We will start with a rather comprehensive home studio for the DJ / Producer Luciano.

After having installed a studio for Luciano in Barcelona we were approached to move the installations to Lausanne Switzerland in the winter of 2015. In order not to get bogged down in paperwork we decided to do all the work within a 90 day permitted working timeframe where our presence is not under large amounts of permissions and paperwork.

The brief was to build a better version of what we had done in Barcelona as now we all knew much better how Luciano wanted to work with his equipment and how it all needed to fit together. It was one year after we had first assembled everything for him and he had now got an idea of the ideal workflow that he needed. The initial brief was difficult as he had a great degree of uncertainty as to whether the new location would be long term or not.

Either way he had to get working on his future productions, so we could not hang around for too long. It was decided that as we had largely lost all the cabling from Barcelona as it all now did not fit the new studio we would not repeat that error, the new studio was to be designed on a flexible, re-configurable multi-pin system so items could not only be moved about, but they could easily be taken to a new place and re-installed at zero materials cost. It was discussed and decided that the initial investment would be significantly greater than normal hard-wired cabling, but if Luciano were to move installations just once the investment will save a vast sum of money in the future. As high-quality cables can last many decades, this cabling system could easily see a few moves.

Even the main studio electrical power board was built with a CEE-63A input plug and Powercon output connectors to every circuit, it can simply be unplugged, lifted from the wall, and re-installed in the new studio. Inevitably some cables will not be recoverable, in order to create a tidy installation about 20% of the cheaper cabling was hard-wired and will need to be cut free. Studio lighting systems and controllers are mounted on a removable panel and are again, easily transportable. It was indeed a complex and unique design exercise, but one that has resulted in a very good long-term investment in studio infrastructure.

Not only were technical items designed to be recoverable, but much of the acoustic structure was built in a modular manner to be removable with the least possible impact, it is estimated that up to 50% of the acoustic treatment is able to be re-used in future projects. Frame joints and board joints were aligned so as to allow modular removal, support structures were made from specially damped Unistrut frames and hanging baffles were of a standard board size.

One of Luciano’s specifications was to create a separate quality control mastering space. While the main room has excellent acoustic properties and plenty of space for the sound to be controlled it is still predominantly a creative space. Considering the amount of equipment in the main space it is a testament to the robustness of the acoustic principles employed that the room is so free of problems. However as with all creative spaces it is essential that before any result is released to public release it be finally quality control checked in a better environment. This is the mastering process.

In order to provide Luciano with a mastering reference we designed and built a much more ideal space (although smaller) adjacent to the main room. where a simple mastering set-up could be mounted. As a second reference it was decided that we needed to use a different monitoring system in this room. We would normally suggest our standard systems, but as the main room had one of those we chose the PMC MB2A as an excellent, different, reference.

While we believe firmly in the quality and principles of the systems we use now– Electromotive Laboratories monitoring systems – when we are asked for a different alternative we really like the PMC professional large series loudspeakers. As Luciano asked us if we could find somewhere to store his vinyl collection in the studio we took immediate advantage of the immense weight and acoustic properties to build a front wall from all of the discs, weighing in at almost three tons the front wall is a perfect non resonant baffle for the loudspeaker systems while using zero room space for the record storage.

This room was the first room we ever lit with only LED tape, the 14 w/m tape provides a beautiful relaxing shadow free almost outdoor light feel, additionally the RGB coloured wall lights allow us to vastly change the mood of the room

The back wall has a full bandwidth absorber, and side walls are heavily damped.

It took us, as a team, 133 years of learning to collectively learn to build this beautiful place from scratch for an incredible artist in just  90 working days.