How did you originally come across the Astoria? Why a boat?
The boat was five minutes away from David's house, and it was for sale. So just out of interest, we went and had a look at it. When we drove away from it having been shown around, David turned around and said, "What do you think?" to me, and I said, "Well, I think it's fantastic." Then he said to Warrick, a friend of his who used to be the Floyd's personal roadie, "What do you think?" "I think you've got to buy it!" David said, "Yeah, what are we going to do with it?" And it was almost one of those Spinal Tap moments. It seemed, for what it was, a very inexpensive, fabulous place. David thought that it would be a good place; conducive to being creative and writing music.
Before that, David had had different home studios, but was currently living in a house where there wasn't room for a studio and his equipment was in storage. We were bowled over by what a wonderful place it was; not only the boat, but the riverbank grounds and buildings.
What kind of shape was the boat in? It obviously wasn't in the pristine shape that it's in now?
It was in pretty good condition. It was a beautiful, furnished houseboat, with a caretaker living on board. David thought he could use it for songwriting; he didn't have anywhere else available. David's brief was to get his equipment out of storage and put it in the large end room while he was away for six weeks in the summer. When he got back, we'd start doing some work. Well, having worked for the band for a while at that time, I thought, if I do that, they're going to want to change it, and I could see how it would work out better. I took it upon myself to change the plan somewhat. I converted the next room along, the master bedroom, into a machine room, where we put power amplifiers, all the tape machines, camera supplies and that sort of stuff. And I converted the room at the other end of the boat so it could be used as a live room if required, running mic lines, red lights, foldback, CCTV, etc. And then I had air conditioning systems put in the machine room and control room. The control room I had secondarily glazed. We had an old Soundcraft 2400 desk from David's old home studio. It was all right, but pretty noisy; too noisy, in my opinion, to put into a new place. I phoned David in Greece, and said "I want to change this desk to a DDA AMR 24 I've got a great deal, and a really good price." David was of course very reluctant over the phone to change the desk as he was very hands-on and knew how it worked. I assured him that the layout was fairly similar but it was actually much quieter with a cleaner signal path. So he said, "Okay." I had Nick [Whittaker] in to do some acoustic tests and design work for the room. I had to get it completed before David came back six weeks later. The logistics were unusual; I had to get a crane barge and a tug to get both the tape machines in through a window opening in to the master bedroom on the far side of the boat and the air conditioning unit for the control room on to the roof. The last two days of construction, I think I just stayed there, having barely slept at all, trying to get 20 workmen out of there who had been doing the whole installation getting in each other's way in a fairly confined space with desk installation, wiring, electric, woodwork, glazing, air con, CCTV, decorating, etc., with the floors up and all going on at the same time and I had to get the place finished and running to be ready for use. [laughs]
Did David know the scope of what you were trying to achieve while he was away?
No, I didn't tell him. The whole thing, including the desk, to put the air conditioning in, do secondary glazing, do the acoustic work, have things custom built such as racks and monitor stands, putting in the CCTV system, mic lines, wiring — it cost 50-60,000 pounds. With all things considered and the facility now available, it was very inexpensive, really. He flew back in from Greece and immediately came to the boat. He walked around, went up to the control room, walked round some more, came up the other end and found me. The only thing he said was, "Well, how much did it cost?" [laughs] And that was really the start of it all here. We then started work on the Momentary Lapse... album and everybody really liked being here. The whole thing worked very well. As time went on, the studio and grounds went through many different stages of being upgraded and changed.
So this was since 1986?
Yes.
Who did you involve getting the boat up to snuff? Did you get a serious team together?
Nick Whittaker, the acoustician, who had done a couple of other things for us and who we still use now. But also the Pink Floyd engineers, James Guthrie and Andy Jackson, who have done every bit of David Gilmour and Floyd work between them since The Wall, really. James started in '78, I guess. They're both fantastic engineers and have great ears. James lives in Lake Tahoe now and he has his own studio there. Andy lives in London. In fact, Andy used to be James' assistant at Utopia studios in London in the mid-seventies. But they both grew up doing all sorts and styles of music and honing their craft, as did other well-known engineers from Utopia during that time, such as Greg and Pete Walsh. So there's always been a team of people, with Andy or James' ears, along with Nick Whittaker's ears and his measuring equipment. I've always been the driving force and the motivator.
How do you like being the ringleader of it all?
