External studios

If a recording cannot take place at our studio in Clerkenwell, we have connections with studios around the world. Our productions have been recorded in Glasgow, Manchester, Barbados, Los Angeles, Toronto, Auckland, Vancouver, Paris and Melbourne to name a few.

Sound design

Thanks to our network of musicians and editors, we are particularly well-equipped to produce children’s audiobooks. We also possess a sound effects library of over 10,000 items and can commission or create new music and effects for titles recorded in our studio. We can sometimes be found in on location or in the studio recording custom-made foley; we’ve used this for for adverts, enhanced audiobooks and children’s audiobooks. Listen to these examples: the podcast advert for Funny You Should Ask, Max Porter’s Lanny, and a full soundscape for Dara McAnulty’s Wild Child.

Music

We can commission music to suit most genres for use on children’s audiobooks (to replace the pictures!), for the intro and outro on non-illustrated books, themes for podcasts and adverts. We can also license library music, including classical orchestral recordings.

Recording in other languages and pronunciation help

Moreover, Strathmore has a varied network of native language readers and speakers; in the past we have drawn upon their expertise in New Testament Greek, Polish, Latin, Hungarian, German, and more, both for pronunciation help and also for recording in their native languages (such as the Bloomberg Connects Audio for the Courtauld Gallery through Green Lions Limited).

Restoration

We use world-class software to restore old recordings. We have devices capable of transferring reel to reel quarter inch tape, cassettes, and which can rip CDs with a far lower error rate than on a PC. Our Pro Tools plug-ins (including Isotope) are highly effective at removing background noise, hisses and even overcompression from recordings. For example William Golding’s original author recordings of Sea Trilogy were restored using our equipment. We can edit and split to modern requirements such as remastering with the accepted RMS levels and time restraints for sites like Audible.

Podcasts

We can record in-studio podcasts, guide guests through remote podcast recordings and also a hybrid of both. We’ve worked on podcast series of Sara Pascoes’ Sex, Power and Money, Lenny Henry and Marcus Ryder’s Black British Lives Matter and Auticon’s Autism: In Conversation With Auticon podcasts.

Hosting remote recording jobs

With our engineer running the recording external producers can ring in and direct recordings remotely. The producer can be from anywhere in the world and listen in live, our engineer can mark up the text and take care of the talent with same day delivery of raw audio to publisher’s editing team.

Portable recording kit

We have commissioned a portable recording kit consisting of three foldable soundproofed screens that almost fully wrap round, a mic, interface and reading desk mounted on a stand, a computer and headphones. The entire kit can be controlled remotely over the internet and can be delivered by car.