The Crash Factory is a purpose-built recording studio, situated in a Victorian lace factory in Hockley, Nottingham city centre. The studio consists of an acoustically-designed control room, a live room with variable reflective characteristics and a vocal booth for isolation. All rooms are of floating room-within-a-room construction and have great lines of sight. A liquorice factory of wiring permits the use of our various other spaces and isolation devices for the recording and manipulation of sound.
The studio also features a spacious and light client lounge for recuperation after that pounding live take or to watch the Lord Of The Rings trilogy while your drummer tunes his rack of Phil Collins-style toms to perfect musical intervals.
RECORDING
There’s nothing we like more than to point microphones at people making noise; generally these microphones are old and German and the people in question are making a whole shedload of noise.
We don’t believe there is any one way to record, and all sessions begin with an in-depth discussion about exactly what you’re looking for. We believe the most important function of the recording engineer is to ascertain and understand the sounds that you’re imagining and to do whatever it takes to make that come out of the speakers at the end of your session.
We’re pretty strong advocates of *getting it right* at the beginning and not relying on fixing things later. We encourage clients to know what they want, and to be decisive.
MIXING
So you recorded seventeen guitar parts and also some drums? Let’s mix.
More often than not, mix time is accounted for in your session and is an organic extention of the recording process. In some cases however, we mix tracks at a flat rate, off the clock. This is based on an educated guess of how long the work will take and includes provisions for you to make changes and approve the final mix. This can be a good way of working because you can be assured the cost isn’t going to get out of hand and we get a bit more freedom to try crazy stuff with backwards reverb.
We also really enjoy mixing recordings that other people have made, be it at other studios or done at home. Generally this is done for a flat rate- we address any issues, prepare the tracks and transfer to delicious 2″ tape from which we mix. Drop us a line if you have tracks you’d like us to look at.
EQUIPMENT
Whilst we certainly beleive the driver is more important than the car, we do like pushy buttons and flashy lights. As well as all the normal dull stuff studios need like headphones and mic stands, the important parts of our equipment are thus:
1979 AMEK M1000 32 channel recording console
1986 Otari MTR90 24 track 2″ tape recorder
1978 Studer B67 2 track 1/4″ tape recorder
Genelec 1031 Monitoring speakers
Vintage & new microphones by AKG, Sennheiser, Shure & Beyerdynamic
Vintage, new and custom-made outboard equipment
Backline by Marshall, Fender, Ampeg & Premier