London’s Famed AIR Studios Launches AIR Mastering

London, UK (April 18, 2023)—Alchemy Mastering at AIR has moved into two new mastering suites at AIR Studios‘ Lyndhurst premises in London and is now generally known as AIR Mastering.

When AIR Studios acquired Bary Grint and Phil Kinrade’s Alchemy mastering home in 2020, it acknowledged that its long-term purpose was to accommodate your entire mastering enterprise beneath one roof. The completion of two new suites, together with an improve of AIR’s current mastering facility at its Lyndhurst premises, has introduced this plan to fruition and given AIR’s worldwide shopper base entry to studios operated by the workforce.

“Mastering is a crucial a part of AIR’s enterprise and due to this fact it makes good industrial sense to put money into amenities and gear that give AIR Mastering a aggressive edge,” says Nikki Affleck, supervisor of AIR Mastering. “Our new studios are particularly constructed for this goal. As effectively as incorporating the most effective gear in the marketplace, they’re additionally acoustically correct, aesthetically pleasing and really comfy locations for employees and clients to spend time in.”

Veteran mastering engineer Barry Grint, who has greater than 30 years’ expertise of constructing and working mastering amenities, took cost of studio design utilizing a modular system provided by custom-build specialists CIPOD.

“CIPOD panels include a metallic again plate and mesh entrance plate with rockwool filler between them,” Grint explains, “This ensures excessive ranges of soundproofing and distinctive acoustics, which is necessary for mastering as it’s essential hear each element of the observe you might be engaged on. As the panels slot collectively simply, we had been additionally in a position to cut back the period of time it took to construct every room.”

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Grint provides, “We have labored laborious to make sure that every room meets the identical excessive customary in order that tasks will be simply transferred between them. This is why now we have chosen the identical monitoring for every room. All three rooms are outfitted with ATC SCM150 monitor audio system and use Sequoia mastering software program with an intensive array of plugins.”

With vinyl slicing accounting for almost 70% of AIR Mastering’s enterprise, Grint has specified Neumann VMS80 lathes, modified in order that they’ll make half-speed cuts, for all three studios. “Alchemy and AIR have all the time had a powerful fame for slicing vinyl, and given the present resurgence on this format, it will be important that Air Mastering’s gear is of the very best customary,” he says. “Having the flexibility to chop at half-speed is attracting numerous curiosity as a result of labels perceive that this offers them a high quality product, which in flip will be retailed at the next value level.”

Grint provides that for slicing from analog tape, AIR Mastering additionally has a Studer A80 preview machine, which has been modified to make use of Ampex ATR100 playback electronics.

Mastering 1, AIR’s current studio that was initially opened in 2006 and was dwelling to Ray Staff for a few years, is now the area of Phil Kinrade, a specialist in catalog, mainstream, compilations, and restoration.

Mastering 2 homes engineers John Webber and Jasper Ward and options an intensive vary of outboard gear from producers equivalent to Sontec, Manley, API, Thermionic Culture, Crane Song, Chandler and Dangerous Music.

Mastering 3 is centered round a Maselec management system with outboard gear from Sontec, Elysia, Dangerous Music and Whitestone. This studio is dwelling to Barry Grint and Cicely Balston.