Introduction
How Lama Connect was used to record a band in two different studios
In today’s fast-changing music production world, the barriers of traditional recording studios are starting to fade. Artists and engineers are finding new ways to collaborate, record, and mix without needing to be in the same room.
Almost Islanders, led by Troy Nadeau, and Sungrown Studios, led by Nick Tio, pushed this idea further by connecting two home studios using LAMA Connect. By joining their spaces and resources, they created a powerful and flexible recording environment that could compete with top-tier commercial studios.
Their collaboration on Trianna Feruza & The Heavy Hitters’ debut album showcases what is possible when innovation meets creativity.
The challenge
Limited studio space. Two different locations.
Capturing a full-band performance usually demands a large studio space with multiple isolation rooms, a luxury that is becoming harder to afford. Home studios work well for solo tracking or overdubs, but they are rarely equipped to handle live sessions with multiple musicians playing together.
Troy and Nick needed a solution that would let them track an entire rhythm section and add guitars and vocals in real time, even though they were in two different locations. They wanted the musicians to interact naturally, preserving the energy and chemistry that can easily be lost when tracking separately.
Maintaining the energy of a live performance while working remotely was essential.
Troy Nadeau, Almost Islanders (left) and Nick Tio, Sungrown Studios (right).
The solution
A single system with the energy of a group session
Using LAMA Connect, Almost Islanders and Sungrown Studios combined their two recording environments into a single, powerful system. The two studios ran LAMA Connect Pro and used NDI Bridge to stream audio between them over the internet, with 24 to 30 milliseconds of latency between locations. This setup worked well for the players and preserved the feel of a live session. The system relied on LAMA NDI Sender and Receiver nodes, which support up to 256 audio tracks per stream, or 255 when using NDI Bridge.
At Sungrown Studios, a rhythm-focused space became the live room where drums and bass were recorded together to a click and streamed in real time. Across town at Almost Islanders, isolation rooms allowed guitars and vocals to be overdubbed while monitoring the live groove with minimal latency, preserving natural musical interaction. Mixing moved to a high-performance bare-metal server in San Jose, accessed via LAMA Connect Cloud. Even with heavy plugin chains and over 50 tracks, the system stayed responsive. Semi-mixed playback, streamed back with a brief delay, let artists hear their parts already shaped – keeping momentum and creativity high.
This approach preserved the energy of a group session while avoiding typical problems like drum bleed and phase issues. It allowed the musicians to perform naturally, reacting to each other’s dynamics and timing, despite being physically separated.
The impact
A high energy album recording, and happy artists
The collaboration between Almost Islanders and Sungrown Studios proved that distance does not have to limit creativity. Thanks to LAMA Connect, they were able to record a full band across two locations, while keeping the natural energy and interaction of a live performance.
The cloud-based mixing workflow gave them access to massive processing power without the financial burden of traditional studio sessions. They pushed their mix sessions further than ever before, layering more than 50 channels, using complex plugin chains, and still maintaining lightning-fast responsiveness.
Artists were able to hear themselves in near real time with a semi-mixed playback, keeping the creative momentum alive throughout the recording process. Even more importantly, the finished album captured the warmth, authenticity, and live feel that modern production often struggles to achieve.
By embracing LAMA Connect, Almost Islanders and Sungrown Studios transformed their independent setups into a unified, powerful, and flexible production environment. They showed that with creativity and the right technology, musicians and engineers are no longer limited by geography or studio size. Instead, they can collaborate freely, share resources, and produce professional-grade work that stands alongside the best in the industry.
Following the successful recording sessions, the first album of Trianna Feruza and The Heavy Hitters was released.
