Between decades of recording, engineering, and running AEA Ribbon Mics, I’ve spent my life learning how great music is captured and heard. Today, Ryan Sillifant and I have created Big Ribbon Stories to advance three main goals:
First, to document and preserve the history of the audio industry, through riveting interviews with the recording pioneers who built modern music.
Second, to create and share full sessions, highlighting just how good modern recordings can truly sound; alongside sharing full multitracks for free so anyone can download and mix world-class recordings.
Finally, Just as ribbon microphones once raised the bar for realism and depth in recorded sound, we’ve curated a recording process that is both innovative, and accessible for anyone in the recording industry. And, for artists who want to work at the highest level, our studio and engineering are available to artists to come and record with us.
Founder: AEA Ribbon Mics, Big Ribbon Stories
Wes Dooley
The “Big Ribbon” Sound - A New Standard in Sound Recording.
What sets our sound apart?
Quite simply, it’s the closest you’ll ever feel to being in the room with the music. Artists tell us time and time again—they’ve never heard themselves, or their instruments, recorded like this before.
How do we achieve this?
We accomplish this exceptional sound through a truly innovative recording process, one that is rarely heard today. We utilize a combination of Ribbon Microphones, high-end preamps, and DSD256 recording format/Analog workflow—each of which produces extraordinary sound on its own–with the goal of capturing music as true to the source as possible.
What does this mean for you?
As an artist: Recording with us brings a level of depth and clarity in your music you’ve never heard before. You and your audience will finally experience your instruments as they truly sound. (Learn more about booking our engineering service)
As an engineer: Learning our process can kick your recording up to the next level, re genre or audience. Our approach helps your work stand out and connect with your listeners on a deeper level.
For both: Recording your music at this higher level allows you to market to broader audiences. Audiophile listeners, platforms like NativeDSD, are thriving markets that love high fidelity recordings like these, and will allow you to earn through selling albums and records to lovers of music.
And finally, for listeners: You don’t need a $10,000 setup to hear the difference in our recordings; our capture method results in a source material that is so pure that your listening experience will be noticeably better and more Musical, on any system!
For as long as I can remember, music has been the center of my life. And yet, as I moved from playing into recording and mixing, I quickly realized that the recordings I worked on never sounded like the music I was actually hearing in the room. The richness and weight all seemed to vanish once it hit a DAW.
This all changed the day I first heard a recording made with my grandfather’s AEA R84. For the first time, I heard a recording that breathed. The room and instruments all sounded like themselves, it was like hearing through a window into the studio; it completely reshaped the way I thought about recording.
From then on, I've dedicated my career to chasing that sound. With ribbon microphones, high-headroom preamps, and DSD256, I've found a path that keeps the honesty and musicality of a track intact. We've been able to achieve a quality that makes artists tear up, never having heard their instruments sound so real in a recording.
Since then, another major milestone has been partnering with one of my idols, Wes Dooley, to produce recorded examples that show both listeners and artists what's possible.
Now, with Big Ribbon Stories, I am ecstatic to bring this approach to a new era of music—not only through the sessions we engineer, but by opening up the process so others can learn it too.
Chief Audio Engineer for Big Ribbon Stories.
Ryan Sillifant
I'm Ryan Sillifant, senior recording engineer for Big Ribbon Stories.
For as long as I can remember, music has been the center of my life. And yet, as I moved from playing into recording and mixing, I quickly realized that the recordings I worked on never sounded like the music I was actually hearing in the room. The richness and weight all seemed to vanish once it hit a DAW.
This all changed the day I first heard a recording made with my grandfather’s AEA R84. For the first time, I heard a recording that breathed. The room and instruments all sounded like themselves, it was like hearing through a window into the studio; it completely reshaped the way I thought about recording.
From then on, I've dedicated my career to chasing that sound. With ribbon microphones, high-headroom preamps, and DSD256, I've found a path that keeps the honesty and musicality of a track intact. We've been able to achieve a quality that makes artists tear up, never having heard their instruments sound so real in a recording.
Since then, another major milestone has been partnering with one of my idols, Wes Dooley, to produce recorded examples that show both listeners and artists what's possible.
Now, with Big Ribbon Stories, I am ecstatic to bring this approach to a new era of music—not only through the sessions we engineer, but by opening up the process so others can learn it too.