News
Air Studios upgrade to DFC Gemini
25.06.08
Air Studios, one of the world’s most prestigious recording facilities, has recently completed the refurbishment of Studio 3 with the installation of a new AMS Neve 48 fader DFC Gemini.
Established in 1969 by Sir George Martin on London’s Oxford Street, Air Studios rapidly became known as one of the region’s premier recording studios. Since relocating to Lyndhurst Hall, London in 1991, Air Studios has garnered the additional recognition of becoming Britain’s leading film scoring facility, as well as expanding its post production division ‘Breathe’ which now provides facilities that rival those in London’s postproduction heartland.
Studio 3 has been completely refurbished to enlarge the control room and improve the acoustics. The full range surround monitoring system consists of Dynaudio M4 monitors (LCR), 4 off BM15s (surround) and a twin JBL 18” sub system. A 56 channel ProTools HD2 Accel system is provided within the studio with interconnects to the console via Sydec MADI interfaces.
“Studio 3 caters for two main areas of business.” explains Tim Vine-Lott (Technical Director, Air Studios), “Long form TV mixing, for things like dramas, and film score mixing. To cater for these we have kept the desk mobile. For TV mixing the production executives like to sit in front of the desk, while for film mixing the engineers prefer to work from the middle of the room. We can therefore move the DFC accordingly. There are monitoring implications by doing this, so we have presets stored on our XTA speaker management system to handle the various room EQ and delay settings.”
“Prior to refurbishment, Studio 3 was installed with an AMS-Neve Logic 2.” continues Tim, “We had used that console for over 15 years, which is quite an achievement for a digital console.” Geoff Foster (Engineer, Air Management), who’s extensive list of film, pop and classical credits include the forthcoming Batman: The Dark Knight movie, explains further, “Studio 3 is a great sounding room where I really enjoy mixing soundtracks, but as the mixes got larger I was really pushing the Logic 2 to its capacity. Now refurbished though, it is great to have the increase in processing power.”
“Configuration of the console was decided upon by calculating the largest channel count that we have worked with here.” details Tim. “The busiest desk that Geoff used at Air was 302 channels. This was a combination of the 88R (192 automated faders on mixdown) and a Libra ‘side car’ that we brought into service when we required additional channels. This gave us our benchmark figure and we multiplied it by 2! The dual AMS-Neve USP engine we use with the DFC now provides us with 300 paths at 96kHz or 600 at 48kHz, and as for audio quality, the DFC is a much cleaner sounding console than the older Logic 2.”
An additional advantage for deciding upon the DFC Gemini is that it runs the same Encore Plus automation system as the all analogue 88R in the main hall. “As the automation systems are identical we can, if necessary, run a monitor mix up from the 88R into Studio 3 and maintain all the fader and mute settings.” says Tim.
Further details of the Air Studios facility can be found at their website www.airstudios.com. More information regarding Breathe Post Production can be found at www.breathepost.tv.
