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We brought producer Warren Huart to Porto to spend a few days with Sina Drums and her team at Boom Studios. The plan was simple: put a full band in one room, hand them our microphones and record a Led Zeppelin cover live, with no click, no samples and no editing.
Boom Studios is the facility Sina Doering and Nils Neumann have built in Porto, and it is designed for recording and for filming at the same time. It offers more than 210 square metres across five rooms. At its heart is the Grand Hall, a live room of roughly 134 square metres with six metre ceilings and wooden surfaces that sound big without getting out of control. The Stone Room adds bright natural reflections, the Red Room is heavily treated and dry, and the control room follows the Non-Environment concept.
Recording with Sina Drums and Warren Huart
Warren Huart runs Produce Like A Pro, one of the most respected recording and mixing channels on YouTube. Sina Drums has built an audience of nearly two million subscribers on the strength of live performance. Putting the two together in the Grand Hall was an easy decision.
By the time Warren arrived, Sina, Nils, engineer Gabriel Suarez Cejuela, and the band had already done the work. The room was set up, the band had rehearsed, and the sounds were already strong. Warren was not there to rebuild the session. He was there to listen with fresh ears and find the small changes that make a real difference.
The song was "Dazed and Confused", sung by Girish Pradhan of the Indian hard rock band Girish and the Chronicles, who reached the live quarterfinals of Season 20 of America's Got Talent in 2025. Emmy Grace played guitar and sang, Antonio played guitar, Marius Holland played keys, and every part was performed live in the same room.
Featured LEWITT microphones for the session
- LCT 1040 – Outside kick, set to FET mode for a classic large-diaphragm kick sound
- DTP 640 REX – Inside kick, pointed at the beater, and on the guitar cabinets
- LCT 440 PURE – Snare top, front-of-kit crunch mic and drum overheads
- LCT 140 AIR – Snare bottom and hi-hat
- DTP 340 TT – Toms, top and bottom, on rim clamps
- LCT 640 TS – Room pair in the hallway
- MTP W950 – All vocals
Placement first, processing later
The first sound that was worked on was the outside kick. The LEWITT LCT 1040 was positioned close to the port in the resonant head, which gave a concentrated burst of air and attack but not much of the body and bloom of the drum. Pulling it back and slightly off-center gave the front head room to develop, and the short thump turned into weight.
The snare choice worked the same way. For "Dazed and Confused" the band switched to a five inch Ludwig Supraphonic with far more ring. On its own, that ring is the kind of thing engineers instinctively dampen. In the context of the full band, it is exactly what lets the snare cut through the guitars.
There is a practical lesson in the snare bottom placement too. Gabriel wanted as few stands and cables as possible in the shot for the video, so the LCT 140 AIR under the snare shares a stand with the top mic. The compromise turned out to capture the shell ring as well as the snares, and Warren said on camera that he wanted to try it himself. A limitation produced a better idea.
Transparent overheads and room mics
The overheads were a pair of LCT 440 PURE. Gabriel has fought with modern condensers on overheads before, where a hard upper midrange gets tiring fast. What he wanted here was detail without harshness, and fast transients.
“Very transparent, very clean, and very fast transient.” – Gabriel Suarez Cejuela on the LCT 440 PURE overheads
For the rooms, a pair of LCT 640 TS went out into the hallway on Triad-Orbit stands. Warren has a long history with that microphone. Years ago at Blackbird Studio he put a pair over a Steinway alongside pairs of far more expensive classics, then listened blind.
“It sounds like I just stuck my head over the piano and listened.” – Warren Huart on the LCT 640 TS
That is the reason he keeps coming back to it. Capture the source accurately and every colouring decision stays open to you at the mix.
Vocals with no drum bleed
Every vocal in the session went through an MTP W950, a live microphone that features standout bleed rejection while maintaining crystal-clear, studio-like condenser sound. The vocalists were standing close to a fully played drum kit in the same room, which is normally where vocal microphones start to cause problems. The bleed stayed minimal, which gave Gabriel real control over the vocals in the mix and gave the singers something they were not used to.
No click, no samples, no editing
The LEWITT microphones did their job, but the reason this session sounds the way it does is the musicianship. Everybody played together, live, in one room. No click track, no Auto-Tune, no drum replacement, no punch-ins, and no comping. When somebody missed an entrance, the band either kept it or played the whole song again.
That changes how everyone behaves. Without a click, the tempo is allowed to breathe. A section can push as the energy builds and pull back when the music needs space. Musicians have to listen to each other and agree in real time on where the important beats land. Sina made the point that a mistake often makes a take better, because everyone reacts to it and suddenly pays closer attention.
“The technology gave us control, but it never replaced the performance.” – Warren Huart
It's a wrap
Thank you to Sina, Nils, Gabriel, Girish, and every musician and crew member at Boom Studios, and to Warren and the Produce Like A Pro team for making the trip. Porto delivered, the Grand Hall delivered, and the band delivered a complete live take of one of the hardest songs in rock to pull off in one room.
You can watch the full session breakdown on the Produce Like A Pro channel, watch the performance on Sina Drums, and download the multitracks to mix the session yourself.
Credits
Drums: Sina Doering, sina-drums
Producer, project direction, bass: Nils Neumann, n.neumann.music
Recording engineer: Gabriel Suarez Cejuela, gabrielsound
Guest producer: Warren Huart, Produce Like A Pro
Lead vocals: Girish Pradhan, Girish and the Chronicles
Vocals and guitar: Emmy Grace
Guitar: Antonio
Keys: Marius Holland, holland_marius
Studio: Boom Studios, Porto