Equipment & Resources
Music practice rooms.
There are five large band rehearsal rooms, eight small band rooms, seven rooms set up with piano/keyboards and two digital audio workrooms. A variety of professional music equipment can be borrowed including vocal PA, drum kits, bass and guitar amps and over 30 musical instruments.
Generous donations from a number of sponsors and manufacturers such as Orange Amps, Fret King guitars, JHS guitars and Zildjian, ensures numerous state-of-the art instruments and equipment.
Recording studios.
There are six professionally equipped recording studios. All of them support music tracking and mixing to a high standard, and some have additional facilities for sound to picture production, surround mixing, mastering and editing.
Studio kit list
All six recording studios are professionally designed and acoustically treated and isolated.
Consoles are currently: Audient (ASP8024 36 channel and 24 channel) // Yamaha (DM2000) // SSL (AWS900+ and a 48 channel Duality) // Digidesign (16 fader Icon with Surround Panning Option).
Our standard multi-track format is Pro-Tools HD, but we also support RADAR in most studios and DTRS and 2-inch analogue tape (Otari MTR-90) in the central machine room. The Pro-Tools HD systems are installed with a range of plug-ins from Waves and Sonnox, and a Pyramix/VCube system enhances DAW capability in the postproduction studio.
Offline suites.
There are 22 offline workstations to complement the HD systems in the studios. The offline workstations are based around Mac Pros. Each system runs Logic Studio, Pro-Tools and a variety of software synthesizers and samplers such as Reason and Reaktor.
Mobile Recording.
In addition to the recording studios, we also have a mobile recording system with microphone preamplifiers, monitoring and routing based around a Pro-Tools HD2 system. This is used for recording on location (for example at Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall), or for recording in some of the larger performance spaces.
Broadcast Audio
We have a fully flightcased set of equipment capable of being configured for a variety of location broadcast applications. This is based around a Soundcraft RM1-D digital broadcast mixer, communications and cue systems and a range of playback sources including a computer based playout and scheduling system.
Outboard equipment
This includes items from Lexicon // Tc electronic // Drawmer// BSS // Focusrite // Eventide // dbx // Yamaha // Neve // Millennia // Manley // Universal Audio // Empirical Labs //Thermionic Culture.
Microphones
Our extensive stock of microphones include items from Sennheiser // Neumann // Sony // Schoeps // AKG // beyerdynamic // Shure // ElectroVoice // Crown // Audio Technica
// DPA // Audix // Earthworks // Brauner // Royer // AEA // sE.
Monitoring
This is catered for by Genelec // Klein and Hummel // Coastal Acoustics.
Performance spaces
We have two main performance spaces used for live productions and for teaching. The Paul McCartney Auditorium (PMA) is a traditional proscenium arch theatre and is our largest performance space which can seat over 400 people. The Sennheister Studio Theatre can hold an audience of 96. We have also invested in equipment that enables us to transform our café area into a great venue for music gigs.
Take a virtual tour of the Paul McCartney Auditorium
Take a virtual tour of the Sennheiser Studio Theatre