North Melbourne, Victoria

There must have been thousands of albums recorded, mixed or mastered at the Production Workshop by David Briggs over the last 29 years. Situated not too far from Melbourne’s Victoria Market, David’s setup has always included a host of analogue gear, including several Neumann U47 mics and Neve preamps, a grand piano and cutting-edge digital equipment, all crammed into his Queensberry St terrace house.

David and his studio are inseparable. There would hardly be a recording musician in Melbourne who hasn’t worked with him at some point. He’s one of Australia’s most knowledgeable engineer/producers, with a room full of Gold and Platinum records awarded for everything from production of the iconic Australian Crawl album, Boy’s Light Up, to the platinum-awarded US release of The Little River Band’s, First Under the Wire. This album included the hit, The Lonesome Loser, which David wrote while playing lead guitar in the band. He even earned a Grammy nomination for said hit.

David is always happy to share his knowledge on any audio-related topic no matter how esoteric it might seem. If you want to know something about acoustics, production and mixing techniques, downsampling mathematics, touring in the US, ProTools, plug-ins… you name it, ‘Briggsy’ will have something informed to say about it. From a personal perspective, there has never been a visit to the Production Workshop where I didn’t walk away more enlightened about audio than when I stumbled in.

The Production Workshop remained virtually unchanged for a couple of decades. Things that were seemingly placed randomly in the corner 15 years ago, occupy the exact same space as they always did – until now that is. Finally, after much deliberation, David has completed construction of a new upstairs mastering room that he’s designed himself using his expansive knowledge of acoustics. Behind the raw hessian walls of this modestly proportioned listening room – hey, it’s a terrace house – are several acoustic treatments designed to ‘flatten’ the room response and reveal the ‘truth’ behind the audio. Centred on a ProTools HD3 rig, the new room caters exclusively to mixing and mastering duties, all within the digital domain – Andy Stewart.

The Production Workshop: (03) 9328 3085 or go to the website