Inspired by the classic Queen recording ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ at Ridge Farm Studio – one of the first residential recording studios in the UK – German entrepreneur Jan Henric Buettner has opened the doors on Big Barn Studios, a creative musical retreat housed in a thatched barn at the centre of the 185-acre Weissenhaus Private Nature Luxury Resort.
‘Queen produced ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ in a British barn,’ Buettner says. ‘When I was a child, my hero was Freddie Mercury, and I had a band – I was the singer and I thought, ‘let’s build a music studio’. I’m a perfectionist, so it had to be the best, most beautiful and most modern music studio possible.’
Twenty years ago, Buettner purchased a dilapidated historic estate and village in the north of Germany, overlooking the Baltic Sea, and turned it into a privately operated luxury resort, which opened in 2014.
Designed to accommodate everything from songwriting sessions to Dolby Atmos recording and mixing projects, the studio features a large, high-ceilinged live room and a comfortable lounge area. The studio’s control room features a Solid State Logic AWS 948 δelta SuperAnalogue console accompanied by high-end outboard and signal processing with both stereo and immersive monitoring systems. A wide range of high-quality microphones are available for tracking and overdubbing.
‘We need a great sounding, flexible and reliable desk for recording and mixing,’ says Swen Meyer, one of three sound engineers on the Big Barn studio team. ‘For our situation, we need a “solid state-of-the-art” desk. You can’t do wrong with SSL.
‘I know SSL from the 1990s and the 2000s,’ he continues. ‘I worked on the E, G and J Series many times. Here, with this hybrid solution that we are providing for our customers, SSL fits perfectly in the studio. I like the sound, the headroom, the punch, the crystal-clear highs, and the analogue “SSL mojo”. You can drive the mic preamps hard, and I like being able to toggle between the G and the E series EQs, as well as its superbly integrated DAW control. The AWS’ stereo or dual mono channels offer a great deal of flexibility when mixing. Their Width control means you can precisely place sounds while making them sit in the stereo field.’
In addition to DAW control, engineers can use SSL’s δelta-Control Plug-in to automate the analogue channels and mix bus of the AWS console as if it is a plug-in in Pro Tools. As the control centre of the studio, the AWS puts everything that the engineer needs to run a full session.
‘For today’s hybrid work, you do a lot in the DAW, but whether you’re in-the-box, going hybrid using δelta-Control, or out-of-the-box, the AWS is perfect for recording, mixing and monitoring – everything,’ Meyer says.
In addition to the live room, with its grand piano and a drum kit, clients also have access to the large event space on the ground floor of the barn. ‘If there is a concert taking place downstairs, we can deploy a stagebox and send it to the desk upstairs,’ Meyer says.
The amenities at Weissenhaus include a 400-year-old castle housing a two-star Michelin restaurant and thermal baths, as well as gardens, forest and nearly two miles of beach, are intended to offer guests privacy, relaxation and inspiration. For those visiting the resort to work at Big Barn Studio, Buettner has built out an artist village that accommodates up to 12 people. Three experienced music producers, including Meyer, are available to assist visiting artists through the creation process, from inspiration to the finished production.
Big Barn is also equipped to present streaming events of all kinds. In February 2025, the facility hosted the first leg of the global Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour, which is being co-organised with Norwegian grandmaster Magnus Carlsen, and sponsored by Buettner.
The Big Barn Studio SSL AWS 948 was supplied by Digital Audio Service in Hamburg.
More: www.solidstatelogic.com
