Abbey Road Studios is undoubtedly one of the most famous and respected music recording facilities in the world. Over the last 80 years, across all genres of music, the studio has been at the forefront of adopting the latest recording technologies.

In addition to the multiple Avid Pro Tools|HD Accel systems already owned by the studios, Abbey Road recently installed two of the new Pro Tools|HD Native systems with HD I/O 8x8 interfaces. We spoke to Simon Campbell, Abbey Road’s Technical Manager about the recent installs and on how the new technology is performing in one of the most high-pressure operating environments in the music recording industry.
 

Q) Abbey Road have just installed two new Avid Pro Tools|HD Native systems, how are they being used within the studios?

A) One system is used throughout the studios’ recording and mastering facilities wherever required and it has handled everything we’ve needed it to do so far. The other has been installed in a recently refurbished facility here, Studio 52, where amongst other projects we have also carried out some of our Online Mixing sessions, information for which can be found on the Abbey Road website.

Q) How did the installs of the new Pro Tools|HD Native systems go and did you run into any technical issues?

A) The installations went very well, the Pro Tools experts in the team here did their thing while Yan and Andy at MediaPros were very helpful whenever any questions arose. Subsequently our engineering colleagues have been very impressed with Pro Tools|HD 10 on the Native systems.

Q) You’ve also installed the new Avid HD I/O 8x8 audio interfaces with the Native systems, do you have any remarks on how these compare with other interfaces you use within the studios?

A) The Avid HD I/O interface seems to perform very well and compare very favourably with the other interfaces throughout Abbey Road.

For further information please visit the Abbey Road Studios website.