It became clear during 2011 that there was a resurgence in big room recording studios. Defying expectation, the kind of studio that had most readily been undermined by the falling cost of equipment and the project rooms that followed was making a comeback.
The trend continues in the early months of 2012, first with Village Studios in China, and now with MonkMusic in New York.
Norway’s new Konserthuset Kilden (Kilden Performing Arts Centre) is being billed as one of the largest and most technologically sophisticated arts venues in Scandinavia. Equipping the four halls on the 15,000-sq-m was a demanding job, and one that fell to territorial distributor. LydRommet.
The centre provides the home for the Agder Regional Theater, Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra and Opera Sør – the regional opera company.
Three years in the making, a new studio represents the future of China’s recording industry – and a bold move in a superstar’s long-term career plan.
Designed by Walters-Storyk Design Group, the Village Studios project is a good reflection of the interaction of company’s international offices. ‘It is interesting to note that neither distance nor language presented insurmountable barriers to our collaboration,’ WSDG principal John Storyk observes.
In 2011, I made a radio documentary for the BBC called The Sound of Sport. Although this was a radio piece, most of what it concerned itself with was television sports sound.
We think of the dominant sound of sports broadcasts as the commentator, but this is really about all the other sounds – the sounds underneath the commentary, the sounds of the event itself, and how they get onto your TV.
The Audient ASP8024 mixing desk being installed at Ohio’s Capital University is the centrepiece of its Music Technology Area studio. This console was chosen to assist the teaching of signal flow to music technology students of all levels – and the route to its selection is as educational as the reasons behind it.
Chad Loughrige, Head of the Music Technology Area and specifier of the desk explains…
‘The location we discovered has all the attributes for a successful studio,’ says producer/engineer Louis Benedetti of his two-year search for the ideal New York City studio location.
That location is a former bank building on one of Soho’s chicest streets, where his collaboration with an NY contractor has produced resulted an ingeniously designed studio. It came at a cost – and with unanticipated isolation issues...
An industrial crossroads on the north shore of Louisiana’s Lake Pontchartrain, Slidell has weathered its share of storms – but nothing like the devastation brought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
For a community that is still in recovery, the completion of the US$5.4m Slidell City Council and Administrative Center is both a return to its past running and a sign of good things to come...
For four months during the summer show season, London’s Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre becomes one of the city’s largest venues, selling out its 1,200-plus capacity each night.
This year’s programme included Lord of the Flies, Beggar’s Opera (with a children’s version of Pericles running concurrently during the day), and the Gershwin musical Crazy for You. And an audio innovation...
Symphonica: The Orchestra Tour is a showcase for many of George Michael’s hits, plus a carefully chosen selection of covers that have been re-worked for orchestral accompaniment.
As a technical production, Symphonica: The Orchestra Tour would be daunting for even the most experienced of engineers, so both crew and equipment have been carefully chosen.
Installations or refurbishments free of budgetary limitations are a rare thing. When they do come up, however, state-funded showpieces and churches lead the way.
‘It is always disappointing when technical teams have their expectations for a new system threatened by budgetary limitations,’ agrees Michael Garrison, founder and owner of Michael Garrison Associates. ‘This was the situation we walked into at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church.’
Where the original 1979 production of Pink Floyd’s The Wall cost around £1m and was so big that it was only staged in three cities, its 2011 counterpart is reckoned to have cost £37m and has been performed a total of 120 times at venues around North America and Europe.
The new version of the show is the current touring vehicle for writer and former Floyd founder/bass player Roger Waters, and draws on new 3D animation, pyrotechnics and effects.