The Abbey Road Institute in Johannesburg has opened its doors and welcomed its first students. The famous institute, with seven locations around the world, is based in South Africa at the Mastermax studios in Midrand.
The experience and capacity for innovation behind the work of Abbey Road Studios make training at each of its institutes a great opportunity to learn about sound from the best professionals. The Johannesburg campus also offers a one-year professional course in Music Production and Sound Engineering.
The Institute's managing director, Johan van der Colff, is a renowned industry professional who even received a SAMA (South African Music Award) for his work as an engineer on Sahara's album "Loliwe." In addition to running the Mastermax studios, he is also the director of the international Post|City network of post-production facilities. His most notable collaborations include work with Mumford and Sons, One Republic, Jennifer Hudson and Westlife, as well as on numerous films.
All Abbey Road Institute students have access to the latest sound technology, including a range of DiGiGrid products as standard in every DAW in the production classrooms. Johan considers himself a big fan of DiGiGrid products:
"A friend from Waves introduced me to the world of DiGiGrid. At the time I was working on a lot of multitrack recordings that required several MADI channels, and when I discovered the DiGiGrid MGO and MGB, I immediately switched to their interfaces"
That was seven years ago, and Johan didn't hesitate to keep betting on the company's products for his studio and, later, for the institute's production classrooms as well.
"In the Abbey Road Institute classrooms, the DiGiGrid gear gave us countless more creative options. Since the whole class is on a SoundGrid network, students can share their projects easily, simply by assigning the classroom D interface to the central audio of their classmates' computers."
"These systems also help us demonstrate the many advantages of networked audio. We can access any device, in any classroom, whenever we want. In addition, each student has a dedicated workstation, and the DiGiGrid IO units are perfect, both for their size and for their excellent performance and cost-effectiveness."
In class, each student has a DiGiGrid M unit at their workstation, with a D at the teacher's station also connected to the room's speakers. In Studio A there is an IOS system with a DLI bridge, AVID 192 IO interfaces, plus a D located in the control room for monitoring and local IO outputs. All the systems in the facility have been configured to create a home production working environment that is easy to handle, accessible and capable of making the most of even the smallest setups.
The mixing room also has another IOS system, which feeds an SSL SIX. As mentioned above, all the rooms are on the DiGiGrid network, so it is possible to access any room or station at any time, even when it is not in use. Johan is currently even considering getting some portable IOX and IOC units to increase control options when more IO capacity is needed.
