CONTROL ROOM
“The perfect listening environment”
Showcasing the stone walls of the 200 year old barn was an important consideration for us to implement when designing the control room. Retaining as much of the natural feel of the original room and efficiently dealing with the acoustics in order to provide a high performance and accurate monitoring environment was paramount in the design of ARC’s control room.
The control room comfortably accommodates a six piece band, producer and engineer, providing a smooth sonic response across the room. The control room also has tie-lines to re-amp and drive remote speakers, with the amp heads running in the control room to allow fast and accurate adjustments to guitar tones.
SSL 4000 G+ Mixing Console
The centrepiece of our studio is the 32 channel SSL 4000 G+ mixing desk. This console is famous for just how modular it is. This feature allows us the luxury of having the best of both worlds with 16 G-channel strips and 16 E-channel strips, 8 VCA channels and the legendary G+ Stereo Buss Compressor. We also maintain eight spare channels strips of both G and E (four of each). For extra resilience, we also have a reserve PSU.
Best-in-Class Monitoring
Our monitors cover a broad spectrum of mid to near field monitoring choices that includes soffit-mounted ADAM S5H, PMC Two Two, the classic Yamaha NS10M (powered by Unison SR1), Genelec 1031A, or ADAM A7X.
Coffee!
Great coffee is vitally important in any recording session. We selected our Sage Barista Touch coffee machine here at ARC not just for extremely good coffee-making abilities but also with our clients in mind. The intuitive touch screen display simplifies how to make your favourite coffee in 3 easy steps - Grind, Brew and Milk. You can easily adjust the coffee strength, milk texture and temperature to suit your taste. Then save it with your own unique name. The machine can create and save up to 6 personalised coffees for easy recall by anyone throughout your session.
Tape Machine
Otari MTR-100 24-track 2” tape machine
We have a 24 track Otari MTR-100 tape machine, with the CB-140 remote. This machine was built to functionally emulate the Studer A820. Some of its key features are; multiple speeds (7.5ips / 15ips / 30ips), automatic alignment and can also store alignment settings for multiple tape formats at multiple speeds, soft tape ending, faster spooling, internal Dolby HX Pro, compact auto-locate, etc.
“Sound quality is excellent, transport is very gentle and the drop-in speed is fast”
Otari MTR tape machines were installed at the legendary Westland Studios in Dublin (the first 24 track in Ireland) and were used to record seminal albums by Bob Dylan, Thin Lizzy, U2, Kate Bush, The Corrs, Placebo, Brian Adams and many more.
Computers
ARCintosh
ARCintosh is the name of our DAW machine, custom-built for our Studio. Has been constructed to a specifically required spec. It is a 64-bit computer with CPU@5.5GHz (24 cores/32 threads) and 64GB of RAM DDR5@6400MHz (XMP II mode). The machine is powered by Logic Pro X mainly with all the plugins required. We're also using other applications and tools needed for a session, please check the whole list under the "Software" section below.
Plenty of SSD (NVMe) internal storage space is available for handling recordings in the fastest possible way. During recording/session mixing our DAW machine is also backed up to the internal and external storage simultaneously in a unique interval time set. Additionally, data-snap-shooting is scheduled three times per day, which makes recorded live content safe during on-site and off-site backup schedules.
We also have a redundancy ARCintosh machine, running an identical spec. ARC follows technology market changes and invests, improving the spec of its own built DAW computers when required.
Backups: All the data from ARCintosh are RTRR/RSYNC copied in live, then all are replicated across 3 independent NASs, in 3 physical different locations dedicated for each NAS.
We are able to record in excess of 32 channels simultaneously via our SSL 4000 mixer and external mic preamps. We also have a simultaneous 32 channels of AES 50 available for other recording and patching options.
Software
ProTools HDX 1 with ProTools Ultimate
Logic Pro X
UAD Octo PCI-e card
Extensive list of plugins - including industry-leading brands such as:
UAD (“The World’s Most Authentic Analog Emulations”)
East West
Many, many more
Outboard
The outboard rack at ARC is made up of carefully selected analogue equipment that enables a complete end-to-end analogue signal chain. We are equipped with a fairly comprehensive set of outboard equipment to meet needs of any project: AMS Neve, API, RND, Focusrite, DBX, Avalon, Drawmer, TL Audio, Warm Audio, Telefunken, etc
ARC Studio has a broad selection of analogue outboard equipment.