I am by default, really. It all started doing the Floyd's back-line. After doing the Wish You Were Here and Dark Side... tours, it was time do re-do all the back-line for the Animals tour. I kept David's 4 x 12 cabinets and Hi-Watts, keyboards and specific effects, but re-did everything else. Bass equipment, got stabilizers, isolating transformers, re-did all the mains runs, every bit of cabling, casing. Again, even in those days, my approach to doing it was that everything had to be done as well as possible to the highest quality — top class for a great band. I felt it was my role, without anything being said, to keep things to the highest standard possible. It's rubbed off from them, from doing their live shows into this area where I've ended by default; somehow running a studio — well, building one.
You have the best aesthetic and sonic environment here.
It's unique. The way I've done it on this boat is that this studio could be taken completely out of this boat, and, with not very much work, it could be turned back into just a beautiful houseboat. The alterations in the ceilings and walls are not very many. I have stored any wood that has been removed in our warehouse.
Does David come to the Astoria often? What sorts of thing draws him aboard these days?
It's his place and he likes it here, so he comes in when he has something to do.
Can he get around on your Neve 88R desk?
Yes, he might fiddle and be hands on, but either Andy or Damon [Iddins] will be here to run the room, so he doesn't need to, really.
How have you approached the Astoria as a commercial studio? Is there an unwritten policy on who can record here? Do people have to know you or somebody else who works here?
It is not a commercial studio in the normal sense. It is David's private studio which, when he is not here, we do let friends and acquaintances come in to use the place. It's down to my discretion. We're ex-directory, and we're not in any studio guides and we don't advertise. It's still really private. David was happy with closing it down and not doing anything between the periods when he wanted to work. But of course, inevitably when you do that, you switch it all back on and it doesn't work properly or it's out of date. So what I put to him was, if I made it available to friends, which actually he really didn't want me to do, I said it would be good to get other people in; other engineers and producers, to see what they thought of it. It would be good to get other input to help improve it keep the place running and up to scratch for when he wanted to use it. So it's very low-key and discreet. As the years go by, more people hear about it.
When was Roger Knapp brought in for maintenance?
I'm not sure. About ten years ago, probably. He's in about two or three days a week. It varies, depending on what's going on, but generally about two or three days a week.
Just to make sure all the machines are running up to snuff?
Well, [laughs] one of the things he did when he worked for Pete Townshend at Eel Pie was — Pete had a studio on a boat, albeit a very different type of boat, a big Dutch barge, which Roger put together, and Roger's very good at all sorts of things, other than just electronics.
How has your monitoring system evolved over the years?
First of all, when we put the monitoring in, we used UREI 813s, with external crossover and Phase Linear amps, which for the time were okay. No one ever thought they were fabulous.
What was your general feeling about those monitors?
Well, they were alright. No one was ever very happy with them. We then, in I think the late '80s or around 1990, discovered ATC speakers, which were designed by a guy called Billy Woodman in England. He'd designed this soft four-inch midrange dome, when a lot of studio main monitors were using horn-loaded mid-range. Never very pleasant to sit and listen to for any period of time. And these soft-dome speakers were a whole new area, really.
Does the four-inch dome midrange design on your ATC monitors also help even out the dispersion?
Much more so than the horn, yes. James Guthrie was the first person to come across ATC speakers; he raved about them and suggested we have a listen and check some out on the boat. He was already using them himself. We finally did, in I think around 1990. We got some ATC 200s. They were a huge step forward in terms of detail, clarity and neutrality. They appeared a bit bass light — but actually the problem was with our room, not the speakers — we needed more room tweaking. Since then, we worked over the years with the 200s, changing physical support, changing tweeters — they used to come with Audax tweeters and we then changed those to Vifa, as used on their smaller ATC50 speakers. They seemed to work in conjunction with the mids much more seamlessly through the crossover point.
So you completely customized them to your needs.
Yes. Eventually we customized them completely. We changed them from Vifas to Scan Speak Revelators, we changed the cabling several times, we moved and changed the cabinet position — height, wall proximity, angle, etc. We tried many different amplifiers and physical supports and their location several times, and in conjunction with that, we've continually worked on the room to give a large area behind the desk — so wherever you move about, the monitoring remains fairly constant and phase coherent. When you're at the back racks EQing or compressing or whatever, you're not getting any secondary reflections or funny phase problems when you move. It's taken us years to achieve that.
So there's a comfort in knowing that all the sound is equally distributed.
Yes, to a very large area behind the desk, which is not the case with most control rooms. It is very phase coherent when you move about, and it all relates very well. There's almost no change for a pretty big area behind the desk.
