About Audio Expert Mike Konopka
Thundertone Audio
Mike Konopka is the owner of Thundertone Audio. His Chicago area audio firm offers services in the areas of music mixing & production, acoustical design & consultation, live sound mixing, and expert analog audio tape restoration.
Mike also offers location audio recording and live broadcast services through his longtime association with Timothy Powell’s Metro Mobile Location Recording.
Ray Davies & The Kinks
From 1996 to 1999, Mike Konopka worked for Rock and Roll Hall of Fame artist Ray Davies’ Storyteller tour as front of house live sound engineer. He toured Storyteller with The Kinks frontman throughout the United States and Canada, as well as the UK, Scotland, Ireland, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and Brussels.
Additionally, Mike served as recording engineer at the Kinks’ famous Konk Studios in North London. There he engineered Ray’s Storyteller album as well as The Kinks Singles collection.
Mike was also the restoration engineer for fourteen albums from The Kinks’ RCA and Arista catalogs, including the critically acclaimed Muswell Hillbillies album. For these works, Mike carefully sourced the original analog masters from a library of over 600 reels. Mike painstakingly restored and transferred the actual master reels to high resolution digital files. Then, top mastering guru Bob Ludwig performed the final mastering work.
The Second City, Chicago, IL
Hired by famed producer Joyce Sloane in 1989, Mike Konopka served as the free-lance Sound Designer for over 30 Second City revues. He provided designs at the famous Chicago comedy troupe’s Main Stage, Etc, and Northwest companies. Highlights included working with Nate Herman on America Lite and It Was Thirty Years Ago Today.
Mike installed, reconfigured, and improved all three theaters’ sound systems. He also coached actors for proper audio techniques including Chris Farley, Tim Meadows, Ruby Streak, Rob Bronstein, Steve Carell, Steven Colbert, Rachel Dratch, Amy Sedaris, and Mark Beltzman to name only a few.
Mike also engineered the audio accompanying the book The Second City, Backstage at The World’s Most Famous Comedy Theater. He worked with author Sheldon Patinkin, narrator Robert Kline, and producer Kelly Leonard. Mike culled through hundreds of recordings to help select and expertly restore the best of the best comedy scenes for the book.
About Audio Expert Mike Konopka
Seagrape Studios, Chicago, IL
Along with the late Wilderness Road drummer Tom Haban, in 1983, Mike Konopka designed, built, and ran Seagrape Recording. At Seagrape, Chicago’s House Music scene, among other musical genres, was established. Mike cut hundreds of House 12″ mixes and remixes with Larry Heard (aka Mr Fingers), The Hot Mix Five, and many more. Also at Seagrape, Mike recorded and mixed hundreds of other recordings to analog tape in the genres of blues, folk, ethnic, pop, jazz, metal, and rock.
Pentwater
Mike Konopka was a founding member of the 70’s rock group Pentwater. This innovative act performed throughout the US including at CBGBs, Max’s Kansas City in New York, and B’Ginnings in the Chicago area. Pentwater played hundreds of shows and recorded three albums. Mike and Pentwater’s Tom Orsi recorded the first Pentwater LP in 1977.
About Audio Expert Mike Konopka
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