It’s always great to hear of the success of a student you had the privilege of teaching, as I’ve been watching the extraordinary progress of Sam Pura and his Panda Studios. I’ve been wanting to check out The Panda Studios for quite some time and finally got the chance to connect with Sam, I took the drive down to chat with a colleague.
It must’ve been about 14 years since I last saw Sam, I was greeted at the door by Sam and his dog Bowie #bighomiedog, an adorable and happy Golden Retriever. Once inside, I was guided on a tour of The Panda and its well-designed rooms and I got to meet Sam’s assistant engineer Theresa Brown, a very talented young engineer with exceptional skills.
I was impressed by the impeccable appearances and design of the Panda, from the main recording room with its creative sound defusers and its fabulous recording gear to the exceptionally comfortable ProTools editing Suites. Well done Sam, well done.
We had a long chat, talking about gear, the most discussed topic for us technical peeps. The Panda has some great mic pre’s and a wonderful selection of outboard signal processing units. As a live sound reinforcement engineer, I always fancy dBX compressors and gates and I was glad to see a few of them in the rack. Good times indeed.
Sam started the Panda about 12 years ago and achieved great success and growth over the years due to his commitment to providing his clients with great experiences. The Panda has a great comfortable feeling to it, a warm and relaxing vibe that you feel upon entering through the front doors.
It was truly a great experience for me to visit the Panda. As a former teacher and educator, it made me proud to know of Sam’s accomplishments in creating a wonderful environment for recording artists. A place with great gear and exceptionally talented engineers. Thank you Sam for being a generous and gracious host. Cheers!!