Shack Studio can be found at Highlands farm near Rettendon Common, Essex and offers bands, musicians and solo artists a relaxed, comfortable, friendly and professional environment in which to rehearse, record, mix and master their music.

 

The rear entrance to the studio offers easy access for the loading and unloading of instruments and equipment directly into the live room which houses our Mackie SA1232 (1300w) PA system for rehearsals. The front entrance opens into the green room with comfy sofas, tea and coffee making facilities, fridge, microwave and of course free Wi-Fi.

 

Next we enter the spacious control room which offers a choice of monitoring from Genelec, Adam and Yamaha. Our console of choice is the Allen & Heath ‘ZED – R16’, a superbly equipped and flexible desk with first class mic preamps.

 

From the engineer’s position and looking over to the left is the vocal booth. This has been treated to give a very tight acoustic, but without sounding unnatural and boxy. Not only is this booth used for solo projects, vocal and instrument overdubs, it also doubles as a perfect acoustically isolated area when tracking bands.

 

A corridor (which also acts as a further isolated area) running along side the vocal booth leads to the 32 square metre live room. Here all band members can maintain constant eye contact with each other without feeling crowded; their amps safely isolated to prevent bleed. A third isolation area can be found at the far end of the live room.

 

 

List of Equipment

 

Microphones:

 

Neumann U87

AKG C1000 S (x4)

AKG C214 (x4)

AKG C414 (x2)

AKG D112

Shure SM57 (x6)

Shure SM58 (x2)

Rode NT2

Rode NT2A

Sennheiser 441

Sennheiser 421

PZM (x2)

 

Outboard Valve Compression:

 

DBX

TLA Audio

 

Monitors:

 

Genelec 8040B

Adam A7X

Yamaha NS10M

 

Console:

 

Allen & Heath ZED-R16

 

DAW:

 

Mac Pro 2.8Ghz Quad Core Intel Xeon with 16GB RAM running OSX10.9.5 / 24inch Cinema Display

Logic 9

Logic X

 

Plugins:

 

Neve

Fairchild

Studer

Manley

Izotope