Luis Mansilla is a Dominican recording, mixing and mastering engineer. He is one of the most decorated figures in Dominican music and one of the least visible, because the work he does does not carry a face.

Juan Luis Guerra & 440

From 2000 to 2007 he ran the studio for Juan Luis Guerra 4.40 as manager and as recording and mixing engineer. La Llave de Mi Corazón, the tenth album, came out of that room in 2007 and swept both the Grammys and the Latin Grammys; the awards went to the engineers as well as the artist, and his name is on them alongside Allan Leschhorn, Ronnie Torres and Adam Ayan.

Dominican press reported him collecting his fifth Grammy statuette on 8 November 2007. He now gives the count as eight.

The studio

He runs his own room, handling recording, mixing and mastering. The client list runs across tropical music and contemporary Christian music both — Sergio Vargas and Eddy Herrera among the merengue side, congregational records on the other. He is also a pastor at Casa de Adoración, which is why the two halves sit together rather than by accident.

The brothers

His brother Alex Mansilla is an arranger, producer and musical director. The two names turn up together in the credits of record after record — Alex writing the arrangement, Luis closing the sound — which is a rarer arrangement than it sounds, since most Dominican productions buy those two jobs from different places.

Teaching the desk

He teaches. His channel carries long workshop sessions rather than music: an hour and a half on mixing bachata bass and drums, and a tropical mixing class given with the producer Alfio Lora.

Material of this kind is scarce. Dominican tropical music has produced world-class engineering and almost no written record of how it is done, and a two-hour video of an engineer working the desk is among the few documents the field has.