Studio 1
The most lavish recording facility ever built is not in London, New York, or the Netherlands, but in a remote part of South Africa. We trace the extraordinary story of BOP Studios.
Ask Sound On Sound readers to name the best recording studios in existence, and I doubt that many would list Bophuthatswana Recording Studios alongside the Abbey Roads and Ocean Ways of this world. Yet when the studio complex, otherwise known as BRS or just BOP, was built in 1991 it was one of the top three residential studios in the world.
The Republic of Bophuthatswana, formerly an independent ‘homeland’ in the Northwest Province of South Africa close to the border with Botswana, was reintegrated with South Africa in 1994, post-Apartheid. The BOP studios are located within a secure campus on the outskirts of Mafikeng (Mahikeng or Mmabatho).
The money behind BOP came, rather bizarrely, from the Sefalana Employee Benefits Organisation (SEBO), which is essentially a government pension fund. Even a cursory glance around BOP reveals that no expense was spared in its construction and fit-out: definitive figures are elusive, but different sources put the cost anywhere between 22 and 91 million US dollars!
Studio 1
Studio Blocks
The Swiss architects Thomas Rast used newly developed techniques to build the truly massive concrete shells for each of the three totally separate and self-contained studio suites, which were designed by Tom Hidley (see box). All control and live rooms are built as rooms within rooms to maximise isolation, with enormous windows for expansive sight lines. In addition to the control and live rooms, each suite’s outer building shell also accommodates tape machine, power supply and computer rooms, a tape store, a producer’s office, a lounge area with kitchen/bar and toilets, instrument and equipment storage areas, and a loading bay.
To keep background noise to an absolute minimum, the air-conditioning plant is located in a separate building behind Studio 3. During our visit it wasn’t working, sadly, but when installed the ambient noise floor in the live rooms with the air-con running was just 10dBA — lower than the self-noise of most microphones! Equally remarkable was the provision of a substantial UPS capacity able to maintain the mains power supplies for the entire building for 15 minutes. A diesel generator set in a far corner of the site took over during prolonged power outages.
The central listening position at the mixing console is around five metres away from the monitor wall, and the huge live room windows are about three metres deep, meaning that engineer and producer are about eight metres from the live-room glass.
Flat to 10Hz
Kinoshita monitors are a standard feature of Tom Hidley’s control-room designs, and the main monitors in all three BOP control rooms are soffit-mounted RM-7V models weighing 250kg each! Designed by Shozo Kinoshita and installed in over 350 studios worldwide, the RM7 is a two-way system in a ‘vertical twin’ configuration — an arrangement that allows the most linear phase response, which is important in a room as revealing of acoustic phase errors as Hidley’s non-environment design. The RM7s were originally powered by 1kW Van den Hul solid-state amps and large rackmounting passive crossovers, both located in dedicated rooms behind each monitor soffit, but Manley 600W (KT90) valve amps have taken over the job.
The RM7 monitor’s specified bandwidth is 20Hz to 20kHz, with a maximum of 130dB SPL. That might sound a lot for a control room, but the near-anechoic nature of Hidley’s design means that the sound pressure falls off at an almost perfect 6dB per doubling of distance, so the monitors need to be very powerful to deliver a generous volume at the listening position.
An unusual feature shared across all three control rooms is a low-level island pod in the middle of the room containing the analogue patchbay. The rear panel of this pod also carries connectors for external equipment such as outboard processors, MIDI instruments, AES3 digital tie-lines, tape machine remote controllers, and so on. Usefully, both 110V and 230V AC power outlets are provided throughout the control and live rooms, with standard UK, US and South African wall sockets. Confirming the no-expense-spared approach, the console and studio wiring is with Van den Hul silver cables: Studio 3 alone employs 11km of wiring!
Studio 3
The mixing console in Studio 3 is an SSL 4000G+ with Ultimation moving fader automation, providing 72 mono channel modules and eight extra stereo modules. This in-line desk is colossal at roughly 5.5 metres wide across the main section, with 24 modules either side of the centre controls. Angled side-wings accommodate 16 more modules each, as well as 19-inch bays for outboard equipment.
