ARTICLE FROM STUDIO SOUND, 1994

THE HIT FACTORY, NYC

In late 1989 the Germano family flew to London to look over the CBS studio facility, recently purchased by Sony Music. Studio 3 – the rooftop – had been extensively refurbished in 1987 by Neil Grant of Harris, Grant Associates and as a result of listening to this room and the BOXER 4 monitor installation, HGA were asked to take on the design of all technical and acoustical spaces, technical systems and monitoring installations of the new 80,000 ft2 Hit Factory building in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen area the following year.

Working closely with New York architects and construction crews, two years of design development led to the completion of what is now arguably the world’s most successful multiple studio installation. Three of the four main control rooms are designed to monitor in multiple stereo and surround-sound formats and all of the technical spaces can be quickly and simply interfaced by patching from the machine rooms, enabling dubbing from all of the stages to all of the control rooms along with rapid up-link via ISDN lines to the rest of the world.

Grant had commented that too many facilities appear to fail to integrate the independent engineering of the mixing console with the room environment and racking systems, and with the co-operation of SSL, the principal Studio 4’s 4096G+ console had its framing, cabling and interfaces redesigned to integrate the entire mixing surface with the racking, worktops and finishes. Because of the exceptional size of the working area, a speaker railway was designed to enable engineers to readily move the close-field monitors to any position on the meter bridge as work patterns require. The first session in this room was a 96-track mixdown to picture for a Bon Jovi MTV special, using two Sony 3348 DASH machines in lock – proving that the commercial requirement for such facilities does indeed exist.

The Neve VRSP legend equipped Studio1 also features the installation of the first full-scale diffractal rear wall in the New York recording industry. This provides low-frequency diffusion and control to below 40Hz within this exceptionally large room (8m ceiling height).

Isolation within the building was a priority – the studio facilities are split on the first, third and sixth floors to provide neutral area between critical spaces. All technical areas are floating shells on independently decoupled cast in situ floors. These shells, contrary to conventional American practice, are fabricated with wooden structural members and not the lightweight metal studs favoured by the US. Grant believes firmly that the lower Q, greater structural stiffness and highly-damped resonances of a timber framed shell results in substantial isolation and low-frequency performance advantages.

Building components and finishes were sourced from all over the world. HGA checked, accepted and consolidated all the materials, technical components, racks, monitors, cabling and connectors into 40 foot articulated trucks, then flew three weeks later to break the seals on the same containers, accepting the goods on behalf of their clients on the studio site.

Arguably one of the most complex installations to have been attempted by the Discrete Research Group of companies [holding company for Harris, Grant Associates], it is felt that the success of the Hit Factory New York is a vindication of the integrated systems approach taken by all of the companies within the group, working hand in hand on every one of the complexities of the modern, multiple-purpose recording facility.