U2's Engineer Studio

Alastair McMillan has been touring with U2 since 2009 and wanted to set up a mixing facility at home so he could go back to working on studio mixing again and find a balance between studio and live sound engineering which is his ultimate goal.

He decided to create his Control Room in a pleasant but uncommon place: a room with a view to the sea, in his home, near Belfast, Northern Ireland. "The room I wanted to treat was very reflective and I didn’t think it would be possible to fix, but they did an incredible job. My briefing to Big Bear Sound (Vicoustic's Distributor in Ireland) was that I wanted to hear only the speakers and completely remove the room which they managed to do extremely well", says Alastair McMillan.

The result is an outstanding set where the cutting-edge acoustic solutions prove they can solve reflections or reverberation from outside. "The acoustic panels are extremely powerful", says the sound engineer.

A sound engineer since 1989, Alastair McMillan has engineering credits on four Grammy winning albums: "Voodoo Lounge", from Rolling Stones (Best Rock Album 1994), "Riverdance", from various artists (Best Musical Show Album 1995) "What's Wrong With This Picture?", from Van Morrison (Best Contemporary Blues Album 2004), "Landmarks", from Clannad (Best New Age Album 1998).

He started as an assistant engineer at Windmill Lane Studios in Dublin and went on to be the house engineer, manager and eventually co-director. After that he went freelance and opened his own studio, before taking a full time position with Van Morrison as his recording engineer. "I spent 9 years with Van before an opportunity came up to go full time on the road with U2. I’ve been touring with them since 2009 mixing monitors which has been an incredible experience. Because I’ve been almost exclusively on the road for the last 10 years, I’m only starting up with studio mixing again. So far it’s just been local artists and some U2 work".

Aside from his work with Bono and his partners, there is "a very vibrant music scene in Northern Ireland", and Alastair has been working with some local artists, like Gareth Dunlop. "His recordings are very detailed so now that I have the room it really makes mixing his tracks an absolute pleasure :)"

Installation by Big Bear Sound. 
Thanks to Alastair McMillan.