Feature: Vocational calling
Feature: Vocational calling
A high school in Shanghai is providing students with state-of-the-art recording and performance spaces to equip them for a bright future. Caroline Moss learns more
In its drive to equip the country for further development, the Chinese government has made significant investment in vocational skills training at all levels of the educational system. As an alternative to traditional high schools, vocational schools are opening across the country to teach students a trade with market demand. Vocational high schools now account for around 40% of all secondary schools across the country, preparing students for industries such as manufacturing, elevator maintenance, high-speed railways, e-commerce and, for a handful of lucky Shanghai youths, music production.
Featuring a complex of teaching studios designed by world-renowned acoustician Sam Toyoshima, the US$5.5 million Shanghai Vocational School of Contemporary Music aims to cultivate talent in modern music production and performance at a professional level. The school, which currently has 300 students, is supported by the Shanghai Municipal Government and offers majors in recording art, music production and music performance. It aims to provide a high level of contemporary music training to its students, as well as assistance in gaining employment after graduation.
The bid to design and equip the facility was won in late 2018 by Shanghai SunYart Digital Technology Co, which had worked on other projects with Toyoshima in the past, including a world-class recording studio at the Jiangsu Centre for the Performing Arts in Nanjing, and brought the Japanese acoustician into this project too. Work began to convert an existing school, and the Shanghai Vocational School of Contemporary Music opened its doors to students in early 2020.
Shanghai SunYart Digital Technology director Alex Wei and his team carried out a basic layout design for the new facility, with Toyoshima providing an acoustic design. Wei and Toyoshima continued to discuss and refine the plans, with the latter making regular visits to Shanghai to oversee the project.
At the centre of the new school, taking pride of place on the ground floor, is a large music recording studio capable of accommodating a symphony orchestra. One of the biggest challenges in creating this studio was to provide enough ceiling height. This was limited by the previous teaching building, which was converted to create the new facility, and consisted mainly of standard classrooms with a height of just 2.5m. Wei and his team decided to make use of the courtyard of the original building, digging into the ground to create the extra height needed for acoustic isolation and absorption. The resulting space now covers an area of more than 300m2, with a ceiling height of 7.8m. This incorporates a 91m2 control room, a 214.6 m2 orchestral studio, two 53.6 m2 rooms for drum and piano, and a 38.4 m2 vocal booth. Toyoshima managed to reduce the weight of the floating floor by 30% by adjusting the layout of the rubber cushion and introducing a multi-panel system instead of heavy concrete blocks for isolation walls between studio and control room, and studio and booths.
The recording area is arranged in a roughly circular shape around the control room. Two retractable soundproofed doors can separate the area into three spaces with different reverberation times: the orchestra, piano and drum rooms. With the doors open, the whole area of 322 m2 can be used. In the larger orchestral space, more than 70 rotating columns of different heights and diameter, with varying sizes of sound absorption holes, can be used to achieve a reverberation time of between 0.8–1.2s.
Wei and Toyoshima share the same design aesthetics, particularly when it comes to the provision of large floor-to-ceiling windows to create light and enhance communication. “Sam showed me many of the studios he had designed all over the world, and I was amazed,” recalls Wei. “I wanted this project to meet the acoustic requirements while also having the visual impact to produce a ‘wow’ factor; our ideas fitted well.”
The shared aesthetics are particularly apparent when it comes to a series of windows overlooking the recording area. Toyoshima divided the glass into six rectangular shapes that gradually get smaller, to vary reflections and create a smooth reverberation. Motorised curtains can be opened and closed to vary the amount of natural light. “The outer wall of the control room is west-facing, and in the afternoon the sun comes through the window,” says Wei. “When I got a sketch of Sam’s design, I was blown away, as he’d designed the glass window in the shape of a keyboard. He always manages to perfectly combine cultural elements with the design requirements.”
Another striking feature of Toyoshima’s design is a pair of Genelec 1236A SAM main monitors embedded in the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the recording area. The acoustician revisited a design he executed around 30 years ago at London’s Metropolis Studios together with architect John Flynn. “We wanted to make the large Genelec 1035 monitors look as if they were floating in the glass,” recalls Toyoshima. “The biggest problem was how to support the heavy monitors; something the 24mm thickness glass could not do.” The solution they devised back then was to put the monitors into boxes hung from the supporting beam by a rubber cushion to insulate the vibration, with the gap between the boxes and the glass carefully filled with silicon putty. “Alex has done it almost the same way here, but using metal springs instead of rubber cushions, to give more strength and stability,” Toyoshima adds.
Wei wanted to optimise the control room’s working space as well as to accommodate more students and provide good visibility. “If we mounted the 1236As conventionally, the limited ceiling height would have reduced the working area, narrowing the viewing angle of the recording engineer and making acoustic treatment more difficult,” he says. “I asked Sam to embed them into the window to achieve better monitoring accuracy, increase the use of the control room and give a better viewing angle of the window.”
To support the combined weight of the speakers plus frames – 646kg – four elastic structures on each frame were welded to the beam to reduce pressure, with welding points carefully calculated to share the load evenly and avoid excessive vibrations. Given the optimum listening height of 1.2m, the 1236As had to be tilted downwards by 6.9°. Acoustic material at the bottom of the frame prevents the speakers from sliding and dropping down.
