Avid and Abbey Road Studios in London announced a studio-wide upgrade of Avid’s flagship music and audio post-production workstation to Pro Tools|HDX. Avid reports that Abbey Road is the most recent among a large group of facilities and private studios that have upgraded to HDX.
“The accomplished artists and producers that use our facilities expect sonic excellence and the very best tools to work with their recordings. This means we need to use the most up-to-date, highly specified and intuitive recording systems available to us,” says Simon Campbell, head of technical services at Abbey Road Studios. “Upgrading to Avid Pro Tools|HDX has enabled our clients to run larger sessions at high sample rates with as much plug-in processing as required, while operating faster than ever.”
“Pro Tools|HDX meets the needs of the most demanding professionals by providing scalable power to deliver peak performance in even the most challenging recording environments,” says W. Sean Ford, Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Avid. “Avid continues to set the standard for professional music production, and we’re excited to provide the technology that will be powering the award-winning projects coming out of Abbey Road.”
Abbey Road Studios has hosted sessions for Adele and Florence + The Machine, as well as for the scores of blockbuster movies such as Skyfall and The Hobbit.
Waves REDD.17 plug-in
In addition, Abbey Road teamed with Waves Audio to develop Waves’ REDD Console plug-ins: REDD.17 and REDD.37-.51, which emulate the sonic characteristics of Abbey Road’s custom-designed EMI REDD consoles used in the 1960s to record and mix The Beatles, The Hollies, Pink Floyd, and many others. Both REDD.17 and REDD.37-.51 are Native- and SoundGrid-compatible and are available for $349 MSRP, with a special introductory price of $199.
The original REDD consoles were built in-house and named after EMI’s Record Engineering Development Department (REDD). The REDD.17 still belongs to Abbey Road Studios, while Lenny Kravitz owns the REDD.37.
Plug-in controls include Amp Type (REDD.37-.51 only), Channel Select, Bass Lift (which controls the 9dB low shelf that compensates for low frequency loss caused by using condenser microphones in a figure-8 configuration), EQ Select (REDD.37-.51 only, which toggles between Classic and Pop EQ types), Tone High, Tone Low, Monitor output, stereo Spread, Drive, Analog (which controls the level of modeled noise and hum), Output, and VU Meters.
Visit Abbey Road Studios at www.abbeyroad.com
