Dave Pensado

Dave Pensado is a Grammy Award-winning mix engineer. His career began in Atlanta in the 1970s and 1980s doing live and studio sound engineering. He has lived in Los Angeles since 1990.

He mixes between 200 and 250 songs a year at Larrabee Studios in Los Angeles. When recording he usually records at Echo Bar Studios in North Hollywood.

On September 12, 2011, Pensado started a weekly show called Pensado's Place, together with Herb Trawick, his manager and business partner. The first part of the show is about audio engineering techniques; Pensado evaluates - sometimes assisted or replaced by a guest speaker - plugins, outboard gear like microphones, and demonstrates how to improve the mix. The second part is an interview of a mixing engineer, master engineer, producer, label CEO or singer-songwriter.

On July 20, 2013, Pensado and Trawick hosted an event at Vintage King Los Angeles called "Pensado Gear Expo 2013". More than one thousand people from around the world attended. 22-time Grammy Award-winning engineer, Al Schmitt, Steven Slate, Alex da Kid, Ryan Hewitt, and Robert Duncan were a few of the featured guests of the expo.

Equipment
At first, Pensado occasionally demonstrates outboard analog gear, but later on, he only processes/edits audio tracks with his computer, which is also called mixing 'in the box', before sending his mixes to a mastering engineer. For all demonstrations he uses Pro Tools as his DAW (digital audio workstation), and the show is sponsored by audio companies he respects.

Awards
Pensado won a Grammy Award, alongside fellow engineers Jaycen Joshua and Kuk Harrell, for Mary J. Blige's 2008 Best Contemporary R&B Album, Growing Pains.

Pensado was the recipient of the 2020 NAMM TEC (Technical Excellence & Creativity) Hall of Fame Award. Pensado was officially inducted into the NAMM TEC Hall of Fame at the 35th Annual NAMM TEC Awards, held on January 18 in Anaheim, California during the NAMM Show.

Alumni
Some successful audio engineers & producers that have assisted for Dave Pensado in the past include Sylvia Massy, Jaycen Joshua, Manny Marroquin, Dylan "3-D" Dresdow, Ariel Chobaz, Ethan Willoughby, Nico Hamui, and Rafael Fadul.