Housed in new multi-studio campus, IMW (Islington Music Workshop) Studios has extended its technical facilities with the installation of a number of SSL mixing/control consoles.

A community organisation offering a range of music and sound production courses from starter up to degree level, IMW aims to provide ‘a pathway to a career in the sound industries for entry-level students and experienced musicians looking to increase engineering and production skills’.

‘IMW is an independent not-for-profit educational organisation established 30 years ago to provide professional training for sound-related industries for students within the community and was the first base for Oscar and Grammy winning producer Paul Epworth,’ says IMW founding director, John Dennis.

Central to the new facilities are Logic Duality SE, AWS 948, Matrix and Nucleus consoles from SSL.

‘We have just completed our new campus expansion that includes four studios within two minutes of each other,’ Dennis explains. ‘We have very successfully used an SSL 4000 series for the past 15 years, so we already knew the SSL brand for its sound quality and reliability. Technology and the way people record and mix music has changed, so we needed to invest in equipment that could provide a pathway that includes both traditional and in-the-box recording.’

The educational offerings include the Duality Room (known as the ‘Full-on Studio’), a high-end control room with associated studio room capable of handling a six-piece band. The AWS room is fitted with 12 Nucleus DAW controllers that feature SuperAnalogue mic pres and monitoring section. The Matrix Room also features 12 Nucleus systems. Both the AWS and Matrix rooms are used as students’ workshops. Two additional studios are set up for DAW tuition.

‘We took a close look at everything on the market before deciding on SSL,’ Dennis says. ‘Before we built the new facilities, we were using dedicated controllers in addition to the 4000 Series console, but the controllers did not give us the in depth learning experience or the progression route we wanted to offer our students. The item that really sold us was the Nucleus. Every one of our students now has their own personal Nucleus on their DAW to start on and work their way through the Matrix, and the AWS 948 to the Duality SE. In our opinion, SSL is the only company that provides the robust features across its entire product line to tackle the job of teaching modern audio production.’

Courses at IMW include music production, sound engineering, sound for picture and sound for video games, so the new studios needed to be flexible enough to handle a wide range of applications.

‘What we are trying to do is give our students the skills and the opportunity to make an informed choice as to what area of media production to follow,’ Dennis says. ‘We are taking young musicians out of “the box” and into the real world of audio. They are used to working on a laptop with headphones, or making cheap demos, for example, so they have not really developed their critical listening skills. We take them through the various levels of production to develop a very high level of critical listening in the Duality Room. The critical listening and production techniques we teach depend on the quality and industry leadership of SSL. With SSL our students learn to craft sound, not fix it.’