Alchemea College Upgrades Workstations With Universal Audio UAD-2

Founded in 1992 in the north London suburb in Islington, Alchemea College has rapidly become one of the country's most respected audio engineering schools, offering both full- and part-time courses in audio engineering and various other disciplines for the music and post-production industries.
Alchemea not only provides students with the theoretical knowledge to operate in their respective industries, but also practical skills and insights drawn from the considerable experience of the staff.
Currently taking centre-stage at Alchemea is Universal Audio's new UAD-2 plug-in platform. The college has just refitted its entire suite of main workstations with new 2.8Hz 8-core Mac Pro computers, new Apple screens and Mboxes. Each computer is also equipped with a Universal Audio UAD-2 Solo card. The Quad Mac Pro in the Programming Room is also to benefit from a Solo card.
Along with the UAD-2 hardware installations, Alchemea has installed the entire range of UA plug-ins, including all the Neve compressors and EQs, the Roland and Boss effects, and the brand new Moog Multimode Filter plug-in.
And it's not just UA plug-ins that Alchemea likes the sound of. Another recent addition to the college is a UA 6176 channel strip. It's being installed in the Euphonix mixing room to provide students with more mic preamp options to flavour their mixes.
Alchemea's Marketing Director Mike Sinnott explained that the decision to follow the UAD-2 path was partly inspired by his own experience of UAD plug-ins. He currently owns a MacBook laptop equipped with a UAD Xpander: "I use all of the plug-ins. Of all the competition, it's by far the best overall solution, partly because of the partnerships they have with manufacturers. The Roland stuff is just awesome, and the Neve 33609 is one of the best-sounding compressor plug-ins I've ever heard."
Among Mike\s other favourites are the Cambridge EQ, of which he said: "It has so many slopes, from very aggressive to very smooth-sounding and can be precise - plus you can use tons of instances."
The Roland effects have also hit home with Mike: "The Boss CE-1 chorus, the Dimension-D and the RE-201 Tape Delay are all very effective. You have to be careful you don't overcook the Dimension-D, but it's great for reverb and delay returns - it's really simple, but it really works."
Mike said: "It's great that students and other users now have the chance to experience what only a few years ago would have been the preserve of the rich, or engineers in the big studios. It's led to an enormous improvement in the quality of what people can produce themselves, partly because of access to high-end plug-ins and partly because of the opportunity to practice their skills using digital audio workstations."
(KMcA)