Welcome to Public Hi-Fi

Public Hi-Fi studio was started by Jim Eno in 1998, while working on Spoon’s 3rd album, Girls Can Tell. The band had become very frustrated with the cost of studio time and wanted to be able to take time to develop songs in the studio, so Jim converted a detached garage into a one room studio (with a closet used for isolation). He purchased an Ampex MM1200 16 track tape machine from John Vanderslice and a Trident 24 board from a former studio owner.
From then on he began adding more gear to fill out the offerings at the studio. In 2003 he purchased a Neve 8016 from a broker in London. The Neve was in bad shape, so electronics wiz Garry Creiman was drafted to rebuild it. During the rebuild, the Neve’s serial number was discovered, written in pencil on the inside of the armrest of the console – #A41. This dated the console to 1969-1970 and marked it as the 41st console made by Neve. With this in mind, and knowing that the broker was going to sell the console for parts, the often-frustrating rebuild became a restoration project. Spoon’s Gimme Fiction was tracked on the Neve at Public Hi-Fi.

After the completion of Gimme Fiction, the original garage was torn down to make way for the new studio. Built on the same site, yet two times the footprint and two stories high, Public Hi-Fi was designed from the ground up to be a professional recording studio, with conduits for wiring, floating floors, multi-wall construction, acoustic doors/seals, double windows, etc. During the project, Jim worked very closely with Austin architect Mark Canada to create an acoustically sound, comfortable, and creative environment for recording. A unique look was desired for the live room, and after following discussions about the Adobe brick walls at Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio studio, Adobe brick was chosen for some of the interior walls at Public Hi-Fi. In addition to looking great, Adobe is porous, and therefore less acoustically harsh than normal brick. Frank Myer, an Austin musician and sustainable living builder, enthusiastically hand crafted each Adobe brick for the studio. Frank also suggested earthen plaster for the remaining walls in the live room and control room, and this was applied directly to the sheetrock, toning down the reflections of the walls. The earthen plaster and Adobe brick create a very unique vibe in the studio’s live room.
The control room was designed by Steven Durr. He recommended Urei 813 time aligned speakers which have been a great addition to the studio. In addition to sounding amazing and getting really loud, the Urei speakers make tracking in the control room a possibility, offering the musician the nice alternative of playing along without headphones. The studio was completed in March of 2006. Spoon was the first session to record in the new studio. The session was mildly successful, as is true for any first session. However, the studio is now a well-oiled machine and has been very busy since the March 2006 opening.