Out Of Eden

There has been a lot of talk lately on the future shape that commercial studios should take, and what, given the general acceptance of digital processes (a debatable point in some minds, but bear with me), can an investment in a room, acoustics, rent, and heavyweight technology do that an investment in a spare bedroom, soft furnishings, and a PC can't?

That is unlikely to be a difficult question for a little while yet, but even so, the mere threat is enough to provoke visionary people to look for a new studio model. I could probably name several facilities that are adjusting their businesses, often looking to the post community for a model of what makes sense and what doesn't. But what would you do with an empty room and a reasonable budget, given the current state of the studio art? Something like Out Of Eden would be a good start.

Built on the side of Eden studios in Chiswick, Out Of Eden is owned by Andy Richards (with credits from Liza Minnelli to Pet Shop Boys, and from Karate Kid 2 to Biggles) and, to put it bluntly, is a room built around a Fairlight Fame2 (the first install in the world), a formidable Pro Tools system, and Miller & Kreisel surround monitoring. It is also living proof that a digital studio doesn't have to be a digital environment. Andy has gone to great lengths to make this a comfortable room, from the wall colours and lighting, to a 'modular' chair that has to be sat in to be believed! In the press shots, Andy looks very happy - and in the flesh he is very happy.

Eden studios was founded just over 30 years ago, by three partners, Piers Ford-Crush, Philip Love, and Mike Gardner. It was originally set up as their own facility, to service their own productions, but developed into one of the early commercial SSL facilities. Nowadays, Mike Gardener and Philip Love share the practical duties involving mostly technical direction, and financial direction, respectively. Up until not so long ago, Eden consisted of two SSL rooms, and a few programming rooms. Andy: 'I had been here for a few years, having worked for Sarm Management for some time. After about a year or so, things were going very well, we had a great relationship, and I decided that this would be the place where something like this [Out Of Eden] could happen.'

The existing staff of Eden are a very important factor in this, as Andy makes clear: 'They are people I trust, they are people with great integrity, they are friends.' It was an early vision that has taken some time to come to fruition: 'We all realised that we could look each other in the eyes and tell it like it was; there was no agenda apart from doing as well as we could, and to do something that would help the complex - by doing something that was fundamentally different in terms of the concept of the room.' That foundation of people and ethos is possibly the main reason why Eden still exists as a successful, privately owned studio more than over 30 years - and it's a foundation that is invaluable when something new comes along. Andy: 'They [Mike and Philip] roll up their sleeves, they come to work every morning — it's their way of life. It's something I greatly respect. They don't have people delegated to do certain tasks. When Out Of Eden was being built, they were in here everyday. There was a real sense of us doing it together, rather than it being a slightly more 'rarified' atmosphere. And what is delightful is that Mike Gardener built the room - we had the director on site, sleeves up, doing the wiring and the lighting. It was an organic process - rather than bringing somebody in from the outside who's commissioned to do it.' Andy put the finishing touches in with the paintwork and so forth: 'I tried to make it a cross between a high-end room and a living room. I've tried to achieve something that's homely and warm.' In actual fact, before the room was Out Of Eden, it was somebody's living room - and a small part of Mike's workshop.

The business arrangement is based on mutual benefit. Andy: 'I went to them and said, 'You build the room and do most of the furnishing, and I will put all my equipment in it'. In that respect it's a partnership, but they are, if you like, benevolent landlords. They trust me - some of the clients who work here end up using the other rooms as well. If this room does better, they do better.'

Andy's prompt was something that has become a familiar concern to many in the music recording business: 'I could see that the whole industry was going through a change. Engineers were saying 'we're not very busy', ‘the work's dried up', 'the writing's on the wall'. At the same time a friend of mine at Fairlight said that there was this new console, which was a lot bigger than the last one and could be used for music. I was already using an old Fairlight system together with Pro Tools upstairs, and I started putting two and two together and investigated, and thought to myself ‘this could be really good'. I developed the idea of having a studio that was a giant workstaion, rather than a studio that had a recording console and a tape machine.'

It is that concept that drives Out Of Eden - discrete equipment that together forms a single system: 'The front end is the Fairlight Fame2. But equally important is a large Pro Tools system. They are digitally, and 'synch-wise' linked together, totally. So they've become sort of seamless, and data flow runs from one to the other with having to worry about synch problems or anything like that. We have a synch box here [Nanosyncs] that synchs everything, whether it's the Fairlight, Pro Tools, a DAT machine - we have a 24-bit DAT machine - and we also have non-linear video, so we can do the high-end post as well. So we cover virtually the whole range of music production from composing, to mixing, and to post, and we can do a complete recall of all the machines in here in around a minute to a minute-and-a-half. So we can actually recall and remix virtually a whole album in a day.' The early reference to the post community was deliberate. It's this kind of emphasis on the value of time that is bringing in the clients.

And value for money, for that matter: 'The Pro Tools system is part of the room, you don't pay extra for that. You don't have this situation of wheeling it in and finding that the Extensions Manager has fouled up on you, or whatever. It's here, it's bolted in, you slot in your CD or hot-swappable drive and you're ready to go, in a completely digital fashion. In fact, I'm waiting for Digidesign to come along with a digital-only interface, because we don't actually need their analogue - it is purely connected to the Fairlight via AES/EBU, word clock, and timecode.'

