Electroacoustic and recording studios

Find out about the range of electroacoustic equipment available in the New Zealand School of Music’s recording studios.

Lilburn Studios for electronic music and recording

Douglas Lilburn developed the electronic music studios at Victoria University of Wellington, beginning in 1963. These studios, originally situated in the basement of the Hunter Building, were to produce the first generation of electronic music composers in New Zealand (Ross Harris, John Rimmer, John Cousins, and Denis Smalley, among others). When the new facilities for the former Victoria University of Wellington School of Music were opened in 1989, two custom-designed spaces were created. Since then two more dedicated spaces have been added and in 2015 the studios were substantially refurbished.

Studio 1

Large experimental studio with stereo and 8.2 channel monitoring, equipped with a wide range of software, and analogue and digital hardware, for superb monitoring, mixing and sound processing. Air-conditioned and acoustically treated for stereo and surround sound production work.

Studio 2

Recording and production studio centred on a Toft ATB-16 analogue console. Outfitted with a wide range of software, and analogue and digital hardware, for professional level monitoring, mixing and sound processing. Air-conditioned and acoustically treated for stereo production work.

Studio 3

Dual purpose studio for recording and project work. Equipped with 5.1 monitoring, mixing and processing facilities, with audio tie lines to Studios 1 & 2. Acoustically treated for recording use.

Sonic Arts Lab

Live electronics research and teaching lab equipped with facilities for electronic hardware fabrication, 10 audio workstations for teaching and learning, multichannel monitoring, and a data projector.

Our keyboard/ midi lab has 12 x 88 note weighed keyboards each with Midi interface to an iMac.

Adam concert room

The concert room is equipped with a Genelec 8.2 speaker system, which can be expanded to 24 channels for audio diffusion concerts.

Recording studio - Student Union Building

This is the primary studio for the Jazz Programme with superb monitoring, mixing and processing facilities in an air-conditioned environment. Musicians can send up to 24 channels of audio to the Studio control room where the performance can be viewed via a direct video link.

Hardware includes:

  • Yamaha 02R96 digital mixing console
  • Apple quad core Mac Pro computer
  • Logic Studio software
  • Viewsonic 22" monitor
  • 50" Panasonic Plasma TV
  • Motu Firewire interface
  • 5 x Genelec 8040A loudspeakers
  • 1 x Genelec 8040A subwoofer
  • 2 x AKG C414 B-ULS microphones (stereo pair)
  • 2 x Neumann microphones
  • 6 x AKG C3000 microphones
  • 2 x Rhode NT2 microphones
  • 2 x Octava microphones
  • 1 x Shure SY77 stereo microphone
  • 4 x Shure SM 57 microphones
  • 6 x Shure SM 58 microphones
  • 3 x DI boxes