Alexandria, Australia (March 5, 2018)—Australia’s Studios 301, originally established in 1926, was forced to relocate in 2016 and, following a change of ownership, has reopened in a new multi-million-dollar building.
As Australia’s longest-running professional recording studio, Studios 301 was founded in Sydney as The Columbia Graphophone Company, and later became EMI. It has hosted acts like Coldplay, Kanye West, Lady Gaga, U2, David Bowie, INXS, Elton John, Bob Dylan and Lana Del Rey over the years.
The new owner is familiar with the studios—Dr. Tom Misner, founder of SAE Institute, owned and rebuilt Studios 301 in the late 1990s before divesting his Australian business interests in 2011, and now reacquired Studios 301 at the end of 2016. The new facility now sits in the suburbs of Sydney.
The new facility features classic Neve 88R and SSL K series consoles plus new additions such as an API console and an Avid S6 in the 5.1 mixdown suite. To achieve the sound returning owner Tom Misner wanted throughout the main rooms, they built the rooms for their monitor speakers rather than trying to fit the speakers to the existing acoustics of the room.
“I chose PMC’s QB1-A monitors for our main studio because they are currently the best studio monitors on the market, especially when they are installed in a room that has been purpose-built to house them,” said Misner
The choice of QB1-A monitors for Control Room One make this the first facility in the Southern hemisphere to install PMC’s flagship monitoring system, which already has pride of place at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles and Metropolis Studios in London.
PMC’s recently launched MB3 XBD-A monitors reside in Control Rooms Two and Three and Mastering Rooms Two and Three, installed in stereo configurations in all rooms except Control Room Three, where they are part of a 5.1 surround sound set-up, in conjunction with a PMC MB3-A center speaker and MB2S passives for the rear surrounds. Control Rooms Four and Five and three production suites are all equipped with PMC twotwo monitors.
“The PMC MB3 monitors were the only ones I could find that were sufficiently versatile for recording, mixing and mastering,” Misner adds. “We are very happy with the sound they deliver. All the local engineers who have heard them have been pleasantly surprised and are looking forward to working with them. I also love the character of the twotwo speakers that we are putting into the production suites and smaller mix rooms. I am quite familiar with these, having used smaller PMC speakers at Abbey Road Studios. My main criteria were to use the same monitors throughout—for the smaller rooms, the main rooms and for mastering.”
PMC • www.pmc-speakers.com
