Castleford, W. Yorks., UK (July 25, 2014)—The Chairworks Studios, located in the north of England, has opened a new studio, the Vegas Rooms, with Allen & Heath’s GS-R24 studio console as the centerpiece.
Ben Hammond, an engineer who in recent years has held down the FOH position for bands such as Saxon, Deaf Havana, You Me At Six and No Devotion, is working out of the new studio. “Increasingly on tour, I was getting demands for live recordings for single B sides, album additional tracks, or magazine covers, so there was always a need for studio time. I knew it was time to invest in my own studio when I found myself mixing the bonus tracks for Deaf Havana’s deluxe edition album on a laptop on my knees,” explains Ben Hammond. “The studio works alongside my touring work, opening up options for the bands I work with.”
Hammond has used Allen & Heath’s iLive digital mixing system for touring over the past few years. “Sonically, GS-R24 is familiar, the preamps sound fantastic and the EQ is amazing. It’s a great sounding console,” says Hammond. “Once you start to use it, you realize what a clever piece of kit it is—the routing is almost infinitely flexible. As both a desk and control surface, it works however you want to work, whether you’re tracking through it, mixing on the console, using it as a controller for Pro Tools, a summing mixer, or glorified patchbay to use various outboard—it’s ingenious.”
The studio also features an iDR-16 MixRack, which enables Hammond to simply connect his laptop via CAT5, mix down material recorded via Dante on the touring iLive system, and pipe audio back to his laptop loaded with iLive Editor.
Allen & Heath
www.allen-heath.com