Tracking is possible in Out Of Eden - overdubs, guitars, and so on - as there is a small booth 'en-suite'. However, for more than a few people, or for drum kits and so on, the studio next door can always accommodate them, and the tie-lines are in place; from Eden, to Out Of Eden. Andy: 'If you have an enormous recording area in your studio it becomes something else altogether. You are beholden to use that area as a resource on a regular basis or it simply does not make any sense financially. The vocal booth has Pro Tools tie-lines in it, so I can have an artist in there with their own Logic or Pro Tools system, or I can have another programmer in there working with me in tandem.' Amongst the adjectives for the studio, 'dynamic' figures very highly indeed.

At the time I spoke to Andy, he was still reeling from the six-month studio build, and from putting the Fame2, and indeed the whole studio, through some extensive beta testing. They had already done some work to film, and a programming session, and were in the process of booking several music mixes. There doesn't seem to have been any temptation to take bookings until the room and Andy were completely ready. Andy: 'In a way, putting this studio together has been like a sabbatical for me. I took a step back, had a look at the industry, and built this thing. Now I feel, within a month or two, ready to come back and say 'right, it's working'. There are all these options and possibilities that I never had before, whether it's mixing, recording, post, or even a humble tape copy for Todd-AO. Because everything is so quickly recallable, I can put a session away, and be doing something completely unrelated within ten minutes. I can do things with this room that I never dreamt I could ever do as a musician/producer.'

One of the big assets of Out Of Eden is the 5.1 set-up - almost a 'must-have' now for new facilities. 'I can work on and start a project in 5.1, and at the press of a button on the Fairlight the whole thing folds down into stereo, and there's your stereo master.

'I love Pro Tools. It's a great facility and a great interface to the outside world. The plug-ins and many of the editing features are glorious. But in terms of having real robustness, to me it's always 'lacked' - which is why often you'll mix in a large console room, and bring the whole thing up on the board. In working with the Fairlight system as well, I wanted to do away with having to do that. The Fairlight gives me the robust front end, digitally, for Pro Tools, and Pro Tools gives me all the niceties — the plug-ins and so on. Because I have two different systems, I can bus backwards and forwards between the systems in real time with virtually no latency.'

The Fairlight Fame2 is one of the new QDC technology-based products being produced by Fairlight. The extra DSP power that they have invested allows the 72-channels, each with dedicated EQ, dynamics, and so on; plus a 48-track recorder/editor. Andy: 'The Pro Tools system is digitally hardwired to the Fairlight, which means that I can, for my aux sends and returns, use real-time plug-ins. I can use the whole gamut of plug-ins that Digidesign and others provide, in real-time, with my mixes.' Yes, Pro Tools is often used as a very large effects processor.

One session inevitably generates two files - one for the Fairlight, and one for Pro Tools, but this is no big problem, especially as most of the interaction is through digital audio cables, rather than via a server. I was treated to a demo of Fame2, both in audio and editing. It is incredibly fast, and as Andy points out, it sounds very natural. Especially impressive was the 'one-touch' fold-down mix demonstrated by Andy. He is equally enthusiastic: 'What we can do is record and do all our mixes in 5.1, but deliver the stereo mix to the record company today. They come back and say, ‘We liked the 5.1 mix as well' and it takes me a minute to put the track up, and maybe four or five minutes later they've got their surround mix as well... it makes this thing incredibly powerful.' Another aspect of the Fairlight that Andy is so impressed with is the ability to change panning laws. He only discovered this during a technical consultation regarding the monitoring calibration and, as you would expect, it made things a whole lot easier. They set everything linear, and rely on the Fame2 to do the hard work.

Of course, the sound that Andy is so proud of is helped by his choice in monitoring. The Miller & Kreisel system, now distributed by Pure Distribution, is fairly new to Europe, but has many fans in the US film industry. Andy: 'I could not believe what they did to the sound of the room and the sound of the kit. There was actually no contest with any other speaker on the market - it was game, set, and match, virtually the moment I heard them.' The M&K system uses a bass management system that directs anything below 80Hz to the sub, whether Andy is working in stereo or 5.1. 'It's a grand system, and they are Dolby and THX approved, so they are thought of very highly in the surround and cinema world.' Again Andy has not followed the crowd: ' I thought, 'I've got the new Fairlight, I've got a dual workstation system, which nobody else in the UK has done - why not have some different speakers as well'. To get away from the ‘big speaker syndrome' is a relief for me. When people come in they hear it as super hi-fi, they don't hear it as rock ‘n roll. What's fascinating is that when you turn them down very low, your perception is still the same.'

There's many aspects to Out Of Eden that are new, and possibly the most important is that it is a 'future studio'. Andy has built something ready for a new kind of audio business. He says that he doesn't judge his success on making 'so much money per day'. Instead, he knows what he needs per month to stay afloat, while the rest of the world catches up. Some of the studio's uniqueness is down to the equipment, but the biggest proportion is attributable to Andy, and the Eden staff. A new studio concept, new monitoring, the first Fame2 installation in the world, a policy of surround ‘integration' (rather than treating it as some kind of extra ‘other'), and the foresight to put it all together in this particular configuration doesn't come from any studio instruction manual that I know of, but from a vision of the future of commercial audio facilities. Thus, Andy Richards is the proud proprieter of a future studio.