Recording and mastering / lacquer cutting studios in Sydney, Australia (also referred to as 'Festival Recording Studios'). Located on the corner of Miller St and Bulwara Rd, Pyrmont in Sydney, upstairs of the record factory.
For the US studios, please use Festival Recording Studios.
In the early 70s, the profits from the massively successful Sister Janet Mead - The Lord's Prayer contributed to the refurbishment of Studio A with a Neve 8038 24x16x16 recording console and 24 track MCI and Studer tape machines, resulting in that studio's renaming to "Studio 24" (which commonly appears as "Festival's Studio 24" on mid-70s releases). According to the liner notes of The Whitlams - Torch The Moon, the rhythm tracks to "The Lights Are Back On", "Best Work" and "Royal in the Afternoon" on that album are the last things ever recorded at Festival Studio A.
Cutting room 1 was equipped with a Neumann VMS 70 with Neumann SP79 control console, Sontec mastering equalizer and an MCI tape machine.
Cutting room 2 was equipped with a Neumann VMS 80 with a custom rack setup without console and an MCI tape machine.
People known to have worked here:
Richard Batchens - Producer
Paul Ibbotson - Mastering and cutting engineer (can be identified by P or Pi in the runouts)
Jo Hansch - Mastering and cutting engineer (1971-1976)
William Bowden - Mastering and cutting engineer (can be identified by WB in the runouts - WB looks like a butterfly)
Rick O'Neil - Cutting, Mastering and Senior Mastering engineer (can be identified by Ⓡ2A)
Warren Barnett - Mastering and cutting engineer (can be identified by W in the runouts - the scribe may appear as URA)
Glenn "Magoo" Aird - Mastering engineer
Gerry Stevens - Engineer
Martin Erdman - Engineer
Joe Raine - Engineer
Mark Thomas - Engineer
About the runouts:
MX is generally short for "Matrix". MX indicates a mono release, SMX a Stereo release from an analog tape, DATMX from a DAT, DMX and DTMX indicate they were cut from a digital master. Also existing is AMX.
Each side was assigned a matrix number. The odd number at the end would be side A and the even number at the end would be side B (e.g. SMX56341 = Stereo, analog tape, Side A; SMX56342 = Stereo, analog tape, Side B).
This should not be confused with the MX numbers used by the plant of CBS Records Australia. Additionally, other Australian pressing plants sometimes pressed each others records so they all shared the MX matrix system on those releases.
When adding to Festival Studios, please add Lacquer Cut At for each number and with the respective prefix, e.g.
Lacquer Cut At - Festival Studios + LCCN# DMX-74965
Lacquer Cut At - Festival Studios + LCCN# DMX-74966
(see example here.
Other abbreviations:
P2A, W2A, Ⓡ2A, WB2A, etc:
P is the cutting engineer (here Paul Ibbotson)
2 is stereo
A is how many times it was cut or recut. A is the first cut, B the second etc.
Since the closure the buildings are being used for other purposes (including a supermarket).