Studio 3
Studio 2
Larger acoustic recording sessions are the province of Studios 1 and 2. All of BOP’s live rooms feature bespoke modular headphone cue systems, with either three- or eight-channel mixers and multiple artist stations. There are custom-made instrument DI boxes around the live rooms, too. Studio 2’s large live room is capable of accommodating 65 musicians with ease. The narrow end incorporates a raised drum platform, S tudio 2’s control room boasts an imposing Neve VRP96 console with Flying Fader automation. This desk is an evolution of the original V-series desk, with Recall and Post-production output routing and monitoring facilities, the latter accommodating multi-channel film and TV production requirement.
Studio 2
Studio 1
The flagship Studio 1 enjoys the largest live room at BRS. At 22m in length and nearly 19m wide at the control-room end, it can seat 120 musicians — a full concert orchestra. As with the other studios, the acoustic design and treatment in the Studio 1 control room is quite different from that found in conventional rooms. The hardwood floor is a 16-inch thick concrete slab floating on industrial isolation springs (with a resonant frequency of 3Hz), seated on the even more massive base slab that forms the bottom of the concrete shell enveloping the control room. The live room has its own separate concrete shell structure.
Studio 1
Overboard on Outboard
A wide range of outboard equipment is installed in the side wings of all three consoles, with more on rack trolleys that can be moved between areas as needed. The Aphex Aural Exciters and BBE Sonic Maximisers conjure up a time-warp image of the mid-1990s, but there are also numerous desirable and timeless classics. In addition to various Focusrite, Neve and SSL rack modules, there are also familiar devices like Dbx 165A, Manley Variable Mu, SSL FXG384 and Urei 1176LN and LA4 compressors. Outboard EQ is provided by Manley’s Pultec and Mid-frequency units, TC Electronic’s TC1128 and BSS DPR901s, while reverbs and delays include AMS S-DMX 15-80 and RMX16 units, Klark Teknik DN780s, Eventide H3000SE Ultra-Harmonizers, Lexicon 300s, PCM70s and PCM42s along with various Yamaha SPX processors.
Though it pre-dates the widespread use of computer recording, BOP was built at a time when digital multitracking was the state of the art. So, along with the Studer A820 analogue 24-track and two-track recorders littered about the place, there are also various ‘legacy’ Sony, Mitsubishi and Studer digital recorders.
Lost & Found
The studios were sold for R10 million in 2012 to a foreign national. Studio owner and Focusrite aficionado John Aquilino passionately pursued it. After more than 30 years and a journey of 10,000 miles, he brought it back to serve as the sonic jewel in a one-of-a-kind music recording studio. However, the Focusrite Studio Console remained remarkably intact when John discovered it. With the support of his partner in the studio, Ken Hirsch of Orphan Audio, and guidance from Phil Dudderidge, Chairman of Focusrite Audio Engineering, who acquired Focusrite from founder Rupert Neve in 1989, John embarked on a mission. In September 2019, their team journeyed to BOP Studios, where they purchased and meticulously disassembled the console over a ten-day period.
Once dismantled, they carefully transported it back to Platinum Underground, John’s established studio where he had already collaborated with Hanson Hsu of Delta H Design to conceive a new studio room around the iconic console. Platinum Underground, engineered by the late Vincent Van Haaff and situated 30 feet underground since its opening in 2016.
Restoration and Modernization
As expected after years of disuse, the relocated console needed some refurbishment. This included a thorough recapping (changing the capacitors), installation of new switches, and replacement of a staggering 4,600 LEDs. The restoration journey began under the expertise of Joel Gette from Thermal Relief Design in Las Vegas. However, the process was later transferred to Mesa, a Phoenix suburb, where Ken Hirsch and his team at Orphan Audio undertook the comprehensive restoration and recommissioning of the console to its former glory.
The Focusrite Studio Console came back to life and did a series of local productions with John, an accomplished engineer for artists including Metal Allegiance, Sacred Reich, and SoulFly, at the board. “I needed a great team to make this happen, like TRD, everyone at Ken’s shop, and of course, Phil,” he says. “But the result is the kind of console that made classic recordings. You cannot duplicate this in today’s business — the console’s cabling is silver wire… kilometers of it! There is nothing like it anywhere. And now, it’s an amazing console in an amazing space.”
