THE
STORY
“I wasn’t just making records. I was listening to people.”
— Alessandro Guasconi, founder
ALESSANDRO
GUASCONI
Studio owner & sound engineer
It started with my uncle, a musician, and his recording studio: to a child it looked like a spaceship. That was the first imprint, and it never left. I wanted to be in a room like that, finding sounds.
In 1998 I studied at SAE in Milan, then spent years on the road as a live engineer. But I had a clear picture of the studio I wanted, with a real live room, a spacious control room, a good console and proper acoustics, and I built it myself, learning from the specialist magazines of the time. In early 2002, at 23, Virus opened its doors in Monteriggioni.
In 2008 I added Studio B, run by Jacopo Pettini, and in 2017 I rebuilt Studio A from the acoustics up. More than twenty years later there are over 1,000 credits behind the studio and 52 million streams on the records we worked on: Tony Martin, Ivan Lins, Il Rovescio della Medaglia, the Accademia Musicale Chigiana and many others. But the numbers are the consequence, not the point. The point is still the same as the day I started: the song, and the person making it.
JACOPO
PETTINI
Sound engineer · Studio B
Jacopo Pettini joined Virus in 2008, when Studio B opened. He brought a musician’s ear to the studio, letting us take projects from the ground up, not just record them.
He works across recording, arrangement, mixing and mastering, with deep roots in heavy and progressive music: credits include Soul Secret, Profusion, Charun, Red Light Skyscraper and US black-metal band Nachtmystium, alongside Deschema’s Cristallo (arrangement, mix and master) and I Scream’s I Scream to Cows (recording and mix), plus live productions such as Planimio at Teatro Alfieri.
Studio B is his room: focused sessions, held to the same standard as Studio A.
LET’S MAKE
YOUR
RECORD
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