Rock Mastering: Inside Will Borza's Studio
- Julio Monroy
- Jul 21
- 2 min read
A Room Built for Listening, Not Watching Screens
I visited Seismic Mastering, the studio run by Will Borza, a mastering engineer who trained under Howie Weinberg. That background pushed him toward rock mastering specifically, though he works other genres too. Records that have passed through his room include masters for Deftones, Marilyn Manson, Black Keys, The Lumineers, and My Chemical Romance, plus Dolby Atmos projects for Dirty Heads and Papa Roach, where he takes multitracks from previous releases to remix and master in immersive format.
What struck me most about his workflow wasn't the gear, it was the room layout. The desk isn't centered in front of the main monitors, it sits in a corner. Will sits in the sweet spot, listens, mentally decides what needs to change, gets up, makes the adjustment, and sits back down to listen again. Nothing between him and the song while he's making decisions. According to him, this shift over the past year made his masters more intentional, since it breaks the habit of turning knobs by trial and error instead of first thinking through what you actually want to achieve.
The Physics Behind Subwoofer Placement
The most concrete technical takeaway from the visit has to do with the subwoofer, a Genelec 7360A placed in the front corner of the room. Putting a subwoofer in a corner excites every mode in the room, which produces more peaks (nodes) and fewer nulls in the bass response. The reasoning is simple: correction software like GLM can pull peaks down with EQ, but no software can fill in a null. So Will's strategy is to excite every possible mode and then flatten with EQ, instead of chasing a position that minimizes peaks but ends up creating dead zones that can't be fixed.
The rest of the system is built from 8320 monitors on the ceiling, 8330s on the sides and rear, and 8341s with W371 extensions on the front wall, with a crossover at 60 Hz to the subs and another variable point, set automatically by GLM, between 150 and 250 Hz to the 8341s.
On the effect of moving to Genelec monitoring with room correction, Will summed it up this way:
"my room tells me the truth, sonically"
That certainty — knowing your tonal decisions rest on a reliable room response instead of a guess — is, to me, the real difference between mixing blind and mixing with intent.
Want to watch the full conversation with Will Borza, including the walkthrough of Seismic Mastering? The video is above. And if you want this kind of content sent straight to you, subscribe to my newsletter.
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