About Trutone

Trutone Records was founded as a part-time business in 1972 by Adrianne and Carl Rowatti. The company operated from a 10' X 10' basement room of Carl's childhood home in North Bergen, New Jersey. The services offered were cutting masters for vinyl records, on-location recording for local schools and churches, as well as custom record pressing.

In 1975, Trutone moved to Northvale, New Jersey, and became a full time operation. During this period, Trutone attracted the attention of Stanton Magnetics, a manufacturer of audiophile phono (and today's DJ) cartridges who featured Trutone's home mastering facility in a national advertising campaign. Full page photos of the Rowatti family and the Northvale mastering studio appeared in Audio, High Fidelity, Stereo Review, as well as the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, highlighting Trutone's reliance on Stanton's high-end cartridges to evaluate the performance of their mastering equipment.

In 1976 the company moved to it's first commercial facility in Haworth, New Jersey. Trutone's excellent reputation for disc cutting attracted an ever increasing number of labels, producers, artists and music entrepreneurs. After several expansions in the Haworth location, it became evident that Trutone would once again need a larger home.

In 1990 Trutone made a giant step from a small growing business to a firmly established enterprise with it's relocation to a 15,000 sq foot facility in Hackensack, New Jersey. The new facility featured two large state of the art mastering suites, beautiful modern offices, a client lounge as well as a high speed cassette manufacturing facility and CD packaging plant. To augment the in house manufacturing, Trutone also add ed an in house design staff to create exciting graphic designs for all of it's custom manufactured products.

In late 1999, to fill the growing demand for quick, short-run promo and advance CDs and cassettes, Trutone oened a storefront smack in the middle of NYC's theater district and aplty called it Music on the Run. Several robotic CDR and in-cassette duplicators were put online, as well as an in-house grapic design department and the concept was an immediate success. New York City's local musicians, producers, writers and voice over artists swarmed in to make professional looking demos complete with full color custom graphic inserts.

With the advent of DVD, Music on the Run has kept in step and in 2004 installed a complete DVD line, which also serves the need of the local theatre and film community.

In 2003, Trutone opened new mastering studios at 321 West 44th Street, original home of the fabled Record Plant Studios. "Last year we decided to move our 25-year-old NJ-based mastering operation to NYC to be more convenient to our clients," explains Trutone co-founder Adrianna Rowatti. "We brought John Storyk and the Walters-Storyk Design Group in to consult on the design and acoustics and were delighted with the results."

Almost immediately after completing construction, a devastating flood wiped out Studio B. The undamaged Studio A was kept busy virtually around the clock during the extensive rebuilding process. Both Trutone studios are now fully operational, and the complex is servicing a client roster that ranges from Def Jam, Island Records and Rocafella to many of the most prolific Latin artists and dance club DJ's, as well as independents such as Caroline/Astral Werks, Yoshitoshi/Deep Dish, West End to mention a few.

No longer considered a retro-nostalgia format, vinyl continues to attract fans who appreciate its rich warmth and sonic vibrancy. "The art of vinyl mastering delivers results that are obvious not only to DJ's, but to the club goers as well," emphasized Trutone co-principal/mastering expert Carl Rowatti. "We've also invested in the requisite digital gear. We're comfortable working in that medium, and there is clearly a place for the speed and efficiency that technology provides. But in terms of the ultimate listening experience, vinyl has never been surpassed."

Trutone provides their clientele comprehensive options to guarantee them the highest quality mastering experience. Each suite features a meticulously maintained Neumann VMS-70 lathe retrofitted with a Zuma disc computer and Technics quartz controlled turntable motor. Both lathes are equipped with Neumann SX-74 cutter heads driven by Neumann SAL-74B amplification system. The Neumann SP-77 and SP-78 consoles have been extensively modified to meet and exceed the demands of today's high level electronic music. Outboard gear includes the best of all worlds; digital, as well as both solid state and vacuum tube analog. Gear includes: Weiss BW-102 digital EQ & Compressors, solid state Sontec EQ, Prism and NTP compressors, Pultec vacuum tube equalizers as well as the world renowned Fairchild 670 compressor. To create CD masters, Trutone has chosen the Sonic Studio premastering system. Monitor speakers are KEF Reference 4's in Suite A and KEF Reference 207's in Suite B. Near field monitors are Yamaha NS-10's and Tannoy 6.5's. Monitor power is supplied by Bryston, Ramsa and Hafler amps.

"We cut dozens of records every day for American and international DJs, producers and labels," Adrianna Rowatti says. "In addition to lacquer-cutting we also provide promotional vinyl in 12, 10 and 7 inch formats. Our runs can be as short as 300 pieces and as large as 3000, and though black is still beautiful, we offer eight vibrant alternate vinyl color options." Trutone also designs and produces full color custom jackets in single and custom double fold versions.

"Working with Adrianna and Carl Rowatti in the old Record Plant Studios was a heady experience," architect John Storyk remarked. "The fact that Springsteen, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, Simon and Garfunkle and many other superstars recorded their classic work here is more than just coincidental. This is a very special place, acoustically as well as historically."

Today, Trutone is still run and managed by Adrianne and Carl Rowatti, with the help of their twenty-something dedicated staff members. The Rowattis attribute their longevity and continued growth to their perpetual ability to reinvent themselves and of course, to the multitude of satisfied clients they have had the pleasure to serve throughout the years.