About The Cat Mansion

Hi, I’m Jeff. I started playing piano in 1987, picked up the flute in 1991, switched to guitar in 1997, and never looked back. I loved learning my favorite bands’ songs, but for me, music was always much more about writing my own songs.

After I’d been playing for a while, some friends and I formed a band and had some music recorded. We weren’t bad, but the recordings were. And so, I decided to learn how to record music and engineer it so that the recordings would sound at least as good as I did when I played live.

I bought my first Tascam 424 cassette Portastudio and set to work. I went to the library and read books on audio production. I took classes. I spent time in studios. Eventually, I learned Logic (on a Windows machine, no less… shout out to E-magic!) because I wanted to add synthesizers to my music, and over time, traded in cassette for digital media. As the years have gone by, I’ve continued to hone my craft and I’ve expanded my collection of music recording equipment.

In 2010, I took a job working for Turtle Beach, a computer and gaming audio company that, at the time, was transitioning into focusing on gaming headsets. I spent tons of time working closely with audio hardware engineers (fun fact: Turtle Beach started out life as Octave Electronics, the company that made the Octave Cat, the Voyetra-8, and some other really seminal music equipment), and I learned so much. I got to work on some incredibly cool audio productions and learned from some of the smartest people I know, like Carmine Bonanno.

From there, I began working at The Game Agency, and did lots of composing, sound design, audio post, and other production work for video games, marketing videos, and more. I wish that my work there weren’t NDA’ed, because there’s so much I’d love to share.

After TGA, I’ve worked for ThinkGeek (RIP), and Custom Ink, where I’ve done loads of voiceover work, audio production for television, web, and digital radio.

All the while, I’ve been composing my own music, recording for friends and local musicians, and offering audio production services to clients all over the world.

I love music, I love sound, and I love helping people have the experience I didn’t get to have as a young person. It feels so good to hear a great mix of your song when you’ve written something you know resonates and nailed the performance. And it’s absolutely crushing when you write a great song and play it well only to have the production fall flat.

I started offering my services broadly to musicians in 2015, five years after beginning to do audio work professionally. Since then, I’ve helped hundreds of people get the sonic results they want

I take all this music production stuff pretty seriously, and I’ve invested heavily into The Cat Mansion to make sure it’s as world-class as I can make it. The space is fully acoustically treated: it sounds great for recording and it’s meticulously tuned for mixing and mastering, including monitor correction using the IK ARC system. There’s a lovingly curated set of premium hardware, including SSL and Audient preamps (with a great selection of microphones), SSL and Empirical compressors, and a whole host of premium plugins from Fabfilter, Moog, Softube, SoundToys, and others. The whole studio is cabled from top to bottom using Mogami Gold, and I have premium AD/DA at up to 192 kHz using Ferrofish converters.

I started The Cat Mansion because I believe that great songs deserve great production, and that it shouldn’t be available only to the musicians (and labels) who have access to the A-team at huge studios. The Cat Mansion exists to make the world a more artful place, one production at a time. I look forward to working with you on your next project.

Artificial Intelligence and Music Production

It feels like the world has gone a little maniacal for artificial intelligence. There are no artificial intelligence-based tools in use at The Cat Mansion. I believe it’s dramatically more important to use the right kind of AI to make music: actual intelligence. While I can’t say for certain that there’s no artificial intelligence in any part of any of the software I use (especially, deep down in DAWs), nor can I guarantee it wasn’t used to produce any of my tools, I use my ears, eyes, and hands to make your music sound great. There’s no AI mixing and mastering at play at The Cat Mansion—I don’t even use iZotope. I can see great promise for AI in specific tasks (like precision noise removal and audio restoration, for example), but until tech companies can ensure their products are ethical, I won’t be using them. If you hire me to record, mix, or master your song, or to contribute production elements or session play, please know that the work will be performed by skilled human hands, not an artificial intelligence tool.

Jeff Burchett, owner of The Cat Mansion music studio
The Cat Mansion is a well equipped hybrid digital/analog studio offering production, mixing, and mastering services to clients all over the world! Give your next song the professional polish it needs to stand out. Over 15 years of professional audio experience, reasonable rates, and world class service. #musicproducer #mixengineer #masteringengineer #audiomixing #mastering #musicstudio #studioporn #gearporn #synthesizers #ssl #empiricalaudio #audient #radial #yamahasynths
Congratulations to @ixstudioschicago / @ghost_terminal_band on the release of Arzach 1 by Still Planet. Listen and download at https://stillplanet.bandcamp.com/track/arzach-1 Proudly mixed and mastered by @jeffburchett_ at The Cat Mansion.
Congratulations to @ixstudioschicago / @ghost_terminal_band on the release of Arzach 1 by Still Planet. Listen and download at https://stillplanet.bandcamp.com/track/arzach-1 Proudly mixed and mastered by @jeffburchett_ at The Cat Mansion.
Congratulations on the release of D_konstrukt_u by Subsoma! @ixstudioschicago / @ghost_terminal_band Listen and download at: https://subsoma-music.bandcamp.com/track/d-konstrukt-u Proudly mixed and mastered by @jeffburchett_ at The Cat Mansion.
Congratulations on the release of D_konstrukt_u by Subsoma! @ixstudioschicago / @ghost_terminal_band Listen and download at: https://subsoma-music.bandcamp.com/track/d-konstrukt-u Proudly mixed and mastered by @jeffburchett_ at The Cat Mansion.
The Cat Mansion is a well equipped hybrid digital/analog studio offering production, mixing, and mastering services to clients all over the world! Give your next song the professional polish it needs to stand out. Over 15 years of professional audio
Congratulations to @ixstudioschicago / @ghost_terminal_band on the release of Arzach 1 by Still Planet. Listen and download at https://stillplanet.bandcamp.com/track/arzach-1 Proudly mixed and mastered by @jeffburchett_ at The Cat Mansion. Congratulations on the release of D_konstrukt_u by Subsoma! @ixstudioschicago / @ghost_terminal_band Listen and download at: https://subsoma-music.bandcamp.com/track/d-konstrukt-u Proudly mixed and mastered by @jeffburchett_ at The Cat Mansion.