Leo Studio is Singapore’s newest recording venue. Behind it are Asian pop producer/studio consultant Eric Ng (黃韻仁) and veteran recording/mixing engineer, Frank Lee. Although it has only been operating for a few months, the facility is already highly-regarded, with established artists using it even before the doors officially opened – attracted by its high-end gear and instruments and inspiring environment.
‘A recording studio should not only have great equipment, but should also be a comfortable, creative space.’ says Ng ‘We wanted the live room to be a stimulating environment that would excite the artists and make them welcome.’
At the technical heart of the studio is a 24-channel Solid State Logic Duality mixing console/DAW control surface and Pro Tools HDX system – the first Duality installed in a commercial studio in Singapore. The studio ambience is the work of interior designer, Thomas Ng as.
Its owners built the studio from the ground up, calling on their collective industry experience for inspiration, with Ng specifying the equipment, and Lee handling the acoustic design. ‘For the past ten years or so, we have been doing most of our work in-the-box,’ Ng says. ‘When it came time to build the studio, we asked ourselves, whatwe missed about having a great studio. The first thing that came to mind was an SSL mixing console. There’s no question about the sound quality – it’s the best.’
Duality’shybrid workflow was a key consideration: ‘We record almost exclusively in Pro Tools, so we knew we needed a console and a controller with total recall. Duality seemed like the obvious choice because it integrates the classic SSL design with DAW control. We are impressed with how quickly we can get back to a previous session.’
Perhaps surprisingly, the control room at Leo Studio is not loaded with expensive outboard: ‘We knew we could get amazing results from Duality’s onboard processing, so we found we didn’t need a lot of outboard gear for this studio,’ Ng explains
‘One of the features that really struck me about the Duality is the dual SuperAnalogue and Variable Harmonic Drive (VHD) mic preamp.’ he says. ‘You can run the preamps clean, but when you switch to VHD, you overdrive the preamp to get this saturated sound that is perfect on some instruments.
‘After everything was up and running, we started doing some test recordings and were overwhelmed to hear what we’d been missing over the past decade without the SSL – it sounds so good.’