The large window between control room and studio inspired Toyoshima to revisit another design, this one at Abbey Road’s Studio 1 orchestral room, to minimise reflections. “I had the know-how to solve this problem by designing the position of the main monitors, the angle of the big windows and the shape and absorption coefficients of the walls in the room,” he explains.
Three Genelec 8351A loudspeakers on retractable stands can rise mechanically to provide a 5.1 system for surround mixing and be lowered below the height of the mixing console when not needed. Two 7380A SAM studio subwoofers provide the low frequency element. “Genelec loudspeakers have gained a good reputation in the industry, and were an inevitable choice,” explains Wei. “We’ve ended up with excellent sound and very accurate image positioning. The teachers at the school, the professors at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and the visiting professors from other schools think that this is the best studio they had ever seen.”
Digital Genelec monitoring has been provided by BGA (Beijing Genelec Audio) throughout the entire facility, with 61 speakers in total including the flagship 1236A as well as 1238, 8351, 8260 and 7380 models. All can be aligned and calibrated for optimum sound in the individual studios using Genelec’s GLM software.
An SSL Duality delta 48 takes pride of place in the main control room, supplied by local distributor, DMT. Patch panels have been provided throughout the large recording area, along with several mobile cable carts equipped with integrated plugs and cabling, allowing connection from anywhere in the spacious recording area. The long worktable in the control room that wraps around the mixing console is equipped with a mobile equipment rack to add flexibility for operators working on different tasks. Behind the worktable, a perforated aluminium screen absorbs sound and facilitates wiring.
A number of Sony BRC-H780 PTZ cameras cover all areas of the studio. As well as monitoring, these will be used to broadcast musical TV shows and programmes that go behind the scenes to demonstrate how music is being created. Video interfaces are provided in wall-mount boxes, along with Canare cables to interface with 4K equipment. A projector and customised 200-inch projection screen have been installed into the studio for movie scoring and remote recording applications. Video signals from this studio and the basement teaching room can be transmitted to a broadcasting centre on the second floor for recording and postproduction, while a media asset management system stores video content for future release.
Another key area is the basement teaching practice room, also known as the staircase classroom. This was designed to comply with requests of the teaching staff for a creative teaching environment, in particular from the school’s vice president Mr Zhou. Instead of desks and chairs, the room has shallow steps rising to the back, with power and headphone sockets for all students participating in a lesson.
To one side of the teaching space is a recording area, separated by another large floor-to-ceiling window. When the teacher is demonstrating in here, students can either enter to observe, or watch by sitting on the steps the other side of the glass. The gradient of the stairs and position of the large window have been carefully designed to facilitate viewing from the staircase.
At the front of the classroom, above the Avid S3 mixing system with Dock controller, a high-definition camera has been installed to film the teacher’s hands as they operate the console, displaying video on a large screen at the front of the room. A pair of Genelec 1238A monitors and a pair of Dynaudio nearfields are also installed here.
The facility also houses four other recording spaces: a mastering room on the ground floor, and a multifunctional teaching studio for small and medium-sized bands and foley effects, plus two small practice studios in the basement. The multifunctional studio is equipped with an AMS Neve Genesys Black console with analogue circuit design and digital control, and a 5.1 system of five Genelec 8260A monitors, a 7370A subwoofer and a GLM kit for management. There are plans to upgrade the 5.1 system to Dolby Atmos in the future. The mastering room has a pair of Genelec 1238A monitors as well as a 5.1 setup of five 8351s and a 7073 subwoofer, plus Dynaudio nearfields. The two 45m2 practice studios are each equipped with AMS Neve 1073 mic preamp modules, a pair of Genelec 8351 monitors, RME Fireface UFX+ 188-channel 24-bit/192kHz audio interfaces and Merging Hapi Ravenna/AES67 converters.
Avid Pro Tools and Merging Technologies Pyramix platforms supplied by distributors DMT and Dreamula respectively, are provided throughout the facility, with Pyramix used for high quality recordings up to DSD256, and Merging Technologies Horus interfaces with 48 I/O cards are also supplied. Audio processors are mainly models from SPL, Tube-Tech and Elysia, and there is a TC Electronic Music 600 and System 6000 in the studio in the basement and mastering studio, respectively.
A Ravenna network connects all six recording rooms throughout the facility, with audio signals transferred via fibre optic cable and optical transmitters. “Right from the beginning of the design phase, we knew we wanted to be able to control multiple studios from any of the control rooms,” says Wei. “For example, when I’m in the control room in the main studio downstairs, I can record the signals from any studio upstairs. Each node can be recorded, played back and used for backup.”
Additionally, 11 edit suites on the ground floor are each equipped with a pair of Genelec 8340As. Eight of these rooms have RME Fireface UFX+ interfaces, with RME Babyface Pro interfaces in the other three. “We’ve invested in a lot of RME products, including Micstasy preamp/converters and MADI converters as well as the UFX+ and Babyface Pro interfaces, to guarantee a high quality of education,” says Wei.
The Shanghai Vocational School of Contemporary Music opened its doors in 2020 and is now educating 300 pupils, all of whom are being prepared to graduate with a developed understanding of the art of recording.
“The good acoustic environment that’s been created, together with the high-quality equipment provided, should quickly develop the skills necessary for future audio engineers,” concludes Toyoshima.
This feature appears in the March – April edition of Pro AVL Asia. Subscribe at www.proavl-central.com/subscribe/asia
