Cotton Hill Celebrates Anniversary with Upgrade

In honor of its 10-year anniversary, Cotton Hill Studios in Albany, N.Y., completed an overall system upgrade, which included installation of a ProTools HD3 Accel system, a Trident 80C analog console and an Aviom Pro16 Monitor Mixing System, all provided by Professional Audio Design.

“We decided that the best scenario for us here in this facility was to have some type of a large format analog console along with a digital recording system,” says Ray Rettig, president and owner of Cotton Hill Studios. “Among other modifications, PAD created a card that is inserted into the back of the console to take the audio signal from the Trident 80C and output it to the Aviom gear and the other digital equipment.”

The card, created by PADtech turns four channels of unbalanced audio into balanced audio and four channels of balanced audio into unbalanced. Six of these level-adjustable cards were installed as fully balanced pre-fader inserts in the monitor section. The first 16 channels of these tape monitor insert sends are normalled directly into the Aviom headphone system. One of these balanced conversion cards is also installed in the master section, balancing the mix and control room outputs, and unbalancing the stereo tape returns. In addition, PADtech designed and installed a 4-output, silent-switching speaker selector. The upgrades at the Walters-Storyk-designed Cotton Hill, which took place earlier this year, also included Langevin and PAD-Enhanced Focusrite mic-pre/EQ modules and compressors.