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Astoria Studio

By George Shilling

"Float, float on", sang The Floaters in 1977. But the chances are that they recorded that song on dry land. These days, however, there are several opportunities for water-borne recording, and almost certainly one of most unusual floating studios is Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour's "Astoria". Possibly the UK studio market's best-kept secret, you won't find it listed in any industry directories. And never before have its innermost workings been described in print. Last year I was lucky enough to mix an album here.

Even disregarding studio equipment, the Astoria is an incredible place to behold. The accompanying pictures, whilst showing something of the facility, cannot hope to capture the serene aura of this remarkable vessel. And in terms of the facility, few, if any, land-lubbing studios can compete with the standards set by this place.

Having arrived in the leafy private car park, the present mooring is accessed by a Capability Brown designed tunnel under the road through which one enters Astoria's beautifully landscaped private garden, Garrick's Lawn. (In the eighteenth century this belonged to the actor David Garrick.) It is like discovering a Jules Verne-like Lost World. There is a large conservatory housing kitchen, relaxation and listening facilities, a summerhouse, office, storage huts and various river craft for excursions during breaks, including a beautiful 25 foot 1930s slipper launch. One strolls down through the garden to the teak and glass Astoria, its outlandish Edwardian characteristics making it look like something from a J.R.R.Tolkien fantasy world.

The 90ft houseboat was built in 1911 for music-hall impresario Fred Karno, who some say had far more wealth than good taste, and specified this huge boat with an extant all-marble bathroom, finest Honduras mahogany doors and panelling, hand-bevelled crystal window panes and beautifully ornate plastered ceilings. Astoria has always been moored on the Thames, just southwest of London. Its colourful history includes Charlie Chaplin staying for a weekend, and orchestral concerts staged on its roof with the 2000-strong audience in a surrounding flotilla.

Gilmour acquired the Astoria in 1986 with the idea of it being a peaceful place to stay whilst writing. It seemed a good idea to install Gilmour's extensive collection of studio equipment, which had been in storage since a previous house move. With this in mind, some monitors were set up and measurements were taken, to assess the feasibility. Phil Taylor, Gilmour's long standing guitar-tech and right-hand man, completed much of the initial work while Gilmour was away on holiday, unaware of the extent of his erstwhile assistant's endeavours, having simply asked Taylor to put his gear in the end room. A blistering pace was achieved. Taylor marshalled about twenty workmen - plumbers, carpenters, wiremen, decorators, electricians, etc. until a couple of hours before Gilmour's return. The boss was pleasantly surprised of course, but slightly concerned about the budget! Taylor had, amongst other things, secondary-glazed the control room, part-exchanged the old Soundcraft console, installed CCTV for the studio room, wired the separate power supply (filtered and stabilised at 240V and 110V), machine room tie-lines and studio mic-lines, and done some acoustic work. He drafted in helpers and managed to devise a groundbreaking (waterbreaking?) air conditioning set-up with four separate systems on the boat. In addition there is an ingenious river-cooled air system for the outboard racks, which has resulted in one of the quietest control rooms in the world. Panels were carefully cut in the ceiling between ornate architectural features for vents. Having worked here for a number of weeks, I don't recall ever asking for the temperature to be adjusted - it just always seems right. And there are no unpleasant draughts on one's shoulders when seated at the desk, or anywhere else. At the rear of the control room there is a wooden panelled ceiling concealing bass traps. Where panelling had to be cut, the original pieces have been retained. Behind the monitors there is a gorgeous fireplace, with bass traps up the chimney. There are four huge traps between the internal wooden hull and the external steel hull. Between the windows there are high-end reflectors, mid-range absorbers and sealed helmsholtz resonators all built-in simultaneously. Very soon, the Floyd were working in the studio, and thus began the gradual improvements. Since then, there has been a process of evolvement of sonic excellence in all areas, with a no-compromise approach. In all areas of the development of this studio, empirical methods have been employed by extremely knowledgeable and experienced professionals to achieve the highest standards of audio. Pink Floyd producer/engineer mainstays James Guthrie and Andy Jackson, along with experts such as acoustician Nick Whittaker of Recording Architecture and valve guru Tim de Paravicini (of Esoteric Audio Research) have all worked in association with Phil Taylor to take audio standards way beyond the realms of most studios.

