The Ancienne Belgique in house recording studio has, since its opening in 1997, recorded more than 1.000 concerts. It is fully integrated into the venue, and linked to both the 2000 visitors? capacity main hall, and the 250 capacity club.

It is designed with one purpose only : concert recording and mixing ? whether this is for surround sound DVD, live CD?s, tv shows, live radio broadcast, direct stream audio, etc. In short, if an artist wishes to record his or her show, all we have to do is plug one multicable into the wall and our 48-track digital recording studio is ready for recording.

It's the easiest way to record professionally...

No extra time is wasted on setting up the equipment (including transportation), installation and checking of the cabling and interfacing with the PA-system, as everything is integrated into the venue ? including 6 ambient mics. Recording a show at the AB will not take you one minute longer than your usual setup and soundcheck schedule.
The link to our studio takes the microphone signals straight from stage but splits them actively to ensure a clean and hot signal. From there, they're recorded straight via crystal clear and very silent Euphonix preamps onto hard drive, without any EQ or compression, not compromising any options at mixdown, at a sampling rate of your choice.

At an unbeatable price

The integration of our studio allows the whole recording part to be performed by one engineer (instead of three or more engineers and stage assistants). Which in turn allows us to keep costs down to a minimum, and present you a Main Hall full 48-track digital recording, including engineer and hard disk for 850 € (see rates) page

Why record live anyway

The state of the art recording equipment combined with the integration into a fantastic hall makes the AB studio the perfect choice for all high end audio projects, such as SACD, DVD-Audio, Live CD?s and DVD?s.
But with a price tag this low, a recording can be interesting even if there's no such plans (yet) ; even B-sides, new demo-tracks or simply archiving purposes can justify having it all on multitrack.

And where to mix it ?

Although we have our own excellent mix facilities (including an automated, full recall and surround capable Euphonix CS3000) we've made sure that your multitrack recording can be mixed anywhere in the world, by choosing the high end industry standard ProTools HD Accel³ hard disk recorder, offering 56 simultaneous analog recording channels at 24bit resolution, with sampling rates up to 192Khz.
Taking your multitrack recording home has never been easier : we provide you with a fast, portable, and re-usable FireWire hard drive, ready +/- 30 minutes after the show. Other backup options (DVD, AIT,?) are also possible.

And what about tape property ?

With all of this good news, you might start wondering, where?s the catch? There is none.
The Ancienne Belgique does not retain any rights on or copies of your recording. As with any normal studio booking, the tapes are yours to take home straight after the concert, after the invoice has been taken care of.

Our 'track record'...

Artists who've already enjoyed the professional results, the ease of use and the low cost of the Ancienne Belgique Recording Studio include (see also our track record page for a more complete list) :

Massive Attack - Alanis Morrisette - Calexico - Arno - Rachid Taha - Manic Street Preachers - Stereo MC's ? Simple Minds - Belle & Sebastian - Bush - Iggy Pop - The Cure - The Streets - QOTSA - Faithless - Fun Lovin' Criminals - Judas Priest - Blondie - Tricky - Machinehead - The Tragically Hip - Basement Jaxx - Ben Folds Five - Rachid Taha - Luka Bloom - Ben Harper - Madredeus - Billy Bragg - George Clinton - dEUS - Dream Theater - Einsturzende Neubauten - Indochine - Lamb - Morphine - Graham Parker - Axelle Red - The Walkabouts....

Contact :

For more information contact the studio technician through mail studio@abconcerts.be or telephone +32-2-548.24.15