It’s almost the end of summertime, which means that we’ve been behind the scenes at Morley Radio updating and fixing and installing and having all sorts of nerdy techy fun. We look after not only the radio facilities, but also the music production and rehearsal spaces at North Kensington and Waterloo like the recording studios, Mac labs, live sound facilities, and the band practice rooms. Summer might mean rest and relaxation for most people, but for technicians such as myself it usually means all hands on deck to make sure everything that needs to be fixed is repaired before the masses return, especially with our list of facilities to prepare.
So, given that I have a somewhat captive audience in this blog post (though I know you can click away at any point), I thought I might tell you about some of the updates that have been made the past couple months.
North Kensington Studio Updates
In North Kensington, we replaced the soundcard with a Pro Tools HDX soundcard, which will mean a more reliable recording experience for the students. Our computer used to only run Logic Pro, but the introduction of this soundcard means that we can start running Pro Tools in the future! This is fantastic news for me, as I am a die-hard Pro Tools user. It also happens to be the industry standard DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), which means that Morley students at North Kensington will be able to transition into a professional recording studio even more comfortably than before. We’ve also added some preamps to our outboard kit, with more gear like compressors on the way. And perhaps less functionally but still aesthetically important, we’ve added some more LED lights in the control and live rooms, so the evil and vibe-killing Big Light doesn’t have to rudely push its way into sessions as often.
Waterloo Tech Refresh
In Waterloo, there are new interfaces and MIDI controllers in our MTL Mac Lab. Very satisfying upon completion, but I’ll tell you with the number of boxes I had to open the novelty of opening a new Focusrite has worn off a teeny bit. We also got some new Audix microphones specifically designed for drum recordings (AKA the most fun recording sessions).
Radio Ramp-ups
The system we use to broadcast, called Myriad, has also seen a bit of TLC this summer thanks to my persistent outreach to the software developers (probably more than they’d have liked). In the past we’ve struggled with the best way to share our shows, both previous live shows and our host of podcasts. While we break from live shows in the summer, we like to re-air some of our previous shows, and we’ve figured out the best way to do that! So keep your ears open in the late evenings and early mornings for previous live shows, and the occasional feature of some of our podcasts.
I was also presented with the challenge of coming up with some effects presets to help streamline and standardize our editing process. Our radio studios at each centre have different microphones, specifically chosen to best suit the room they’re in. With the combination of the different room and the different microphone, it means that it can be difficult to achieve a more consistent sound because there are very few constants. The presets I came up with should help mitigate some of the variability, as well as speed up the editing process.
Come say hi!
It has obviously been a busy summer behind the scenes at Morley Radio, and we’re excited to welcome people back to the studio! Feel free to stop by and have a look around the studios or send us a playlist suggestion or show pitch at radio@morley.ac.uk. We’d love to hear you on our radio!
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