Did you try any other monitors?
We have tried almost all types, Genelec, KRK, PMC, etc. We tried ATC 300s [but] they did not work in this room. Before the refit, putting in the 88R, we tried a pair of ATC 150s, which James had been raving about. He replaced his 200s in Tahoe with 150s. And we tried those, with a bit of juggling about. For various reasons, we preferred them to the 200s. I think the size of the baffle on the front created less of a spike from the mids going into the tweeters and a single 15" driver worked better in our room than the 2 x 12"s. And our monitoring at that point, with the 200s, had been one of the best monitoring systems in the country. Now this was yet another good step forward.
How about the rear of the control room? How did you treat the acoustics on the rear?
In the back, in the corners, there's some bass traps, and in the middle rear, the glass has been angled in the center to take reflections away from coming straight back at you. And there are various absorptive areas below and above the windows on the ceiling and on the seating.
And what about these?
These are ATC 50s, for the rear surround sound for doing 5.1 work on the main system. Also at the front — center of the desk another ATC 150 on an electronic scissors stand sitting on top of an ATC sub woofer.
Do you typically use NS10s as near-fields?
Lots of people use NS10s. We've got lots of different near fields. Currently NS10s and Auratones are set up as Stephen Fitz-Maurice has just been in, and that's what he likes to use. In terms of alternate monitoring systems, we have a whole selection of different near fields. We also have off to one side a very small JVC ghetto blaster, which you can access off the mix bus. This is interesting — no tweeters, no silly wide bass. It's very good for setting up quick mixes and listening without hearing too much depth of detail.
So here are your amps and crossovers. You have direct amps serving the bass, mid and tweeter, right?
They're all sitting on these Torlyte stands on these oak cones directly behind the cabinets. The speaker cabling is very short, it goes directly from the amps straight onto the drivers — three feet long.
Can we now talk about the desk a little bit? Why did you install the Neve?
Well, first of all we had the DDA AMR 24 and when we were working in '93 on The Division Bell, the band all liked working here — they wanted to stay here to mix. Andy said, "Well, I'd really want to get a desk with some automation on it." We looked for a window of opportunity and found that there was a week of school holidays in October. "You've got a week then, can you just change the desk?" [laughs] Anyway, we decided that what was available and easy to get at short notice at that time, which actually sounded quite nice, was an Amek Hendrix.
How many channels?
Fifty-six, I think. But the automation never functioned correctly. It was only a kind of stopgap thing. And actually, the mixing of the album drove Andy bananas, because... and later James Guthrie doing Pulse... because with the automation, the faders wouldn't actually return to the same place — some would creep up with each pass. It was a nightmare. It had to go or it was destined for the river. Roger Knapp, our maintenance chap, who used to work building consoles at Helios — the Rolling Stones Mobile, Island Studios, all the Eel Pie Studios, etc. — before coming to work for us he said, "Pete [Townsend]'s selling his VR desk that I put in Eel Pie a couple of years ago, and it's hardly had any use." I talked to David and explained that we're all sick of this desk, and I want to buy this VR. He said, "Alright" and that was it basically.
Well, it sounds like everyone was tired of the Amek desk anyway.
As I say, it sounded good. Some of the older Amek desks were very good. This one was cheaply constructed. It had cheap components and the automation was dreadful. We got the VR desk, we put that in and we listened to it and thought, Well, I don't know, it sounds all right, but it isn't fabulous. We made various improvements, altered the grounding, and had Tim de Paravicini build some alternate valve mix buses for us. The whole monitor system was going through VCAs and JFETs. What was actually coming out of the mix bus and what you were hearing through the monitoring were two different things really, in terms of the clarity and sonic quality. So amongst other things we had Roger build a passive monitoring system for it, and we did some modifications to the power supplies and got it sounding as best we could. Then I considered the 88R, which we had heard some good reports about. I asked Robin Porter to come down, who had designed it at Neve. We asked him to bring a couple of channels and told him that I wanted him to put it into our bussing on our VR, and actually do a proper A-B comparison between channels on the two desks, which he was very happy to do. So we put a day or so aside and we did that. Robin came down and talked through the design, which he had been working on for a few years, which in theory seemed good. Talking's all very well and good, but the proof of the pudding is listening of course. At the end of our tests we were very, very impressed.
So you could hear the difference immediately?
The difference was significant. I mean, ergonomically, it looks like the VR desk, but actually everything about it is different. It was a vast improvement over the VR, and it does sound really good.
