-=SHOW OFF YOUR VINTAGE STUDIO!!!!=-

I really miss that old Soundtracs desk, it had a lovely sound which I don’t think can be bettered by even the best SSL or Neve consoles. Before the desk in the pic Soundtracs made the CM4400, which was marginally better sounding that the one in the pic. The CM440 is quite sought after these days as people are finding out just how go it was.

The studio was based around an Atari ST1040 computer and the first program I used was called Super Conductor. It was the forerunner of cubase, but you could not drag and drop blocks, you had to tell it the number of copies of a block you wanted and where you wanted them to be copied. I also used the first Notator as well. The sampler was an Akai S950 and the monitors were Kef 104’s I think and Mission 770’s.

I recorded and produced loads of dance tracks in that studio. A lot of the first moving shadow was done there (Rob loved that Soundtracs desk) and stuff like shades of rhythm, a home boy a hippy and a funky dread, sub division, K class and loads more stuff.

In around 1992 I needed a bigger desk so had heard about the good reviews the Studio Master series 2 was getting. A panel of judges compared playing a CD though 2 channels against top SSL’s and Neve consoles. Most agreed that the series 2 sounded better so I heard or one for sale and bough OMD’s 40 input series 2. What the reviewers did not try was doing a mix. Yep it could make individual channels and instruments sound great, but couldn’t mix to save its life. Its what you find with many large budget consoles. They either make individual channels sound amazing but then can’t put many channels together to form a good mix, or them can make a good mix but sound bad. Enter the likes of top end SSL and Neve and you can get great individual channel sounds and a board that can mix great as well. I can't find the pics of the series 2 in my studio, but do have them somewhere.

So after about 1 year I sole the Studio Master and got my first Neve. It was a 40 input frame but only had 32 channel strips. It was an inline console, not split and had a route and patch computer with recall. This means it could save routings and channel patching but didn’t have flying faders or any automation.

Here’s a pic of my studio in about 1993. I also got a Studer 2” 24 track tape machine around that time.

This last pic is from a bit later when I got the Spendor monitors in.