Nestling deep in the heart of rural Oxfordshire, near the picturesque village of Shipton-on-Cherwell, is a rather beautiful Georgian manor house. Owned by the Virgin Records conglomerate, over the years the Manor studio has become a favourite location for getting away from it all for a couple of weeks (months?) while you get on with the serious business of recording in what must be one of the most relaxing studio environments on God's earth. And there's plenty of space in the manor house to accommodate, within reason, even the largest of retinues; so the kids and dogs can come too. Set in 50 acres of stunning countryside, it offers a wide range of diversions, including a swimming pool, tennis courts, go-kart track and billiards room. When it comes to tracklaying there is the converted barn fitted out with its 'quadraphonic' Helios desk, Westlake acoustics and other audio-phonic goodies.

But not everyone is a nature lover, or can spare the time and/or money to be out of touch with the bright lights for too long. For such people, Virgin has now opened a London studio that places less emphasis on a residential, 'let's-get-away-from-it-all' feel — although there is accommodation available if it's needed — and is more in keeping with a city-based recording environment. Okay, once the red light comes on and you get down to the serious business of recording, the physical location of a studio is pretty immaterial. However, you don't spend all your time surrounded by microphones or pretty lights and switches, so an environment conducive to feeling at home in what, for most bands, is really a rather alien surrounding can't be a bad thing. Different strokes for different folks; country or town, the choice is yours.

The name of the new studios, Town House, was reportedly chosen by Virgin boss Richard Branson to emphasise and maintain its link with The Manor. (If your history of the Rise and Fall of the British Aristocracy is rather rusty, let me explain that rich folk in days of yore often had two places of residence: an out-of-town retreat for fishin' 'n' huntin' 'n' relaxin', and a place in town from whence they could conduct their business of forging an Empire, exploiting the proletariat and so on. Such people, of course, are now extinct.)

The new studio occupies a site in Shepherd's Bush, west London, formerly housing Goldhawk Film Studios, and comprises two large studios and associated control rooms, three copying rooms, games room, restaurant, bar and four apartments for resident bands. There are also plans to build a cutting room at a later date. Acoustics throughout bear the unmistakable touch of Eastlake/Tom Hidley, with lots of rock facing, shag pile carpets, and lowish ceilings. Love 'em or hate 'em aesthetically, Eastlake rooms still offer a reliable reference point; a tape mixed in one Eastlake control room stands a better than average chance of sounding the same in another Eastlake room on the other side of the world. In these days of jet-setting recording artists, who might choose to record basic tracks in one studio, overdub in a second and possibly mix down in yet another, the problem of maintaining an identical acoustic feel throughout can be difficult, if each studio is adding its own peculiarities to the sound.

Poke your head round the door of Studio 1's control room and you can't fail to notice the wrap-around Helios desk sitting solidly in the centre of the shag-pile carpet. It is equipped with 40 input channels, 32 output groups, full 'quadraphonic' mixdown and monitoring and can be linked during mixdown to an Allison automation package. You may be wondering about that 40/32 input/output format. It takes a while to realise that Town House are the first studio in the UK to take possession of one of the new Telefunken M15A machines capable of recording no less than 32 tracks on 2in tape. What about compatibility though? After all, the 32-track tape can only be played back on another M15A. According to Town House's chief engineer, Mick Glossop, that should present few problems because if clients really insist on taking their tapes away for overdubbing, mixdown or whatever, all they have to do is record on 24 of the 32 tracks. How so, you may ask? It turns out that the track positions on a 'conventional' 24-track tape correspond exactly to 24 of those on a 32-track. I can't remember the formula that Mick gave me for working out which these 24 are (something like every fifth track except if it's divisible by six), but it does mean that compatibility isn't going to be such a hassle for the studios contemplating going 32-track. Another bonus is that if someone had already filled up all 24 tracks on a tape and either doesn't want to bounce them down or link up another 24-track machine and go 46-track, all they have to do is record an extra eight tracks on an M15A. Elegant.

