Trakworx Recording & Mastering Studio

Super 5 stars. The best place for mastering and recording. Justin can make your mix sound top notch. Ask for feedback from him about your mix and what he had to do to it in mastering. This will aid you in future tracks or albums you send Justin in the future. All for such a good price and fast turn around. Btp chop shop/​Btpnation

Man I have been to Bernie Grundman Mastering to STERLING SOUND in New York. I’ve mixed with some of the top name mixers such as Manny Marroquin and others and let me tell you Justin at Trakworx in South SF can run with the best. As far as Im concerned he is the best. He has everything from Vintage Gear to everything new and whatever you need he can do– AND YOU WILL NOT FIND a better price for the work he does. Most of all he can fix problems thats key!!! You can’t get better!!!

GREAT experience! Justin has created a very professional, relaxed atmosphere for his clients. He mastered my record for me and it felt like I was just in a friend’s bedroom listening and talking about music for a couple of hours! That being said, he approached the project with an amazing amount of knowledge and professionalism. His mastering equipment is top notch! My album came to life before my ears and I’m so grateful to Justin for his expertise! Do NOT hesitate to have your music mastered by Justin.

Just put it this way If I could give him 10 starts I would do it! I have actually been working with Justin for about 8 years now. I have also worked with many other companies comparing his work. To say the least, Justin was even victorious when matched against Universal Records top Grammy Award Winning engineers! He has amazing equipment and the very best ear for mastering of anyone I have ever met. Besides that he makes it very affordable which is a blessing. He is truly talented and I wish him continued success with his studio.

How do I not give Justin 5 stars? It’s pretty obvious that I don’t have a bunch of reviews, but I know that every star counts.
A lot of young musicians don’t understand the importance of Mastering. They think you record a song, mix it a little, and it’s ready for the radio. But I can tell you right now, he took my CD from an 7.5 to a 10+. In the world of music — that’s the difference between amateur hour and a possible gig.
He demostrated professionalism from strart to finish. He never gave me the run around and he was willing to use any peice of gear he had to make my song POP! That’s what makes Trakworx the best in the bay.
He’s a busy ass dude but what do you expect? So if you’re trying to take your music to the next level you know where go.
That’s why this is a 5 star review and that’s real!
Adam West
Divine Comedy

I really like Justin and his studio. He gave me real helpful and honest criticism on the way I mix. Justin gave me advice that helped me up my mixing game.
The album Justin mastered for me came great. I use that album in meetings with potential. (ALWAYS WORKS) Thanks Justin. clients. When I left I felt really good about being a mixing engineer after watching Justin work. Whenever I mix an album or a song I always refer my clients to Trakworx.
Chris Willis (MIXOLOGIST)
ROKKETTSCIENCE

Justin is killer diller at Trakworx. Very cool relaxed environment, he get’s great tones drum/​gtr, good price and an overall great experience. Thanks Justin. I’m sure Humboldt Squid will return soon!

If you are making music in the Bay Area and sending your stuff to get mastered by anybody but Justin at Trakworx then you are a damned fool.
Believe me when I say that Justin’s ear and equipment are on par or better than anybody elses out there in the Bay. He’s worked with a wide variety of artists and knows exactly how to get the best of the mixes given to him.
It also has to be mentioned that his price range for the superb work he does is super reasonable. Strike that, it’s beyond reasonable. For the way my band’s project sounded after our mastering session we could (should, maybe) have been charged double maybe even triple the amount we were.
Simply put the guy is really good. Mind you, I’m not a friend of Justin’s. I actually only decided to go with him from all the great reviews on Unilocal.I was extremely skeptical at first — you never know with Unilocal — but it turned out to be one of the single best decisions we’ve made as a band.
Oh and this is my first Unilocal review ever. Usually don’t care either way, but I really felt the work that Justin does is so superior that I just had to add to the growing wave of Unilocalers that are singing his praises.
Keep this man in business! Please!
James,
The Major Deegan

Justin is great. He is very busy, but he responds quickly and always follows through. His customer service is great.
Now, for the record, I am a professional sound engineer and I am very familiar with the work that he does. I was very specific about how I wanted the masters done and he nailed every one of them. He went beyond what I thought could be done with them. His work is brilliant. Our album sounds awesome! He knows how to use his gear and his ears are really really good. Last, he should be charging much more for his services.

I highly recommend Justin Weis and Trakworx for recording, mixing and mastering. HIs mastering is on par with studios costing 10 times as much. He has the best and most interesting gear and he is totally ninja with it. He is also very efficient (fast) which is a rare and awesome virtue. South San Francisco is also a very good headspace for being creative. If you want to work with a real pro who’s also a blast to chill with, check out Trakworx.

