Croft House comprises a residential property and a high-end recording studio. The studio operated as a professional recording studio for musicians and singers for about a decade. It was designed and built by the current owners, with the help of professionals from DACS, Genelec and others to deliver both first class music recording outcomes and a wonderful experience for the artists achieving their recording dreams.
It occupies a single-storey building of over 100m2 internal space(1,100 sq.feet) and comprises four separate recording rooms. Warm wooden floors and panelling, together with open brick and specialist sound treatment feature throughout. The entire internal infrastructure, and much of the external aspects including the roofing, was created by the current owners. Each room is treated to manage the natural reverb - in some cases lively and in others far drier. This includes a combination of absorption and reflection, and there is a system of waist-high thick vinyl bass traps (tastefully concealed behind fabric panelling) throughout to manage any problematic long-wavelength sounds.
All windows, both internal and external, are double glazed with non-parallel glass of non-identical thickness, providing near perfect sound insulation. All internal doors are heavy double-doors to maximise insulation. The electrical circuits are consistently managed with a one-meter separation from the audio cabling. Audio flows take place through embedded chased and shielded audio cabling managed through patch panels throughout the studio - there are nearly 4 miles of audio cabling throughout the studio for maximum flexibility.
The control room is carefully treated, including an angled mirror opposite a counterpart window to maintain a perfect stereo field sense. There is visual line of sight from the control room to all three live rooms.
The main live room is a spacious 35m2, with slightly tapered walls to avoid the standing waves that are possible in purely rectangular rooms. A high ceiling of nearly 4 meters and a huge external window for natural light makes it truly exceptional as a recording environment. This room is "lively" in the sense there is pleasant natural reverb which artists prefer to sterile near-anechoic spaces.
The vocal booth is adjacent to the control room for a sense of intimate communication with the engineer.
The second live room is a "room within a room" for complete insulation, providing an important option (say for percussion and drums) where a floating floor and walls-within-walls ensure no vibration can escape the room. This room is heavily treated with absorption, again providing an alternative option for a dry sound to contrast with the lively nature of the main live room.
Each room has independent air conditioning (reversible for heat in winter), with the main live room having an over-specified ducted system to ensure low fan speed and zero interference with the audio signals within the room.
There is a great deal of storage throughout the studio, a small kitchenette with sink, and a toilet. Nothing has been left to chance, and the studio has recorded everything from a single vocalist to a 17-person percussion group, and styles from folk through pop to hard rock, via jazz and intimate singer-songwriter outfits.
