"I found it much easier to use, more practical and more accessible for recording, in the past, recording on one level and being away from the mixing room (previously, the Manor's control area was at the rear of the room: on a gallery overlooking the studio), I felt a bit removed from the actual recording process.
Kevin Coyne was also among the first artists to use the new Manor. "Ollie (Halsall, lead guitarist in Boxer) is a very loud guitarist, and he was playing right up against the stone walls without any leakage into the drums or bass." It was put there for its acoustic properties. "Tom Hidley showed me around the place and he pointed out the design features - the use of wood, cloth and stone, but none of it was used for decoration.
Mike Patto, lead singer and producer of Boxer, was among the first producers to use the new studio. Westlake's chief designer, Tom Hidley, flew over from the States to oversee the repairs. Surprisingly, the demolition and rebuilding of the studio's interior required only 30 days.
Heavily trapped, with a low ceiling, it is ideal for acoustic instruments. At the very back of the studio, there is still a gallery. The left-hand side of the studio is bright, offering a very live ceiling and stone-faced walls. The Manor's renewal is an equal triumph for Helios, who custom built the console, and Westlake Audio, who rebuilt the studio (above). In addition, a drum cage in the right hand rear corner attenuates the sound. This ensures a minimum of "leakage" from drums and piano. The right side of the redesigned studio is heavily trapped, as is the ceiling. It attenuates middle and high frequencies, and the low frequencies as well, but in different ways, depending on their wave lengths." "Essentially," Elliot added, "the trapping works as a giant acoustic vacuum cleaner. To further ensure this goal, a lot of trapping was put into the walls as well. One of Westlake's major tenets, is that a sound should pass by a mike only once, thereby avoiding (unintentional) out of phase. Tons of sand went underneath the floor to trap the sound. "The control room was up where the gallery is now, and it was obvious to us that the control room would have to be where the studio is now, and the studio would have to be where the control room was." representative of Westlake Audio: "We went out to have a look around (at The Manor), and they asked us if we could do the same thing for The Manor's studio, and we told them no, not the way it was. The reaction was highly favourable.īruce Elliot, of Scenic Sound, U.K. The mixing of the latest Gong album at The Westlake Room in Los Angeles provided Phil Newell, resident engineer at the Manor, a first hand opportunity to see what the American firm had to offer.
The problem underlying the reconstruction was to keep the best of the original studio's feel and to improve the technical quality. It wasn't always what it should have been it lacked bottom, depth." "In the past," says Kevin Coyne, one of the first artists to use the original Manor, "there was what you could call a unique Virgin-Manor sound. Closely identified with such Virgin acts as Slaphappy, Henry Cow, Robert Wyatt and Mike Oldfield, the studio also attracted a formidable selection of bands which warmed to the studio's serene setting in rural Oxfordshire. A combination brain and love child of Virgin Record's Managing Director Richard Branson, The Manor has been fully operational for the past three years. The result is a studio which can accurately boast that it is the best in Europe. The Manor have recently overcome all the difficulties inherent in their previous status as an almost cult recording studio. Re-doing a recording studio is no easy task, particularly if the studio is well established, popular with a number of artists, and identified, even vaguely, with a particular "sound" and feel. Richard Digby Smith, freelance engineer Whatever they did, whatever it cost, it was worth it for the improvement in sound.
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