I took my recent studio mix into Justin at Trakworx for mastering. This is my second studio album, the first I had taken to another well known mastering studio in San Francisco and I feel like I was overcharged.
Trakworx is a great place to get your material mastered, their discography speaks for itself. Justin Weis at Trakworx has mastered some of the best hip hop and rap albums to come out of the Bay Area. Artists such as, Too Short, Zion I, Andre Nickatina, Richie Rich, The Coup, Papa Roach and many more…
If Trakworx is good enough for the professionals, it is good enough for me. Justin was able to accommodate my availability, I met him at the studio and my project was mastered within 24hours. Unbelievably quick turn around, great quality, the tracks sounded great. A few days after our master was complete, I had to have Justin go back and make a change, which he did without any issues. Totally great service, I will definitely bring my next album to Justin at Trakworx.
Unbelivably great value for a professional service. Don’t sleep on Trakworx and feel free to check us out at
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We were in a real crunch… The mastering studio where we usually get our records mastered in Nashville got flooded and I needed this record mastered and sent to the distributer yesterday. I found Justin on Craigslist and he smartly stood out against the others by listing his gear on his CL post. A short paypal transaction later it was go time. We even ran into a mixdown issue that miraculously didn’t put us over budget. I look forward to working with Justin in the future, he’s a consumate professional and a great mastering engineer.

I’m not the first person to review Trakworx, but I think I’m the first person to review Trakworx who also makes his living as an engineer! So, listen up.
I’ve been making records with Justin at Trakworx since 1997. I’m talking about his FIRST studio, in a converted corner office in the Warfield building. (When Justin moved over to his Florida Street location, a friend and I took over his space and built our first studio! Meeeeemoriiiiiies.)
Between 1997 and 2000, I spent conservatively about 2,000 hours at Trakworx, producing records for local artists. I wasn’t an engineer when we started — I got my early education working with Justin and asking questions. He was a good engineer and a patient mentor.
In 2000, I got my first DAW setup, and at that point I focused more on learning to make my own recordings than on working in other studios. Here again, Justin was a constant source of expertise and support. And, more importantly, I still took everything I produced to him for mastering. His ability to take a so-​so home recording and make it sound finished and professional is amazing (I made a few so-​so recordings when I started out!).
Now it’s 2009, and I’ve been making my living as an engineer for the last 5 years or so. And, still, I send everything I mix to Justin for mastering. I’ve sent a couple things to other places to see what they do — high-​end, world-​famous mastering houses — and, honestly, Justin’s results are right on par with those places, at a TINY FRACTION of the price. Plus he’s *way* more responsive and *way* more fun to interact with. Getting big-​studio mastering without big-​studio bullshit is GREAT.
Justin is constantly building his studio (which sounds great) and his gear (which is drool-​worthy) and his craft. He cares deeply about what he does, and consistently goes above and beyond with a «whatever it takes» attitude in the pursuit of quality results. His prices are super reasonable, and he’s the nicest engineer in San Francisco (I live in LA now, plus I’m not quite as nice).
Engineers don’t compliment each other freely — quite the opposite, usually — so you should take this review to heart. Justin is awesome, and you should make your next record with him.
— Jamie Hill (Secret Agent Audio Services, Los Angeles)

Justin Rocks! I was skeptical because I had never gotten anything mastered before but its ridiculous how good it makes even the simplest of tracks sound. And Justin has a great ear and really knows how to pinpoint a weak spot. Oh yeah, and the gear! Wow! Vintage, high quality gear makes this place an amazing value. Highly, highly, reccomended (Just don’t take any of MY time!)

sitting here, listening to our songs, watching justin work magic, made me feel hopeful. it’s quite something to watch a professional work. it’s really something else to realize that all of his expertise is going into your music.
here’s to hope. festizio rules. *swig from a jar*

Mastering at Trakworks was like putting recordings through a giant «awesome button.»
As I pull in to the easy to find industrial complex with plenty of parking, I can’t help but wonder what will come of Festizio’s long-​awaited debut album. After all the recording work, the mastering date is finally here, with Justin at Trakworx.
Will our stuff get on the radio? Or will just enjoy it for ourselves? Or maybe we’ll be like the Papa Roach after they worked in here… a bunch of dumbasses from vacaville, that get big, and rich… then go back to being dumbasses from vacaville. I’d be happy in any case. It doesn’t really matter, time to just rock. Trakworx made it easy to do that. Too bad we’re not really «from» anywhere, cause then we could be dumbasses from –enter location-​. There are no dumbasses from the Bay Area, dammit.
Mastering costs are extremely good, and very fair. The competitors will give you less effort for your dollar. The actual studio is really nice. Clean, isolated, and decked with a soundgasm of gear.
Trust me, you’ll never look at your home recording gear in the same way. Your ART-​Tube preamp and Behringer mixer will look like the first corolla or beat up hyndai you putted around in. At the same time, Trakworx is rollin’ in one of Lebron’s custom caddies, and Justin knows how to use all of it to get those 22’s spinning. He’s also a cool guy. He let us watch Obama’s infomercial about Joe the Plumber, while our drummer strutted around in Gene Simmons platforms. He didn’t blink twice.
Payments made super-​flexible. He has a credit card machine. I gotta get one of those.

