Analog or digital? Do your eyes glaze over when you hear these words? Perhaps you have a stubborn audiophile in your family that insists vinyl records sound superior to digital CD's. Even today, many contemporary producers and artists will put a digital sample of the pop and crackle of a phonograph needle riding on the grooves of a vinyl record, to give the recording a sense a sense of warmth and authenticity that many of today's tracks are lacking.

Whether you're an aspiring artist, or you just like to fire up the turntable and dust off your 33 1/3 phonograph records, one would have to appreciate the hard work and dedication that it takes to get a warm and organic sound recording of your favorite artist.

The hit making producers at Motown records for example would mix a record at Berry Gordy's basement studio in Detroit and after finishing a track, would rush out (sometimes in a driving snowstorm and bone-chilling temperatures) and play the recording through the car stereo to see how it would sound to the average listener coming out of their AM radio. At the Capitol Records vaunted Studio A where Frank Sinatra cut many of his historic sides, there's a bunker below the first floor studio where an echo chamber was built specifically for obtaining a reverberation (or reverb) effect on a guitar or vocal, that many studios would never think of building today. Not when you can purchase a piece of digital software to create a similar effect at the click of a mouse.

Would it sound the same? I think not and many of the top record producers would say the same thing. One might think these kinds of studio techniques are a dying art, but not at Sunburst Recording in Culver City.

Culver City resident Bob Wayne has been running this treasured studio on Jefferson Boulevard for close to 30 years and over the decades, has recorded a who's who of the recording industry. From Richie Havens, to Adam Sandler to George Carlin, to Fishbone, Wayne has sat behind the console as engineer, mixer, producer and sometimes psychologist for the occasional fragile ego.

As Wayne so aptly put in during a recent visit to the studio, "I'm holding onto what's left of ensemble recording, where so much of today's recordings are so layered and processed." You want digital? Wayne can do that too, with an ace Pro Tools recording engineer by the name of Mike Masters, who's worked with such artists as John Cale and the musician/actors of "Flight of the Conchords." However, if you want to record like the "Chairman of the Board" once did, with a typical one-take vocal in front of a live band, this is where you want to go. Wayne still has the ability to record on magnetic two-inch tape for that very warm and penetrating sound that many of today's records lack.

Legendary Los Angeles based studio musicians like tenor sax man Plas Johnson (the unforgettable syrupy sax on Henry Mancini's Pink Panther theme) and jazz vocalist Barbara Morrison (seen locally at the Summer Concerts at City Hall) swear by this warm sounding studio and have cut many sessions there. Comedy legend George Carlin has stepped behind the microphone at Sunburst (resulting in a 2002 Grammy Award) as has Sony lot neighbor Adam Sandler, along with the prolific comedy troupe Firesign Theatre.

Is this studio a throwback to a different era? Perhaps, but with Wayne's extensive background in producing, arranging and performing, he'll be able to get the best performance from an artist, while at the same time getting that in-your-face sound that penetrates your ears like a soft pillow, as opposed to a cold digital signal that sounds like it was recorded on a micro chip with an iPhone.

Wayne has also been hired by his alma mater U.C.L.A. to assist in archiving their oral history program, and currently is working on preserving audio lectures from Brave New World author Aldous Huxley and noted Southern California architect Richard Neutra. Dusting off the box of 60-year-old quarter-inch magnetic tapes from U.C.L.A., Wayne may have to institute some of Huxley's psychedelic mind-altering techniques to get through some of this arcane material. Highlights of the recent U.C.L.A. acquisition include 63 tapes of Huxley reading English and French poems to himself, as well as his noted 1959 talk on the subject of psychological totalitarianism.

Maybe Huxley was onto something, when he said, "after silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music." This is what Wayne can offer at his studio, a passion and dedication to record a piece of music that hits directly at your heart and your brain that is unexplainable. Something that is memorable and heart warming which can lift your spirit, make you laugh or put you in a relaxed trance state. More info on this historic piece of Culver City real estate can be had at http://www.sunburstrecording.com/.

Just down the road, former Sunburst client and Academy Award winning actor Tim Robbins has put together the WTF Festival. In a recent interview on KCRW, Robbins offered not just the standard euphemism for the initials, but the question "Where’s the Funds?" In the midst of the economic downturn, Robbins' Actor’s Gang has put together a festival of theater, music and film, right in downtown Culver City at the Ivy Substation. The idea, according to Robbins, is to "fire up new audiences, help them discover The Gang and support our community outreach." Headlining on Saturday, Oct. 17, will be comedic musical act Tenacious D, fronted by comic actor Jack Black. More info on the festival can be had at http://www.wtffestival.theactorsgang.com/.

Jonathan Weiss is a Los Angeles based music supervisor for film, TV and advertising. jonjaz@aol.com.