Professional Sound - April 2021 | Page 30

The Farm Studios 8.0

From the live floor to the forest floor , Garth Richardson ’ s got it covered
By Andrew Leyenhorst

Nestled comfortably away on British Columbia ’ s Sunshine Coast , Garth Richardson has spent years working on his state-of-the-art facility , The Farm Studios . The Juno Award-winning and Grammy-nominated producer carries a legendary reputation not only for his vast experience and mind-boggling list of credits , but also for the studio that he has been growing for nearly two decades .

The Farm Studios has been an ideal destination for a unique recording studio experience for many years , and through many iterations . In fact , it never really remains the same for very long before Richardson changes things up in some way or another ; as such , the screeching halt to the industry brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic provided a perfect opportunity for new additions to the experience at The Farm .
Going back in time , when Professional Sound last spoke with Richardson about renovations to The Farm in 2016 , he told a story about the process of digging the first channel to run cable underground from building to building . The long and short of that story was , shovels are slow , use a backhoe . So , when Richardson decided last March to run Cat 6 cable all throughout the property as part of a new networked audio system , he bought a tractor and got to work .
While the previous underground cable runs tied the property ’ s main house to the band house where the control room was being moved at the time , the new Cat 6 lines serve a more compelling purpose beyond tying two buildings together . With the help of Focusrite ’ s RedNet series of Dante-networked hardware , Richardson can now record anywhere on the seven-acre property . This includes the main house , the band house , the studio proper , the crew cabin , and even outside in the woods .
“ I have a probably 500-ft . Cat 6 cable , so that if anybody wants to go out and record in the woods , they actually can . If you remember the Zeppelin record where they did some of it outside , [“ Black Country Woman ” from Physical Graffiti ], I have always been in love with that whole fantasy of being able to do that ,” Richardson explains . Of course , that ’ s just one of the options brought along with the new system . “ I have the engineer ’ s cabin wired up , I have my live room wired up , I have my living room wired up , I even have my laundry room wired up . Billie Eilish did her record in her bedroom . I could top that . I did it in my laundry room ,” he jokes .
In terms of the laundry room , Richardson says he actually intends to use it for guitar amps to keep space free on the live floor , and the convenience of the RedNet system really comes into play here . “ I don ’ t have to run tons and tons of mic cables anymore , because it ’ s just one cable .”
The way it works is that Richardson can simply plug in one of his RedNet interfaces or mic pres into any of the Cat 6 jacks on the property , which use Dante to send the audio back to the control room instantly , without any loss in level or fidelity . Currently , Richardson is running the system off of two RedNet HD32R 32-channel Dante network bridges , and handles the recording at the source with three RedNet A16R 16-channel interfaces , a RedNet MP8R eight-channel mic pre and A / D converter , and a RedNet X2P 2x2 interface . He also has two RedNet AM2 headphone boxes for monitoring .
The Dante network saves an immense amount of time and effort , especially dealing with cable runs , as Richardson mentions . However , it ’ s the creative potential and immediacy of being able to simply plug in anywhere and go that really gives the system its appeal .
“ When people come here knowing they can do things outside , there ’ s a whole new kind of excitement . Because people , to me , are so caught up on sitting on their laptops and it ’ s like , ‘ Well , let ’ s do something different . Let ’ s go outside and let ’ s experience something that makes you fucking feel , right ?’”
30 PROFESSIONAL SOUND