I ran past a school this morning and saw kids dressed in costume.
The scene brought me back to Halloween nights when I’d return home with bags full of candy and a mouth full of chocolate, completely ignorant to the dangers of type 2 diabetes. Anyway, it was a nice venture back to a more innocent time when I didn’t need to finish morning runs to get to work on time for a Skype call to the London office…
Where does the time go?
Fast-​forward to college, and I’m recording shitty songs via direct-​in into a stock PC soundcard. My guitar was made in Korea and my mic makes me sound like I’m recording in the belly of a whale — full of muddy extraneous noise and sploshing (trust me, that’s what the inside of a whale sounds like). I’m browsing instrument catalogs dreaming of expensive things I could own in substitution for a real band. I still think Metallica is like the coolest band ever, man.
The best thing about the future is not knowing what might happen.
Two days ago we mastered our first studio album with Justin Weis. Although he came highly recommend by our engineer at Hyde Street Studios, it was his top-​notch studio experience and unbelievable rates that sold us in. We had a great time at Trakworx. There was even a moment, as our tracks were being processed, when we switched on the Obama infomercial. It was a reminder that, despite the personal milestone of completing an album, a much more important, worldly event would soon occur. And as we stood around the monitor during the opening score, I couldn’t help but recall those cheesy scenes from «Armageddon.»
And now our album is done!
It’s amazing how much a person can go through in a relatively short span of time. And though change inevitably occurs, I like to think some things never go away. Cinnamon still reminds me of Christmas. Construction sites still smell like Lincoln Logs. Home-​cooked meals still remind me of mom.
Makes me wonder where I’ll be five years from now…

I enjoyed working with Justin at his studio. He is a very knowledgeable person who uses a variety of gear that ranges from state-​of-​the-​art computer systems to old-​school vintage tube pre-​amps. And he let me use his pretty Gibson!
He was able to understand our goals quickly and offered a lot of his own input, which helped, because we practically didn’t know what we were doing. Having never worked in a studio, I think we all came out of there with a much better understanding of everything.
When time is money (which is often the case in life), there is a lot of pressure to get things done right as quickly as possible. In addition, we knew we were going to be confined to a place for hours upon hours trying to finish our stuff. That is why I am glad we chose Trakworx because it had a nice, chill environment to keep us relaxed and focused through the whole project. Also, Justin is quite efficient with time so our experience was smooth, easy, and relatively cheap.
When another project comes up, we are definitely going to consider working here again. Thanks for the EP Justin!

I just got off the phone with my buddy D in NYC. See, he’s in this moderately successful psych-​rock band that gets to tour europe and stuff, he has a cool indie label, distribution up the ass and his ultra-​hot girlfriend is in the band too. He still collects vinyl, is an engineer and producer and basically is one of the biggest music snobs I ever met. He has never offered anything but polite (yet honest and fair) criticism whenever I play him my latest recordings, with the exception of bands we have both been in. Our common mistress is the heavy rock sound; the thicker the better and a full steam of head.
So I go through this ritual every year or so where I send him my current project and wait, and wait, and he finally sends me an email with some very organized critical reviews and how it could be a great record if…
I got the call 2 days after I sent the CD from my latest effort working with Justin at Trakworx. He started off by telling me he really liked it. After I regained consciousness and called him back he wanted to know who, what, and how all the way down to the bass drum mic. I tried to relay as much as I could but I am just a drummer so most of my brain cells are in remission from some form of abuse. His praise was almost scary, and he couldnt stop talking about how raw and live the drums sounded. When I told him that Justin engineered and mixed/​mastered 10 songs in 18 hours it was his turn to pass out.
I have to give Justin and his incredible recording setup at Trakworx huge ups for his time and dedication to our project. He even came in to finish mastering while totally sick from that nasty flu that’s been going around. Most of all I have to thank him for helping me finally win one for the home team, I think my friend from NY might be coming west to do some recording.

I am a total idiot for writing this because now everyone is gonna know about this place and I won’t get in anymore.. But it deseves to be known about, so here it is:
World class engineer. 2 inch and ½ inch analog, Pro Tools HD. KILLER gear, and I do mean KILLER, this is perhaps the only studio you will ever be in where you will hear the follwing phrase– «nah, f&ck the Neve, we’ll use an RCA OP-​6, it sounds WAY better.» Any studio where Neve is SECOND TIER gear, well, you get my drift.
AND IT’S ALL FOR FORTY FIVE BUCKS AN HOUR!
Oh, and best mastering EVER. Better than Bob Ludwig. Not kidding.
Seriously, why does no one know about this place? I am SICK of all these recording studios in SF where they have «trust me» too cool for school engineers and your shit sounds like… well…shit…when they are done.
If you are just gonna mic a cab with a 57 and then hit it with a plugin I could have done that at home. But if you want your stuff to sound AMAZING, and to be done super quickly and efficiently in a super cool atmosphere then Justin Weis is your man.
Hopefully no one will ever read this and I can keep recording guitars with OP-​6s and the rest of you can stick with your Neves LOL.
Justin Weis rocks. I am happy to be the first reviewer on here!