Hi Friend,

On this week's Inner Circle Podcast episode, producer-engineers who want to build tools on their own terms get a real blueprint from Matt O'Neil's story.

After years of plugin ideas stalled by prohibitive developer costs, Matt used AI coding tools to build 42 original plugins himself, while also making an early bet on Houston before the city's music scene took off.

During our conversation, Matt explains how he identified Houston as an underserved market, how working early with artists like Don Toliver shaped his approach to long-term creative relationships, and how AI removed the financial barrier that had blocked his plugin ideas for years.

Matt built Lunar Mansion Studios in West Houston after deliberately choosing Houston over New York and LA in 2015, reasoning that a fast-growing city would carry an early-established engineer upward with it.

On the workflow side, Matt typically does around 90 percent of his own mastering by thinking about mastering processing while still inside the mix, rather than treating the two stages as separate handoffs.

He credits long early runs with artists like Odatari, whom he has worked with since age 15, for shaping how he builds creative relationships.

You can hear it at bobbyoinnercircle.com, or via Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Mixcloud, Spotify, Deezer, and TuneIn Radio.

Also, a video version of this podcast is now available on YouTube as well.

Enjoy the show!

Bobby

P.S. Mixing, production, music business . . . if you want to learn it, I've probably got a course for it. See for yourself at bobbyowsinskicourses.com.