Glasgow, Scotland (March 2, 2022)—The Royal Scottish National Orchestra (RSNO) has positioned its RSNO Centre, known as Scotland’s Studio, as a destination for film and game industry soundtrack recording. With that in mind, the facility recently installed a SSL Duality Delta SuperAnalogue 72-channel console.
The recording facility is located within the RSNO Centre, which opened in 2015 next to the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. The control room is linked to the 6,000-square-foot New Auditorium, a flexible, acoustically adjustable space located one floor below, over a Dante network as well as copper tie-lines and to the Main Auditorium of the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall next door via an OM4 fiber link. The control room is also linked to several break-out recording spaces.
As Hedd Morfett-Jones, the RSNO’s digital manager, explains, while Scotland has long been a destination for film and TV location shoots, soundtrack production has traditionally been handled by a number of facilities in England. “You could do almost an entire film in Scotland, except the score, so we looked at what we would need to record film scores here.” The RSNO is the only U.K. orchestra with in-house facilities to record sound to picture, enabling Scotland’s Studio to position itself as a prime destination for film and game industry soundtrack recording outside of London.
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A system of 80 A-to-D and D-to-A converters interface between the studio floor, the SSL desk and the Avid Pro Tools, Merging Technologies Pyramix and Magix Sequoia DAWs. The room includes a 5.1 ATC monitor speaker system and features acoustic design by Nick Whitaker, whose clients include Abbey Road Studios, Angel Studios and CTS Watford Colosseum in England.
Since the new production facilities were unveiled in November 2021, Scotland’s Studio has handled one or two scoring projects a month, Morfett-Jones reports. The inaugural project was the score of a TV movie remake of The Amazing Mr. Blunden, which aired on the Sky channel just before Christmas, by Edinburgh-born composer Blair Mowat. Between scoring sessions, the control room is used to record classical music pieces and to stream concerts from the concert hall.
Formed in 1891, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra is one of the world’s leading symphony orchestras. The orchestra performs across Scotland, regularly appearing at the BBC London Proms and Edinburgh International Festival and has received eight Grammy Award nominations for its recordings.
