A new music institute in Brierley Hill, in the UK’s West Midlands, Resonance offers three-year bachelors’ degree programmes in everything from music performance and production to sound engineering. The school has been designed around a new approach to music and pro audio instruction (no more than 200 students per year) that us designed to take students farther, faster. Many tech innovations have been put in place to help carry out this mission, with Focusrite at the heart of it all.

Resonance has three recording studios, each with its own control room, live room(s) with traditional analogue connections, equipment and workflow. In addition, there are eight fully-equipped rehearsal studios for live work, six acoustically isolated practice rooms, and a Mac lab for basic DAW-based study. A variety of small digital mixers and other equipment can circulate between any of these rooms as needed.

‘The entire building, and I mean the entire building, is equipped with Dante,’ explains Resonance CEO and Principal, Rick Benton. ‘We have two completely separate Dante networks running side by side, so if one drops, we go to Dante B. There are Ethernet ports in every room, whether it’s the studios, the live rooms, the rehearsal rooms, the library, or even the café. In effect, this is a 48,000sq-ft recording studio – the sky’s the limit.’

Focusrite gear in Studio One includes a Red 16Line interface connected to two eight-channel Focusrite ISA 828 MkII preamps with Dante converters. In Studio Two, a further Red 16Line is connected to two RedNet A16R MkIIs. Studio Three uses a Focusrite Clarett 8Pre USB interface. The Mac Lab has 16 Mac computers, each with a Scarlett 2i2 interface and Novation Launchkey Mk3 keyboard controller.

Rehearsal rooms, each equipped with a PA with full backline available, are configured to accommodate wheeled racks with four RedNet MP8R remote-controlled eight-channel preamps, which can go into any room individually or together, and six RedNet AM2 headphone/line out boxes that float as well.

While starting a school during a global pandemic might appear wreckless, Resonance is a success story made possible by audio networking. ‘In a 48,000sq-ft building, we can give every student their own room,’ Benton says. ‘They’re isolated, and yet they can be on campus and get their hands on the equipment for a practical approach to their learning. Having the RedNet gear has really helped it along.’

An additional benefit, he says, ‘is the ability to get nearly zero milliseconds of delay from room to room. We can actually have real-time rehearsals where it sounds and feels like students are in the same room even though they’re isolated.’

The uptake of networked audio in the audio industry, particularly its ubiquity in live sound, has created a demand that new hires be network savvy as well as being proficient in the more traditional audio fundamentals. ‘Our understanding from the industry, is that there is a potential shortage of good live sound engineers who have this network background as well – people with phenomenal ears who can mix anything that comes at them, but also have that knowledge of how to send that signal around and how to troubleshoot network issues,’ Benton says.

‘For me, that’s where Focusrite bridges this perfectly,’ adds Alex Prince, Course Leader for Resonance’s Performance & Production Degree. ‘You have the Dante network, which is its own protocol, and there are many manufacturers who have it integrated. This network will work with systems or components from any manufacturer for any idea that we might come up with, and yet at its core it’s still the Focusrite brand. It all marries up so perfectly and it doesn’t get in its own way.’

Benton notes that Focusrite’s goals run parallel to Resonance’s. ‘What we tell the industry,’ he explains, ‘is that we are here to train students, and boxes won’t train them – people will. Focusrite and our other partner companies don’t see education as just another place to sell product. They see that if we’re going to have an industry in ten years’ time, we’ve got to get the people ready to take that industry forward.’