The Neve VR Legend console was acquired from Pete Townshend's Eel Pie Studios, a short distance along the river (but not on it!). Current head of Astoria maintenance is Roger Knapp, who started at the legendary Helios, installed the Rolling Stones Mobile, Island Studios and subsequently worked for Townshend, installing the VR for him when it was new. He therefore knew that the desk was in good order. The standard Neve desk soon sprouted internal pipework (to duct hot air to the bilges), power-supply modifications, passive monitor section, capacitor upgrades, and a unique switchable Tim de Paravicini valve mix bus. The results became apparent during my work here. Although the standard VR's sonic qualities are widely admired, this desk really sounds clearer and more cohesive than the unmodified desk, and like no other VR.

There are no CRT video monitors in the control room, for reasons of RF radiation and noise - the CCTV and computer systems all use Apple LCD screens (there are five in here!) One of them is actually for an Apple Macintosh. Despite the overwhelming emphasis on valve and analogue equipment, the real world has not been forgotten. The Mac is used for editing and pre-mastering listening CDs. Indeed, de Paravicini has even modified the analogue circuits of the CD recorder for a distinct improvement in the sound. A house sync master word-clock is also available. There are no less than six DAT machines, with dCS converters available. The machine room is wired for remote Pro-Tools and/or Radar operation, including cabling for screen displays.

The development of the studio has become similar to that of the Hi-fi enthusiast's system, where the sound is only as good as the weakest link. For an obvious example of this attention to detail, one only has to look up at the ceiling to see the many scattered 4" diameter cylinders of acoustic panels, (referred to by Taylor as 'udders') all placed after many hours of experimentation by listening and measuring to eliminate reflections. The back of the desk is covered with acoustic foam, and they have even cut off the bottom panelling of the desk to improve the room's low-frequency characteristics. Every few months more tests are performed in pursuit of perfection. It is relevant to note that Guthrie is used to working with Q-Sound, which relies on phase and accurate imaging to work properly. The room is significantly deeper front-to-back than most control rooms, but in the working area, there is little variation in the sound as one moves around. Taylor and his nucleus team have always been open to new and unusual solutions. There is often a wide discrepancy between hi-fi enthusiasts' listening systems and those found in studios, and Taylor's philosophy is that for the artist, producer and engineer the monitoring system is their "window to the world". The importance of hearing as much detail as possible in terms of depth, detail, clarity and neutrality has been the driving force here. However, the Astoria team accepts that a lot of music is listened to in cars and on walkmans; "A good mix should sound good on any system", says Taylor. Unusually for a recording studio, so-called 'Hi-Fi tweaks' are employed where they provide audible improvements. There are, amongst other things, Mana Acoustic stands, (which comprise metal frames with spikes supporting plate glass), DH ceramic cones, Shakti pads (6"x 4"x 1" freestanding block of ferrites and crystal which filters microwave, RF and EM interference), and Golden Sound absorptive mats in strategic positions. Van den Hul cables have been utilised after careful auditioning. I was lucky enough to witness a little experimentation with James Guthrie auditioning slight changes to the position of the amplifiers for the midrange drivers of the ATC main monitors, and heard astonishing differences by placing them on different surfaces or placing a Shakti on top, for example. Different combinations of these 'tweaks' can make things sound better or worse with the slightest change. Taylor considers himself lucky to be able to call upon the 'golden ears' of James Guthrie and Andy Jackson to help with these set-ups.

A highly accurate listening environment has been achieved despite difficulties encountered due to the nature of the construction, and the need to preserve original historic features. Acoustic experiments are forever ongoing, and were even taking place while Guthrie was mixing a solo album by Pink Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright. Whitaker and Taylor were trying to eliminate a standing wave. It took a short while for Wright to notice that the entire glass panelling of the rear control room windows had been entirely removed - when he heard the ducks quacking! Inevitably, the problem was found to be completely unrelated to the glass, which was replaced during the lunch break…

