At Dallas' Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, students are using a new $1.7 million recording studio with top-of-the-line equipment that usually only professionals can afford.
Complete with a $2,000 microphone, it's packed with the latest high-tech equipment.
But this studio is in the middle of a school. And the performers are all students.
"I'd like to be an opera singer," said Deor Taylor, 16, a junior. "We just love it. It makes us feel like actual professionals sometimes."
Kort Peters is on the advisory board that helped make all the purchases possible, pulling together donations to furnish the studio with all the best equipment.
"With a lot of really cool partners we've created an opportunity to have this work station for our students to make their audition tapes, to provide opportunities to record performances all across the campus and learn what it is to be in a recording studio," Peters said.
Students not only sing. They also learn how to work the sound mixer and recording equipment.
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Wolfgang Hunter is a senior who hopes to become a professional audio engineer.
"There's no school that has $2,000 mics," he said. "There's no school that offers the education use of this space."
15-year-old Moses Turgeman, a sophomore, sings in Hebrew.
He's amazed how real and professional the studio is.
"This is a privilege," Turgeman said. "Big people record with this stuff. Big names."
Part of the new equipment includes a portable studio on wheels which they can use to record students performing in any part of the school and send back live pictures to the main studio.
Principal Scott Rudes said it's a huge addition to the school.
"This is also the first time most of our students have ever stepped foot in a studio," he said. "To be able to provide that for them in their pre-professional lives is a game changer."
