Winchester, U.K. (November 5, 2025)—Winchester Audio Barn may be the only recording studio in the world to share space with an event venue, restaurant/bar facilities and a classic car workshop and showroom featuring Rod Stewart’s former 1972 Lamborghini Miura SV.
Recently opened in southern England, the studio features a Solid State Logic Duality Fuse 48-channel SuperAnalogue mixing console, racks of vintage outboard gear and microphones, classic instruments and amplification, all within a flexible infrastructure designed to support any audio production scenario.
The new studio is the brainchild of Niall Holden, founder of VDC Trading, which manufactures and distributes Van Damme Cable, among other things. Acoustic design of the Audio Barn was provided by Chris Walls of Level Acoustic Design, while technical design and installation were handled by Bill Ward of Langdale Technical Consulting, who will stay involved long-term with the facility.
Stuart Bruce, whose credits range from Band-Aid to Stevie Wonder, has joined the team as chief engineer. Both Bruce, as engineer, and Ward, as system designer, have long and extensive relationships with SSL and the company’s mixing consoles that started in the 1980s with their respective tenures at Sarm Studios in London.
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Bruce, an engineer, producer and educator, comments, “When choosing a console for a commercial facility, you want something robust, familiar, and that always delivers sonically, but also something that you can put your hand on your heart and say, ‘I love this thing.’ Naturally enough, that led to the decision the Audio Barn made to choose the Duality Fuse.”
He adds, ““I just love the sound of it. I like the switchable dual Superanalogue / Variable Harmonic Drive (VHD) mic pre’s; the way you can set up a drum sound, then flip all the mic pre’s and go, ‘Oh, there’s another character.’”
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The new building also houses a restaurant, bar and multi-format event space capable of hosting up to 250 people with a stage large enough for a seven-piece band. The venue, also intended to support the audio industry and other events, is linked over Dante and analogue networks into the control room with additional connectivity for multiple video cameras.
The Audio Barn, approximately 55 miles southwest of London, also offers a range of accommodation packages through local partners.
