Newcastle College is the largest in the North East and has a national reputation for the quality of it's Music and Performing Arts courses.
Opened in 2004 the College's new £21 million award-winning Performance Academy offers a wide range of courses at all levels from entry level to foundation degree level and in 2005 over 99% of graduates went on to find full time employment , a fine testament to the Academy's stated aim of providing a realistic and creative environment in preparing students for productive employment in a fiercely competitive industry.
The Academy has eleven recording studios, two sequencing labs, a sound design suite, ten rehearsal rooms, theatre , dance and drama studios and a thriving music venue which is open to the public.
Yamaha digital mixing consoles play a key role in the day running of the academy and head of music technology Dan Porter comments "We have a variety of Yamaha digital consoles including a DM2000 and O2R 96’s around the facility , all our recording studios feature Yamaha consoles .On the ground floor we have studios one and two, each of these suites have a dedicated control room and large dedicated live spaces with four booths , two having visual contact with the larger live rooms. Each of these suites can also act as separate studios if required which allows complete flexibility in delivering such a varied and challenging curriculum."
Each of these suites houses Yamaha O2R96 consoles connected to G5's running Logic as the main recording tool. This set-up works superbly for us thanks to the O2R's on board effects free up vital computer processing power, ultimately resulting in greater mixing options. The students find the O2R96 very user friendly , cost effective and they deliver very high quality sound, three factors which were key in choosing Yamaha. The logical layout and routing also aids the students understanding of signal paths and corrective processing.
Dan Porter comments again " These consoles work brilliantly in a curriculum setting primarily because of their logical layout, and students therefore find it easier to understand the routing systems and hence discover the most effective ways in grouping instruments and processing the sound."
The master suite , situated on the first floor of the Academy consists of a large main live room circled by a large master control room and six smaller satellite control rooms, each of which has an adjacent smaller live room. The larger control room required a powerful mixing console excellent routing facilities in order to feed in from all of the other control rooms. The Yamaha DM2000 is perfect for this and via a patch bay tutors can listen in 'live' to the students work and also record directly in from the theatre. The benefit is full integration between courses , with production students recording and mixing audio from the theatre which is then synchronized with visual produced by media students.
Dan Porter concludes " The DM2000 is an excellent console with many great features, the sound quality to the mix is impressive as are it's routing and processing capabilities. I am delighted with all of our Yamaha consoles, both the staff and the students find them very user friendly. Additionally they offer great value for money and are extremely durable and reliable"
