‘Built to boldly go where no studio has gone before’, Tape Studio is a new, two-storey recording/mixing facility in Edinburgh. Owned by ‘alternative’ record producer/mixer Stephen A Watkins, the studio’s equipment list and acoustics are on par with facilities in NY, LA and London.

‘We wanted to put together a studio that was completely over-the-top to match my personal recording/mixing style,’ Watkins explains. ‘The set-up features an all-guns-blazing, maxed out patchbay handling a Who’s Who of analogue outboard gear.’

Central to its operation are two Solid State Logic Duality SE consoles…

‘Duality was the perfect choice for Tape Studios because it brings all the elements we use together, while still addressing a DAW workflow,’ Watkins says. ‘Even when I push them to the limits, which I very often do, the consoles sound incredible.

‘I had this sound in my head and I knew how to make it,’ he elaborates. ‘There is absolutely nowhere in the country that could provide the kind of facility at which I could make the records I wanted to make the way I imagined them. A genuine forte of mine is blending a little chaos into the banality of today’s beige multitrack recordings. I thrive on dynamic range manipulation by patching in multiple compressors instead of just one. I love envelope tickling and things that surge toward you from deep within the noise floor.’

Opened in February 2014 by Watkins and partner Fiona McNab, the studio occupies an old Victorian whiskey bond building that has been converted with design help from Munro Acoustics. The ground floor houses Studio 1 with the 48-channel Duality, a Neve 542 sidecar, Studer A80 24-track analogue tape deck and Cubase/SSL Alpha-Link rig, and custom Dynaudio C3A monitors. Studio 2 features a 96-channel Duality in a custom L-shaped configuration and Dynaudio C3A monitors. Everything in the facility is interconnected to allow resources to be shared between the two rooms. Duality also offers a ‘wow’ factor for clients coming through the doors.

‘Our studio is quite new, but the reaction by the creative community thus far has been nothing short of fantastic,’ Watkins reports. ‘Every single time anybody walks into any room and sees Duality, nothing more needs to be said. When we first started working, Duality became invisible very quickly, delivering exactly the benchmark sound we needed. When I began doing my thing, Duality was absolutely HQ. The line amps pushed hard into the channel dynamics post EQ is just heaven. Plus Duality plugs into the wall direct on only a couple of IEC cables. No machine room. No extra cooling. Duality is a no brainer – end of story. So we bought two.’