The studio's collection of outboard is astonishingly bountiful. With over 150U of rackspace along the sides and behind the desk there is still not room for everything! This is surely the most well endowed studio in the UK. Extra units are housed in protective casings and stored in an outbuilding. Worthy of special note are Decca mix EQ's, (re-engineered by Neil Perry of Raw State), massive 5U K+H mono EQ's, and limiters by Fairchild, Pye (4063's), Teletronix, Telefunken, E.A.R. (by de Paravicini), Neve, Urei and dbx. de Paravicini has supplied a number of items, including four valve channels of very useful guitar pedal interfaces to enable use of stomp box effects with professional level equipment, something all studios should have. Other custom built equipment built by de Paravicini includes two eight-way level-matching interfaces for ADAT or other semi-professional gear. All outboard is cooled externally and units such as AMS dmx delays have had their noisy fans disconnected. A number of particularly well-adjusted and modified spring and plate reverbs are installed, including valve and transistor EMT 140s, EMT 240, AKG BX20 and a rare Fairchild Spring. Even more astonishing is the collection of over 100 microphones, including AKG, Lomo and Neumann valve models all lovingly kept.

A Nemesis headphone mixer system gives each musician independent control of balance. Of particular note is the line driver system for guitar recording, which was developed by de Paravicini and Gilmour's pedal board designer Pete Cornish at Phil Taylor's instigation, to give a feed to up to four amplifiers from one guitar output. This retains all the sonic characteristics of the guitar along the length of the boat to amplification. It has also led to Taylor requesting de Paravicini to build a DI box that retains the optimum signal quality for passive instruments.

Monitoring is based on ATC SCM200s, but of course these too have been modified. Firstly the tweeters were changed from Audax to Vifa and more recently to Scanspeaks, which sound better with the midrange unit and extend to a higher frequency. ATC provided early Billy Woodman designed Super-Linear bass drivers to the Astoria as a test-bed. The magnet structure was designed to eliminate problem eddy currents to achieve a far lower distortion figure than had previously been possible. Through the studio's involvement, modifications to the construction were put in place prior to them being put on the market. Van den Hul cable is used on the mids and tweeters, and a different cable was found to sound better on the bass. Notably, the cable extends all the way from the amplifiers to the drivers, not just to the cabinets. Powerful amplifiers are employed - there is probably a greater power requirement due to the absorptive wooden construction of the boat. These are mounted on special Mana Acoustic stands and racks. Taylor claims that the monitors are easily good to below 20Hz; astonishingly, they produce output down to 10Hz.

The machine room, instead of the usual backroom /cupboard, is a beautiful room just ahead of the control room. This houses a huge amount of gear, including three Studer A827s with two 24-track and two 16-track head blocks for fans of wider tracks, and 48 channels of Dolby SR. There are two very special E.A.R. stereo mastering machines (as purchased by Bob Ludwig for Gateway Mastering). These are Ampex ATR100s modified with de Paravicini's high quality valve circuitry.

The recording space is obviously limited by the nature of the Astoria, but a pleasant light recording room with marvellous views upstream (and 26 channels of Telefunken V-series valve mic amps, modified for extended frequency response) is housed at the opposite end to the control room, with two bedrooms and a galley kitchen also available as isolation booths, not to mention the marble bathroom and another toilet the opposite side. Pink Floyd have recorded together here, completing The Division Bell (apart from orchestral and grand piano overdubs, for obvious reasons). Brit-rockers Kula Shaker hauled a Hammond B3 aboard and managed to set up all their equipment quite happily, under the guidance of Bob Ezrin. Other satisfied customers include Chris Kimsey and Hugh Padgham.

This has to be one of the most thoughtfully constructed studios in the world, with just about every item of equipment one could reasonably expect to find. Not only that, but it is in a most beautiful location. If the only equipment was a portastudio, I would still love to work here. It is novel to feel the gentle rocking of the boat when a large craft passes by. And it is wonderful to see the wildlife - swans, grebes, and a coots' nest just a few feet behind the boat, not to mention the peaceful river traffic, which includes rowing teams and canal barges. This is infinitely better than the more common windowless control rooms of most studios. Entering the Astoria's garden is like entering lost world. The roof of the boat is an oiled hardwood deck and easily accessible by staircase for relaxation during the summer months. Huge panels of glass held in a metal framework cover most of the roof. There is something reassuringly old-fashioned and English about the whole setup. Yet it is a mere stones' throw from London and just 20 minutes from Heathrow Airport. Having worked in most of the major London studios, as well as around the world, I had a most wonderful time working here. The staff are incredibly knowledgeable and conscientious and provide a service to match the very high standards of the studio.