Most of the signal processing goodies are actually built into the Helios desk, rather than being mounted above the engineer's head or in an 'outboard' rack as is often the norm. Few console manufacturers can offer the degree of customising available with Helios boards; thus the side arms of the basic wraparound format are easily extended if necessary to accommodate all the toys that studios feel they need to offer to remain competitive with the guys up the street. Suffice it to say that Town House has a wide selection of sound benders and blenders, including four of the very useful Rebis parametric equalisers, an Audio & Design Scamp rack complete with a pair of the new and, according to Mick Glossop, very useful S23 autopanner modules, a pair of Marshall Time Modulators and one of the extremely expensive but, I'm told, very versatile EMT 250 digital reverb processors. With so many of these beasties capable of generating, or being controlled by, external voltage sources there are plans to fabricate a special patch panel, similar in design to a pin-matrix found on some of the more complex models of synthesisers. In this way it will be possible to link, possibly through envelope shapers, the control voltages of harmonisers, phasers, panners and even the console VCAs. Imagine the possibilities; a sound that flanges as it pans across the stereo/'quad' soundfield and also triggers any number of other tracks to do something equally bizarre.

The studio proper is almost certainly the biggest Eastlake recording environment in Europe. It stretches some 80 feet to a raised area at the far end, and is about 30 feet wide. On the left is a large drum booth which, rather strangely, had a grand piano in it the day of my visit, while the drum kit was set out in the middle of the studio floor. That's the way Sweet like to record these instruments, so Town House were happy to oblige. If the drum booth is otherwise occupied two further traps along the wall will help to contain the sound of a piano. On the right of the studio is a narrow booth fitted with a long glass door. The walls and floor of the booth are covered in absorbent material for a dull sound, or can be exposed for brightening vocals, brass etc. At the far end of the studio a raised platform with a glass door in front offers a brighter environment, and is the place to record guitars, strings etc. Or, if you like a really lively sound, the drum kit. Most areas, however, have movable carpet on the floor and drapes that can be swung out of the way. Thus almost any type of recording environment — bright or dull — can be created whenever it is needed.

Studio 2 is purposely a little more modest in appearance. That's not to say it's a place to be avoided, though. Far from it, because lurking in the centre of the control room is one of the most attractive and beautifully laid out consoles I think I have ever come across. I'm referring to one of the very new Solid State Logic desks, complete with floppy-disc automation. Of in-line modular construction, it presently features 28 input/output/monitor modules (with space left for more when needed) and a pair of master panels that house the centralised controls for monitoring, echo returns etc, plus the eight VCA subgroups and computer keyboards. In fact, the console is so compact that it's all too easy to think that it is severely lacking in facilities; a big mistake. Take just one example. You can't help noticing that there are a lot fewer outboard signal processors in Studio 2 than in Studio 1. That's partly policy but also because each channel of the SSL console comes complete with a built-in high-quality compressor, de-esser and expander gate, plus extremely comprehensive 4-band parametric equalisation. In addition, the console sports a ganged 4-channel compressor-limiter across the master 'quad' bus. So there's little need for extra outboard goodies.

But built-in signal processors are just one of the console's many features. Since all channel routing and switching is handled by CMOS logic, it is possible for many more functions to be interlinked than is possible with 'conventional' relay-controlled logic. For example, by integrating within the console's logic system the remote controls for the multitrack, a bank of three pushbuttons will change the status of the desk and multitrack from a recording mode, to replay, to mixdown, and back again just as quickly. To really give you some idea of what this integrated console/multitrack logic can offer, let me explain the Supercue system. Imagine that you want to drop in a guitar solo while routing to foldback and monitors a mix of several previously recorded tracks. Here there is the problem of what do you send to the guitarist's foldback. If tape is monitored prior to the drop-in point, the guitarist cannot hear himself, and the engineer cannot check his level. If group output is selected there will be no proper cueing from the tape, and there is the risk of losing timing at the crucial point. Supercue lets the musician and engineer listen to tape and group output at the same time. Then at the press of a single pushbutton on the relevant channel module the tape machine track is set to record, the off-tape signal to foldback is muted at exactly the drop-in point and set back to normal as you drop-out on the same button.

