Winchester Audio Barn Opens with SSL Duality Fuse Console, Merging Vintage Soul and Modern Sound in a Purpose - Built Creative Complex and Classic Car Garage

Winchester, U.K., November 4 2025 — In the autumn of 2025, in the heart of southern England, less than an hour from London, something inspiring occurred within the British audio industry: the opening of the Winchester Audio Barn. A state-of-the-art recording studio, three years in the making, it represents a unique blend of retro charm and cutting-edge technology. Designed by a world-renowned acoustician, a master technician, and a dreamer, the Audio Barn is where vintage soul meets modern sound.

Located in the rolling open Hampshire countryside approximately 55 miles southwest of London,Winchester Audio Barn may be the only recording studio in the world to share space within a purpose-built complex that includes an event venue and restaurant/bar facilities, complete with an award-winning in-house chef and a kitchen capable of catering for over 200 guests. Adding a distinctive twist to this eclectic mix is a prestigious classic car showroom and workshop. The studio itself features a Solid State Logic Duality Fuse 48-channel SuperAnalogue™ mixing console, racks of vintage outboard gear and microphones, classic instruments and amplification, within a flexible infrastructure designed to support any audio production scenario. The Audio Barn also offers a range of accommodation packages through carefully selected local partners, discreetly catering to everyone from pop royalty to junior assistants.

The new studio is the brainchild of Niall Holden, founder of VDC Trading, who, amongst other things, manufactures and distributes Van Damme Cable, the industry-leading brand that is spec’d in both the music and live world due to its sonic excellence, and is consequently used exclusively by Abbey Road within their world-famous studios.

Acoustic design of the Audio Barn was provided by Chris Walls of Level Acoustic Design, while technical design and installation were handled by Bill Ward of Langdale Technical Consulting, who will stay involved long-term with the facility. Music industry heavyweight Stuart Bruce has also joined the team as chief engineer and brings a wealth of experience gained from a career that has seen him working and engineering with many of the world’s biggest artists and studios, in a career that goes from Band-Aid to Stevie Wonder with pretty much everyone else in between.

Building on an SSL legacy

Both Bruce, as engineer, and Ward, as system designer, have long and extensive relationships with SSL and the company’s mixing consoles, which started back in the 1980s with their respective tenures at Sarm Studios in London. “We've worked very closely with SSL over the years,” says engineer, producer and educator Bruce. "When choosing a console for a commercial facility, you want something robust, familiar, and that always delivers sonically, but also something that you can put your hand on your heart and say, ‘I love this thing.’ Naturally enough, that led to the decision the Audio Barn made to choose the Duality Fuse.”

A Duality of mic pre’s: SuperAnalogue™ and VHD

Having had the opportunity to use the new console on several sessions as the studio has neared completion, Bruce says, “I just love the sound of it. I like the switchable dual Superanalogue^TM / Variable Harmonic Drive (VHD) mic pre’s. The way you can set up a drum sound, then flip all the mic pre’s and go, ‘Oh, there's another character’ It’s superb, I’m not aware of another console which can do anything like this.” The SuperAnalogue preamp provides breathtaking clarity and punch due to its ultra-low noise floor and minimal phase shift across the audible spectrum. The VHD pre allows engineers to shape their tone by dialling in 2nd order harmonics for rich, valve-like warmth, or add 3rd order harmonics for a harder, transistor-style edge.

Professional industry standard for classic and hybrid workflows

Bruce had not worked extensively on the Duality Fuse previously and found the console is different from the previous series of SSL desks on which he had worked and quickly observed functionality that is designed to support today’s hybrid workflows, as well as support more traditional tracking and mixing configurations “You can split each channels signal path, which allows the input to be taken from the channel path at the input stage, or pre-fader, and be replaced with the DAW return signal. If I need to go hybrid, I simply press ‘Focus’ and console faders, V-pots, and the master control panel provide control of the key elements in my Pro Tools session, with the screens giving me visual feedback. Duality is so fast and flexible that if you set it up in the right way, you can take away a rough mix of the track to work on outside of the studio, because you've already got the balance when tracking.”

Bruce also enjoys the efficiency of Duality’s routing panel, which centralises access to channel routing, signal processing order and other functionality, for single or multiple channels. “If you want to quickly flip a bunch of channels into a different mode, you're not standing over it for 10 minutes pressing lots of buttons. And when different clients get to the end of their sessions, I can store a preset and the next time they come in, the desk’s already configured for the way they work.”

A highly versatile production space

The Audio Barn has been designed with maximum production flexibility in mind. There are over 250 mic and tie-lines within the recording space with custom-made audio panels on every wall of the tracking room and balcony, which was also carefully designed to be deep enough to fit a drum kit on. All of the recording rooms feature dedicated high and low level guitar lines allowing guitars and amps to played and recorded in a multitude of ways and locations, which include two bespoke amp cupboards.

The new building also houses a restaurant, bar and multi-format event space capable of hosting up to 250 people with a stage large enough for a seven-piece band. The venue, also intended to support the audio industry and other events, is linked over both Dante and analogue networks into the control room with additional connectivity enabling the use of multiple video cameras across the event spaces. “We could have a gig with a six-camera shoot in the venue and simultaneously be mixing the audio, in analogue, on the Duality Fuse and be vision-mixing in another room for a broadcast feed. If an outside broadcaster wants to produce a concert in the main venue or the studio, outside provision including power, digital and analogue lines has been made for an OB Truck”

Classic cars and classic kit

Complementing the impressive array of classic cars in the showroom, which range from dream to reality, is a control room that is equally rich in heritage. Its selection of classic outboard gear and microphones, Van Damme Purple patchbays, PMC main monitors and instruments includes many of the vintage guitars and amplifiers from Niall Holden’s personal collection. The Fairchild has a heritage that goes back to Sun Studios; there’s a red Wurlitzer piano that used to belong to The Doors, which Amy Winehouse subsequently wrote Back to Black on, and the Hammond B3 was used on tour by Dire Straits for many years. Even the detail of the 150-year-old parquet wood floor in the studio, which was rescued from a school in Yorkshire and painstakingly restored, adds ambience and screams quality. Accompanying the impressive array of classic instruments is an equally classic car collection. The current collection includes a 1972 Lamborghini Miura SV, previously owned by Rod Stewart, 1970 Mercedes 280 SE V8, 1972 BMW 3.0 CSL, and 1996 Porsche 993 Turbo, as well as serval other stunning examples.

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