Increasingly, studios great and small can find themselves on the move. With so much to do, and so little downtime, there’s a lot to get right. Whether you’re working from home or moving a commercial facility, here are some points to consider.

In Summary

Moving studios is no mean feat. Whether it’s a large commercial facility, or small home setup getting it right matters. Larger or more complex studios have a cut-off where they must down-tools for a set period of time, but this can be minimised. Small facilities can streamline their setup until the big day and be working again in hours.

Going Deeper

As the working from home revolution continues, the small facility can range from a one-room mixing space up to those that enjoy more than one space with the kind of functionality that used to be the preserve of the dedicated site. What these small studios have in common is their flexibility and scalability. This means that in the run-up to a move, it makes sense to strip back to a desert-island set up with none of the bells or whistles, rather like the camping holiday where it’s discovered that cooking without four or six burners is entirely possible…

Larger facilities have more to consider. The larger amount of equipment involved inevitably means its greater co-dependence as an entire system. Patching ‘around’ that console or monitor control as an interim to save time can take as much as just stopping everything in one hit and just moving. Clients need to be aware of timescales should their work in-progress be affected. The extra cabling or ancillary items needed to bed-in at the other end (there will be some) need to be planned for and ordered in advance. The logistics of moving equipment involve other people and/or removals. Are they available for when you need to go? To keep things moving and everyone happy, foresight is everything.

The Working Run-Up

If the move involves other people, or specialist removal services, check their availability well in advance. Whether large or small studio, a move is also a good time to think about whether your studio’s function and capacity needs to change. Equipment can be sold as well as bought, and moving anything that doesn’t earn its keep on the van can go. Any turnover of gear can be done in advance to allow for any delays.

The small studio can consider distilling its equipment into the bare essentials: one pair of monitors, using that unloved desktop 2 X 2 interface, and packing up any non-essential peripherals including control surfaces, instruments/controllers, and other hardware… Being reunited at the other end is part of the fun! If the studio machine is a laptop used with an external display, packing up that and the keyboard will further shrink your system for the move.

The system co-dependency of larger facilities means that changing anything can affect everything, and as mentioned above, workarounds that let the owner pack up one or two pieces of equipment can take longer than just taking a ‘hard-stop’ on the nose. After all, there’s enough to do so why patch half of your studio twice? Logistics will sometimes dictate exceptions where, for example a console goes before everything else does, but if the timing is known, things can be planned for.

Tearing Down

Anyone who has moved house will know that keep things organised on the way out means having them that way on the way in. It’s temping to deal with it later but we have found that having a box of power cables, one of signal (split into type if there’s lots of it), and one of data can help at the other end. This is simply because you’ll find that stuff can sometimes end up on different duties at the other end. This also helps with putting all the power back in first, followed by signal, then data, if that’s your preference.

Moving On

Eying up that new console (or even that old tape machine) is one thing, but does it fit? Is there sufficient road access to get it in, and a suitable route through the building? Measure twice, buy once. A surprising number of world class facilities can see road crew rubbing shoulders and equipment with the public or other users of the facility, so quiet times to move are better. Whoever is doing the lifting, at the other end make sure the gear doesn’t land in the spot where it is going to be built or set up - moving it twice isn’t fun and is totally unnecessary. During the move, keep warm or cool as appropriate and don’t forget to carry some drinks and snacks.

Bedding In

For the bigger build, having enough time and space to commission gear is preferable, and keeping everything just close enough will cut all of those micro-journeys that do add up. When getting finished things in place, don’t be afraid to ask trusted people to help you do big lifts - getting it wrong on your own is usually painful and/or expensive. Use people while they are still around on Move Day, and get bogged down in the cable-work and your chosen manufacturer’s fun method of licencing later. Getting power to everything can be followed by plugging everything up including signal and data connections before the big switch on, preferably after a break, or even a good night’s sleep. Mistakes take more time than rest.

Smaller builds are usually achievable by the single user, and using your pre-move rig that gets built-up in reverse can grow as time permits. At this point you’ll appreciate not having thrown everything into boxes in the old place for your future-self to deal with…Those who usually work with laptops in ‘clamshell’ mode can even lift the lid and leave their display until tomorrow.

Final Thoughts

In the ever-shifting studio landscape, both small independent studio and large facility alike often find themselves having to change premises owing to external factors. Homeworkers in cities are especially prone to the unwanted move, although large urban facilities can also find themselves affected by external forces such as building sale or development. Having an idea in advance of how a move could be tackled does not hurt.

When it comes to the crunch, organisation when that day comes is the difference between a calm, measured exit and one that feels more akin to the last reel of Titanic! At the other end, the experience will be all the better for not having to move things further or around the studio too much once there. Not having to negotiate access/parking and/or remove doorframes to make things fit will also help… Some new builds have even seen equipment delivered before internal structures are built, thus achieving the seemingly impossible.

What are you experiences of your own studio move? Big or small, smooth or ‘character-building’, let us know in the comments.

A Word About This Article

As the Experts team considered how we could better help the community we thought that some of you are time poor and don’t have the time to read a long article or a watch a long video. In 2023 we are going to be trying out articles that have the fast takeaway right at the start and then an opportunity to go deeper if you wish. Let us know if you like this idea in the comments.