Level Acoustic was entrusted with the refurbishment of the iconic Abbey Road Studio 1, the world’s largest purpose-built recording studio. Dating back to 1931, the studio has welcomed classical greats including Elgar, Prokofiev and Stravinsky.
In more recent times, Studio 1 has imparted its acoustic imprint on hundreds of film scores including Raiders of The Lost Ark, The Return of The Jedi, The Last Emperor, The Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit trilogies, Harry Potter, Skyfall, Gravity, 1917, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Wonka, Barbie, Deadpool & Wolverine, Gladiator II and Wicked.
The main live room went through a number of acoustic overhauls during its first 40 years but has remained largely unchanged since 1970. Our project marked the first major works carried out in the studio for over 50 years. The brief included replacing all of the acoustic treatments in the ceiling, making changes to wall finishes to improve compliance with current fire regulations and redesigning the staircase and client balcony to comply with current building regulations. But the main priority was very simple: don’t ruin the acoustics!!
The changes we made actually helped to smooth out the low-mid reverberation time, which had been slightly too pronounced. This was immediately noticed by the engineers on the first projects in the finished studio (Jurassic World and Knives Out 3), and we received a lovely message from Alexandre Desplat congratulating us on our work.