In this latest instalment of our Then and Now series featuring the team’s studios and how they have developed over time, we look at the story of James Richmond’s studio.

Like many people I sort of fell into studio work, first starting as the default ‘tech’ in a number of bands I was playing guitar in, then when I was working in a music shop on sunny Bondi Beach.

I was just young enough to have largely missed tape but had a bit of experience with ADATs and Tascam DA88s but in the early to mid 1990s computers in the studio were just taking off. They were laughably limited compared to what we have now but being able to record, edit and mix audio entirely within the computer seemed like ‘the future.. now’ to me.

My first proper home studio (in 1996) was based around a Pentium 133 computer with an eMagic Audiowerk 8 Soundcard and a Behringer MX8000 24 channel mixer. I had minimal outboard, just a few cheap compressors and Alesis Midiverb units. For monitors I had some JBL passive monitors and an Alesis RA100 amplifier. 

The mixer was constantly breaking and was swapped out for a Yamaha O1V which had a revolutionary convenience of ‘flying faders’. The problem was though that I was working full-time in IT, teaching guitar in the evenings and weekends and writing for all of the Australian music tech magazines so whilst I owned the gear I simply didn’t have the time to do much with it. The other problem was that in Australia everything was so expensive, anywhere from 50% to 100% more expensive than anywhere else. 

By 2001 I had sold it all and relocated to London where I immediately started buying studio equipment. My first studio purchase when I arrived were my Dynaudio BM6A’s monitors. I miss those monitors, even though I have no space for them I would love to have them back.

I also had an Apple Power Mac G4 and was an early adopter of Pro Tools HD which I used as hardware with Logic as the software front end. I was mixing in the box at that point, I had a few hardware synthesisers (Nord Lead 2, Quasimidi Sirius) and Focusrite Red 7 and ISA220 channel strips.

My studio was initially in the second bedroom of my Brixton flat and then moved into a converted brick garage at the back of the property. When I think about the total lack of security I had in that building I do tend to shudder.

A family move in 2005 saw me based in Basel, Switzerland. I rented a room in a local studio complex called Q-Lab which had a fantastic live room and a wonderful Neve console. 

My own room was more modest, a Power Mac G5 was added. My work at that time was largely session guitar oriented and the first time I had used a modelling processor (Line 6 Pod Pro XT) on commercial releases. It was a huge time saver. Also around that time I made an investment in a *serious mic preamp*, namely a Groove Tubes ViPre. I still have it, and it is my go to for male vocals, guitars, snare and as a bass DI.

For the next 6 years this studio travelled with me to New York for a two year stint there and then back to the UK. I added a lot of outboard equipment at the time, not all of it particularly high quality but it did introduce me to a workflow I was starting to get acquainted with; hybrid mixing with outboard.

I sold off almost all of the ‘prosumer’ outboard and kept the good stuff and vowed only to buy quality equipment from then on. The monitor controller I was using back then was a very underrated SPL MTC2381, which is still floating around here somewhere.

By 2012 I was living in West London and working from the third bedroom in a terraced house with minimal acoustic treatment and very understanding neighbours. I had only recently eschewed a Pro Tools HD rig and moved back to native. At the time I couldn’t justify the upgrade price from HD to HDX and went with a modest Apogee Rosetta 800 and an Apple Mac Pro 5.1 Quad Core 2.8 GHz with 10GB RAM and multiple hard drives, all of them the spinning rust variety.

The outboard in the racks is mostly still here and in daily use. That says something to me, computers may come and go but a Distressor is for life.

Fast forward to 2022 and I am living in rural Oxfordshire working from a converted triple garage that is separate from the house. My commute is still less than a minute but it is nice to have a separate space to go to.

I am back in the Avid ecosystem with an MTRX and HDX card, as well as a couple of different native options running in parallel, UA Apollo X8 and a Rednet PCIER card. My main computer is a 2019 Mac Pro, 16 core 3.2GHz with 256GB RAM and multiple M.2 drives on aa pair of OWC PCIE cards.

There is also a fair bit more outboard and I fell down the modular synthesiser rabbit hole a few years ago and have a couple of different systems scattered about.

My monitoring has been upgraded to a pair of ATC SCM45A’s, PSI A255-M Sub and a pair of Kii Threes. I’m also using a Trinnov room correction system and a Grace M905 monitor controller.

The workflow of this studio is very different. Switching the whole studio over to analogue patch bays where every output was half-normalled to an input in the workstation has freed me up considerably. The MTRX acts as my digital patchbay where all inputs can be sent to a DAW or simply to the monitors, or to the other side of the studio where there is another pair of monitors and a modular synthesiser/drum machine/whatever. It is all about having options.

The changes over the years have been lead by advances in technology as well as a need to add flexibility and capability into my workflow. Sure, I could probably work with just a laptop, audio interface and a pair of monitors  but I wouldn’t have as much fun doing so and the output would be very different. I’ve learned that my approach is very 'hands on’.

I like having different zones in the studio where I perform specific tasks- be they playing, mixing, designing modular synthesiser patches or processes. I’m always moving between the different creation stations and I find it very inspiring to be here.