Make Believe Studios

“Make Believe Studios is a full state-of-the-art flagship recording studio based out of Omaha, Nebraska. It was started by a great team of young, aspiring engineers and musicians. Over 10 years, we have grown to do some very incredible work for the music and television industries. We just have one goal; we want to make the best possible creative endeavors with our friends. It took us a long time to achieve that but we finally made it and have been flying high for a while now.

My official position at Make Believe is Chief Recording Engineer. I welcome in clients, get them comfortable, set up some instruments, microphones, and all that. Then, I sit there with them and record, edit, arrange, and sometimes produce records. A day in the life is very laid back for the most part but it does require quite a bit of time. Sometimes we’ll have a client visiting to work on their record and they rent the studio for two weeks, so I’ll come into the studio and be there for 16 hours. A lot of it is trying to fuel the creative side of our brains to harness and document some of our best ideas into sonic art. It sounds fun but sometimes it’s very difficult because sound is so imperfect. Some people spend their lives trying to make perfection out of it and that’s an almost impossible thing to do.”

Focus Engineering

Doug Van Sloun is a Mastering Engineer with over 21 years of professional experience. He founded Focus Mastering in 2007, and his latest state-of-the-art studio was dedicated in 2018.

Van Sloun has mastered over 3500 projects, including a Grammy-nominated album and many gold and platinum award-winning albums by artists across the United States and around the world. He also worked on many of the highly regarded albums released by Saddle Creek Records.

After a two year recording education, Van Sloun landed his first studio job at the legendary Sound Recorders of Omaha, Nebraska — home of epic successes C.W. McCall and Mannheim Streamroller. His early experience included commercial and music production, editing, voiceover and location recording, as well as audio for video. At Sound Recorders he began CD pre-mastering and editing compilations, learning the most advanced digital audio workstation at the time, along with the specialized hardware needed for CD mastering.

Focus Mastering is named for Van Sloun’s dedication to that part of the recording process. His focus is on mastering, on the artist and their music. He works to make their music sound its best in any environment and to connect the listener with the song. A musician himself, he’s always tinkering to get the most out of equipment and is uniquely sensitive to the artist/engineer relationship. His clients rave that beyond his talents he is thoughtful, inspiring and considerate, with an ear towards musicality.

Outside the studio, Doug treasures time with his wife Dawn, loves getting together with friends, running, and roots for the Kansas City Royals.

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