The University of Otago – New Zealand’s oldest, having been established in 1869 –opened a School of Performing Arts in 2020, a purpose-built, two-storey facility to support its teaching programme while also accommodating national and regional music industry projects and encouraging community engagement through workshops and various other events.

Central to the studio’s operation is a Solid State Logic Duality Delta SuperAnalogue mixing console, supplied by Amber Technology NZ, in its spacious main recording studio.

‘The explosion of music in Dunedin was a contributing factor to us having a contemporary music programme at Otago, which led to us having this studio, because we needed somewhere to run that programme,’ says Stephen Stedman, studio manager and music technician at the university’s new Te Korokoro o te Tui studios.

‘The reputation of the Duality precedes it, both in terms of the package – the workflow and how it sits in the room – as well as how it sounds,’ says Stedman. ‘We had a really good look at what other educators are doing around the world, where they want a real-world professional studio console. Dualitys are highly regarded and are in some of the best facilities in the world, so what we are teaching to students is relevant and aligned to what they might encounter in the outside world.

‘We definitely wanted an analogue workflow and that sound,’ he continues. ‘And we wanted something that would demonstrate to students how a large-format console works, how it’s laid out and why so many of the software applications that they use in-the-box are built the way they are built and why the plug-ins look the way they look. We also wanted a console that would be attractive to producers, musicians and publishers, and agencies like the Australasian Performing Right Association and the NZ Music Commission.’

Located on New Zealand’s South Island, university’s contemporary music programme previously occupied an aging former New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation radio studio complex, now demolished. ‘We moved there in 2000 and we had an SSL C200 that we bought in 2010,’ Stedman recalls. ‘That was our first foray into a serious large-format console. The C200 was a phenomenal piece of equipment. That experience with SSL informed the decision to buy the Duality,’ he says.

Stedman enjoyed his time with the C200 but – unsurprisingly for a man who collects vintage tape machines – is happy to be working on an analogue desk. ‘When we track on the Duality, we get that lovely, big, fat sound coming off it. You can wind in some harmonic distortion if you want to, but it also has a clarity, so it’s got the best of both.’

The studio’s new control room overlooks a two-storey-high live space as well as two iso booths, one with an amp locker. Connector panels in the space feed 128 mic lines to the control room, 48 of them normalled into the Duality. The studio is stocked with a variety of acoustic and electric instruments and amplifiers that have been collected over the years. A gantry around the upper level of the tracking room enables microphones, lighting, video screens and other equipment to be suspended.

‘We’ve got a camera above the Duality so we can throw an image of the console up on the big screen for lectures or lab work. We’ve got cameras all through the building, so we can live stream. And we can route audio all over the building,’ over a Dante network, Stedman also notes.

Various faculty and staff collaborated on the technical design of the new complex, which includes eight other purpose-built teaching, practice and rehearsal studios for music, dance and theatre. The music production part of programme is a mix of technology and philosophical thinking as Stedman explains: ‘We start by recording some people playing music. You learn all the technical stuff along the way, but the further you go into it the more sort of philosophical it becomes. It’s about the bigger questions. What is production? Why do records sound the way they sound? Deeper into the course, it becomes about the impact of music and where it’s going and what our response to that might be.’

The recording studio is kept busy with teaching and with student projects during semester but can accommodate some outside production projects at other times of the year. ‘We also have postgraduates doing their master’s and we have a Doctor of Musical Arts programme, which you can do in music production, where you produce three or four albums in the process of building your doctorate.’

Beyond that, the university hosts events to engage the community at the facility. ‘If we have the Australasian Performing Right Association people here doing a series of workshops, then the outside community can come and participate, and our students can be involved too,’ Stedman says. ‘It’s all about helping people make connections.’

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