As well as memorising the dynamics of a mix attempt, the SSL automation package also serves as an autolocator and search-to-cue for the multitrack. It knows where and what the tape is up to by means of a series of time pulses on track 24, which are also used as reference points when the fader positions are 'memorised' during a mixdown session. Thus it is possible to tell the multitrack to go to a certain point in the tape, play a section, drop in, record and drop out in a predesignated sequence. The control language for 'conversing' with the computer has been specially devised so that it bears a close approximation to normal English (or as close as computer instructions can be) and doesn't require a PhD in programming to understand.

Another extremely useful feature is the ability to turn any of the channel/group/monitor modules into a submaster buss during mixdown. For example, the drum tracks can be routed to a spare pair of modules so that individual control of the whole kit in stereo is available. The real bonus is that the modules designated as sub busses still retain all the normal compressor, noise gate, parametric eq, echo sends etc. Thus extra limiting or equalisation can be applied, or a composite echo send derived for a group of tracks, while still retaining independent control of final levels in the mix.

Being highly inquisitive, I enquired of Mick Glossop why Town House had chosen a Solid State Logic desk. Wouldn't a Helios desk have been the obvious choice, given the fact that Studio 1 is so equipped, as well as The Manor and one of the pair of Manor mobile trucks? It turns out that the original plan for Studio 2 was for it to be a cheaper alternative to the 32-track Studio 1, with secondhand gear being installed to keep capital costs — and hence hourly rates — down to the very minimum. At the 11th hour, however, this concept was dropped and a fully-blown, no-holds-barred studio became the order of the day. It was too late at this stage to order up a custom-built Helios desk, so Virgin looked around at various off-the-shelf designs, notably those bearing MCI and Harrison brand names. (Apparently, Solid State Logic weren't even considered at this point because of their low 'marketing profile'.) Both MCI and Harrison consoles looked 'pretty good' but the engineering staff involved weren't 100% impressed. Not until, that is, they eventually cast their technical eyes over one of the prototype SSL consoles, at which time it became obvious that the latter's 'amazing ingenuity and imagination of design' made it the ideal desk for Town House.

Studio 2 proper is 'L-shaped' and wraps around the control room on two sides. A fairly dead, well-trapped rhythm section and drum booth area leads through a glass door to a very lively room facing the control room window. Red Noise, a band formed recently by ex-Be Bop Deluxe person Bill Nelson, had set their drum kit up in there and the sound was nothing short of astounding.

An odd sight was a thick trap door in the floor leading down to a 10ft wide cellar, which functions as an echo chamber for Studio 1. Or a guitar amp can be set up at one end of the cellar and mics placed at various points along its length to pick up multiple delay and reverb patterns. (Town House engineers also think that it would be interesting to find out what a drum kit sounded like down there.)

Road crews are also well catered for. A raised loading and unloading bay at the side of the studios allows equipment to be taken straight from a truck into the corridor running past Studios 1 and 2. The bay is reached through a sliding door from the street so rain and other nasties shouldn't slow down the proceedings at all. Access to Studio 2 is only a few feet away, while gear for Studio 1 needs to be shunted a few yards further on and up a short flight of steps.

Considering the facilities, studio rates are not unreasonable at £55/hour for Studio 1 and £45/hour for Studio 2, with a 20% surcharge operating after 6pm fo(Contact Details)01-743 9313. Town House is located within half a mile of Shepherds Bush Green, only half an hour from the centre of London and Heathrow Airport. You can't miss it as you pass down Goldhawk Road; it's the long building graced with a tasteful mural of a Georgian town house (surprise, surprise) courtesy of artist Ken White (see fab pic).