The Beginners Guide to Studio 1

By Ned FlahertyIntroduction to Studio 1: Studio 1 consists of 3 separate rooms including the control room, vocal booth and live room. The 3 work together to allow people to record live audio, whether it be from a direct input into the control room sound

The Control Room:

The control room is where all the inputs from the live room and the vocal booth are routed so that the audio can be recorded and manipulated by an audio engineer. In Studio 1s control room, the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) Logic is used to mix and record audio. An option for recording audio in the control room is with Direct Input (DI recording) which allows performers to plug in their instrument to a preamp and play directly into Logic. Depending on the sound you are looking for, this may not be as good as micing up an amp in the live room as DI recordings will have a much more defined sound without a lot of the natural reverb that comes with recording in the live room.

With the control room being the main hub of the studio for recording and mixing, it obviously has a lot of equipment in it. Studio 1s control room has 2 sets of near field monitors. Firstly, there are the KRK Rokit 5s. These are powered monitors that have a fairly flat frequency response, although they do have a slight bass boost between 100-200Hz.

There are also the Adam A77Xs which are also powered monitors. Also similarly to the Rokit 5s the A77Xs have a flat frequency response. This is good because it allows you to listen critically to how certain elements of the mix sound at different volumes.

The control room also has capabilities to record MIDI data with the Novation Impulse 49 keyboard available to use. This is a great keyboard as it has capabilities to control the software in use from the keyboard itself, meaning less time away from it trying to tweak settings. However if you have a MIDI device of your own you wish to play that doesnt use USB, then there is an emagic AMT8 available to hook up to.

Also there are emagic Logic Control and Logic Control XT surfaces available for people who arent so keen on working solidly with a mouse and keyboard and prefer the experience of a control surface to produce on.

There are 2 audio interfaces in Studio 1s control room, both coming from Focusrite. The Saffire Pro 40 works as both an amazing analogue/digital converter, as well as having up to 8 mic preamps or 8 line inputs. The works alongside the Octopre MK2 that also has 8 mic preamp inputs available that are used to record audio from both the live room and vocal booth.