The detail, clarity...
Yes, the clarity. Depth of detail and information and cohesion, the noise levels, and it was designed for surround mixing, of course, which was another reason for considering changing the desk. Although we have more and better outboard equipment than most other studios, you know, it was still very important for the functions on the desk, the EQ and compressors to work very well. And they did.
Do you do much 5.1 work in the studio?
We've done a few 5.1 mixing sessions for both DVD and SACD. I think that as a format SACD sounds good and the DSD stream has a type of analogue quality about it. I think it is both logically and sound-wise a better system than DVD-A. These format wars always seem to be counterproductive to what is important with a lot of misinformation being released. James's 5.1 mix of Dark Side of The Moon on SACD is excellent. Let me play you some of it.
[We listen, and I am speechless in awe... best album on the best system I have ever heard, period.]
Look here... Neve put this quad pot control box in yesterday. Apparently we are only the second studio they have supplied with them. David asked for them specifically, he likes to be able to be hands-on and creative with quad panning. It enables him to sit in the middle of the 5.1 monitoring and pan where he chooses — you can alter the divergence — it's recallable and analogue!
You're kidding.
No, there's one in Japan and one here. This is the new 88R quad pot controller.
Pink Floyd has been doing quadraphonic sound for years... was the evolution to 5.1 natural for you?
Well, Pink Floyd invented quad and the quad pot in 1967.
[We walk into machine room, in front of console behind the chimney.]
This machine room used to be Fred Karno's master bedroom, right?
Yes. This is the original glass chandelier, and all these windowpanes, these are all hand-beveled crystal, each one. So all the noisy equipment is in here: the computers, the Pro Tools, SADiE, desk supplies, tape machines, etc. Obviously the computer screens, etc., are next door in the control room. The digital audio from the control room to here is all in solid silver. It comes here into these Weiss anti-jitter boxes, which are supported on cones. They have got a Shakti stone on top of them [which has tuned ferrites and quartz crystals in — these help eliminate RF, EMI and microwave interference]. Twelve-volt power supplies power these boxes, and the people who supplied these have tested 30 different wall warts, all sounding different. So they picked the best, modified them and used high quality copper for the supplies. I have gone into specifics here to show you the care taken with one digital cable run to show you how mad we are. But the proof is in the pudding, as they say — if any of these things did not help retain the audio quality they would not be there. Our Pro Tools system here, which as you can see is housed in this special acoustic-enhancing support cabinet. Let me talk about that for a moment. In my opinion there are a lot of misconceptions about digital audio. Disregarding the good points, some of the bad points are that it is almost impossible to do a digital to digital copy and retain the resolution; it is far more susceptible to the sound changing from many different reasons — RF, A/C mains, harmonic distortion and fluctuation, physical vibrations, etc., than most people realize. What we have tried to achieve is to get our HD system sounding as good as possible, given the parameters of what it is in the first place. We have spent many days listening and testing. Accordingly, every area of improvement has been implemented to the highest degree: all the A/C mains, audio cabling, digital cabling, anti jitter boxes, master clocks, physical support of the units, etc.
Did Tim de Paravicini modify these Studer A827s?
He modified some of them — both the record and the repro electronics. And the difference is considerable. I sent him a record/repro board for testing, and said, "What can you do with it?" I sent him all the circuits. Tim said that these machines are designed to serve a purpose and that purpose is for a blanket use across the industry — whether it's television or broadcast companies, or whatever. They are designed with an element of playing safe to work in different environments without potential for destabilizing transmitters, etc., so they're not necessarily designed for the very best audio performance. They cut off at 20 k. Tim's opened up the whole top end and they sound really nice, as do his other modifications to the bottom end.
How about the ATR 100s over here?
This one I've actually just put the original electronics back on yesterday; just sat them on the top and plugged 'em in. Of course these machines were originally designed to be 4-track and the way Tim has modified the machines to use his valve electronics still enables us to slot in the original audio boards in positions 3 and 4. One can plug the cables in from the penthouse, switch the head jumpers and go back to the stock electronics if desired.
Who actually does the tape editing in here? Is that something Damon does?
Whoever. Depends on the engineer. I've seen some crazy editing in my time. I remember, on The Wall album, it was James Guthrie. He did a window edit. Got out a ruler, marked the tape, I think it was eight tracks of drums for several feet. Cut down the tape and then cut it horizontally, then replaced it with another similar section. Eight of the 24 tracks, you know.
And it came out okay?
