Bars, restaurants, hotels and workplaces · Stirling · 2025
Studio King Street, Stirling
A podcast and video recording studio designed and installed inside a boutique aparthotel in Stirling city centre, with technology advice to the owners on what else the building could do.
Building
King Street Aparthotel, 45 King Street, Stirling: boutique serviced apartments with a recording studio, gym and meeting rooms
Client
King Street Aparthotel
Scope
Podcast and video studio design and installation; technology advice to the management team
Year
2025
The building
King Street Aparthotel is a boutique serviced-apartment building in the centre of Stirling, put together by owners who wanted it to be more than somewhere to sleep. Alongside the apartments there is a gym, meeting space and, unusually for a hotel of its size, a recording studio that guests and local businesses can book: Studio King Street.
The brief
The owners wanted a studio that a solo podcaster, an interviewer with a guest, or a small team could walk into and use without an engineer in the room, and that would record at a quality they could publish. Beyond the studio, they wanted a second opinion on the technology in the rest of the building and where it should go next. Our part was modest in the scale of the whole fit-out, and we were clear about that from the start.
What we designed
A room that records well before anything is plugged in
The studio is treated acoustically so that voices are clean and the room does not colour them, which matters more to a listener than any microphone. Seating and microphone positions were set out so that the room works for one person or three without moving furniture.
Equipment a guest can use
Broadcast microphones on arms at each seat, headphone monitoring, a recording interface and video capture, configured so that a session starts from one place. The aim was that a visitor who has never recorded a podcast leaves with a usable file, and a professional finds nothing missing.
Advice on the rest of the building
We worked with the management team and the other trades from the outset, and the studio led to a wider conversation about the building: control of lighting and media in the guest spaces, what the network needs to carry, and what could be added later without redoing the first fix. That advice is part of what we do on every project, whether or not we install what follows.
Inside the studio
What we handed over
A working studio that the aparthotel runs itself and offers to guests and to local businesses, and a technology plan for the rest of the building that the owners can pick up in stages. It has given a serviced-apartment building something few hotels of any size can offer.
Systems
- Studio Acoustic treatment, broadcast microphones on arms, headphone monitoring, recording interface, video capture
- Operation Set up to start from one place so that a guest can record without an engineer
- Advice Technology plan for guest spaces, lighting and media control, network and future additions
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Gaucho, Edinburgh
Restaurant audio and video on St Andrew Square
Planning a hotel or venue?
A studio, a gym screen or a meeting room is easy to add on the drawings and expensive to add after the plaster. If a hospitality building is being planned or refitted, tell us about it early and we will say what is worth doing and what is not.