studio, Sound On Sound Recording. SOS grew into one of the top recording facilities in New York within ten years, catering to rock, jazz, pop, and hip hop artists including David Bowie, Roger Daltrey, Branford Marsalis, Dave Grusin, Mariah Carey, Beyoncé, Puff Daddy, and Jay-Z. Between the studio and David, as both engineer and producer, the facility garnered more than 65 gold and platinum album awards resulting in sales of over 75 million units worldwide. SOS merged with competitor Right Track Recording (home to many stars including Elton John, Billy Joel, James Taylor, Carly Simon, Whitney Houston, and producer Phil Ramone) in 2005 to create Legacy Studios. Building on the previous successes of both facilities, Legacy also catered to Broadway, Hollywood, and classical music projects including Wicked, The Producers, South Pacific, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, Wynton Marsalis and Michael Brecker.  David's last NYC facility, MSR Studios which closed in 2016, was the result of David buying out his partners in 2009. David and MSR continued to cater to top names and projects including If/Then, Kinky Boots, Sting, Aretha Franklin, Renee Fleming, Yoyo Ma, D'Angelo, J Cole, Frank Ocean, and Barbra Streisand. The combined histories of the facilities have yielded over 150 gold and platinum albums and worldwide sales of more than one hundred fifty million units. In 2018, David opened a new modern facility in Montclair, NJ (www.soundonsoundstudios.com) catering to larger ensemble recording and music mixing for record, theater, film and television, including immersive mixing - the studio is Dolby ATMOS certified.  The studios also cater to voice recording for books, podcasts, and dialog replacement for film and television. The new studios, designed by David, won the TEC award for best studio design. Notable projects include Christian McBride’s Big Band (Grammy winner), Nicole Zuaraitis (Grammy winner engineered by David), Kenny Garrett, Ain’t Too Proud (Grammy nominated), Diana, CBS-TV’s FBI, The Goo Goo Dolls, Johnny Badass, and DMC. David is an adjunct professor at Montclair State University,  recently designed and supervised the acoustic upgrades for the Wellmont Theater (capacity 2,000 seated) in Montclair NJ, and is both president of the board of trustees and chief front-of-house sound mixing engineer for Outpost In The Burbs, also based in Montclair NJ.  David recently celebrated the release of his first official album - Dave & The Divas “Freedom”