Record in a professional studio for £135 ($200) a day?
A pro recording studio for £135 a day (around $200 USD), with access to just about any exotic gear you could possibly want - could this possibly be true?
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Anyone who has a home recording studio must have an ambition one day to record in a pro studio. But pro studios are so expensive. The best cost more than $3000 a day. And cheap studios are often simply not professional.
But if London UK is a practical place for you to record you can hire a fully pro studio for just £135 UK pounds, which is around $200 at the time of writing.
We know this because we hired this studio and did a day's filming there. The experience was fully what we expect of a pro studio with the only exception that the toilet was a long walk away!
Oh, why were we filming in a sound recording studio?
Well for what we wanted, which for once was nothing to do with RP or Audio Masterclass, we could have shot anywhere. But if you shoot or record just anywhere, it's difficult to protect yourself from hassle. There are loads of venues where you can hire function rooms cheaply, but then you'll get the cleaner disturbing you, noise from the boiler, creaky floorboards - any of a million potential problems.
We didn't need any specific facilities for filming, so a pro sound recording studio was an obvious choice.
Anyway, back to this studio and how can it be both pro and cheap? And what about having access to an enormous collection of the best equipment in the world?
Well the answer is that the studio is run by audio hire company FX Rentals. They call it Your Space and you can see it here...
FX Rentals has taken the opportunity to use some elevated space in their vast warehouse to construct two smallish but nice studios. Each has a control room and vocal booth, and the two share a lounge with the normal facilities you would expect.
So how come only £135 per day (plus VAT tax of course, which registered businesses can reclaim)?
The reason the studios are so cheap is that they don't have any equipment! When you hire a studio, you get the studio and monitoring. That's all.
Anything else you need, you have to bring yourself, which is what we did because we only needed a couple of cameras and mics.
But if you need equipment other than what you can bring yourself, you have access to the entire rental stock of FX Rentals. And their stock is HUGE - you can see it in its full glory from the staircase up to the studios.
And inevitably one's thoughts will turn to vintage Neumann mics, Fairchild compressors, and all that lovely stuff, all packed up in flight cases ready to be loved.
And the real kicker is that if you hire equipment to use in either of the Your Space studios, you get a deep deep discount on the hire rate.
What's not to like?
We don't have any connection with FX Rentals, by the way, except that we pay to use their services like anyone else would do.
The photo, by the way, is from the material we shot on our day in the Your Space studio, of actress Kate Ashmead, who was totally professional and gave an excellent performance in difficult material.
Publication date Wednesday March 03, 2010
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