The rooms
The building was a fish merchant's cold store, with walls a foot thick and no windows where it mattered, which is the best start a studio can have. Since 2015 it has had a floating floor, a room built inside a room, double doors everywhere and a lounge with a view of the river.
42 m², 5 m ceilingBands playing together, drums, piano, strings
A floating floor, a drum riser, two isolation booths and a window into the control room. Diffusers overhead, absorbers on the brick, and enough space for a five-piece with sight lines.
£45 an hour · £300 a day
18 m²Podcasts with video, panels, live streams
A round table, four broadcast microphones on arms, three 4K cameras and soft lights, treated to sound like a room. Remote guests on their own track.
£40 an hour · £260 a day
22 m², box in boxMixing, mastering, overdubs
Built on its own floor inside the warehouse: a 32-channel console, a rack of outboard and two pairs of monitors. The control room for the live room and the booth.
£35 an hour · £240 a day
6 m²Voice-over, ADR, audiobooks, vocals
No parallel walls, double doors, ventilation you can turn off, a broadcast microphone and a picture screen. Talkback to the control room and to remote clients.
£55 an hour with an engineer
30 m², ground floorBands rehearsing, evenings and weekends
A soundproofed room with its own door to the embankment, a PA, a kit and amps, and a stereo recorder. £15 an hour, £12 for a weekly slot.
£15 an hour
Between the roomsWaiting, eating, listening back
A sofa, a coffee machine that is better than it needs to be, a fridge, records, and a window onto the river. Free for anyone with a booking, and where most of the good decisions get made.
Free with a booking
How it was built
The live room sits on a concrete slab on rubber isolators, so the kick drum does not travel into the mix room and the lorries on Penarth Road do not travel into the kick drum.
The mix room is a separate box on its own floor inside the warehouse, with an air gap all round, so what you hear in it is the speakers and nothing else.
Every room has a sound lock: two heavy doors with a space between, so a band in the live room and a podcast next door never meet.
Diffusers and absorbers built to the room's measurements, rather than foam stuck to the walls. The rooms sound like rooms, just better ones.
Free now
The live room is £45 an hour, never more than £150 for a half day or £300 for a day; an engineer £20 an hour on top, capped the same way. The book page does the sum and shows what is free today and tomorrow. Half the quote holds the date.