32Classic Console
Beautiful analog tone is at the heart of the 32Classic mixing consoles
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London, U.K., March 5, 2026 — Andrew Hale, BAFTA and Grammy Award-winning composer, songwriter, producer and keyboard player with the band Sade, has outfitted his private Owl Space Studio in northwest London with a Harrison 32Classic 32-channel analog mixing console. The new console, complete with 64 bi-directional channels of Dante and premium A-to-D and D-to-A converters, acts as a centrepiece for Hale’s creative activities, enabling him to access any source in the studio and adjacent live space without moving from the sweet spot between the monitor speakers.
Hale, who joined Sade (the singer and the band that also bears her name) shortly after their live debut in 1983, previously employed a computer-based production setup at Owl Space, which he has operated for over 20 years. Now, he says, “With the Harrison desk as a centerpiece, I’m able to write and record with very little friction because of the freedom it gives me and the ease of workflow. It provides a way of using electronic equipment, keyboards and drum machines and have all those present in a manner that makes my workflow super transparent and easy.”
Hale won his BAFTA Award in 2011, along with co-composer and orchestrator Simon Hale (no relation), for the soundtrack of Rockstar Games’ L.A. Noire video game. These days, he says, “I do music for fashion shows and I still DJ quite a bit. But I'm always playing around. I just love all this old equipment. It's like coming into the lab every day.”
Over the years, Hale has switched his studio between a console-based and computer-based workflow a few times. “Now we're in a world again where there's a lot of hardware and people want to hook things up together and have six keyboards and four drum machines and stuff like that,” he observes. With the 32Classic at the center of his workflow, “It’s almost like running a live 32-track session, putting everything through a fantastic sounding signal path and getting it into the DAW with Dante.”
In a DAW-based workflow, he notes, “There is a sort of barrier between you and the computer. You're immediately putting plug-ins and compressors and stuff on just because you think you have to.” Whereas, with the Harrison console, “Even without the EQ and the filters, just putting something through the mic amp and getting a little bit of harmonic distortion, you're immediately up and running. And the EQ is so musical.”
Beyond the audio features, he continues, “I really like the ergonomics of this desk, the width of the channels and the ease of getting to everything.” The console’s frame design, with its uniquely deep armrest, also allows him to keep the computer keyboard or a laptop computer easily accessible, again, without having to turn away from the monitor speakers. “I even put little keyboards on there when I'm writing,” he says. “It’s all about how you work, day in, day out, so I can't overemphasize how great all these things are. The console becomes integral to everything that you're doing, ergonomically as well as technically.”
Hale was unfamiliar with Dante networking but discovered that it brings significant flexibility to his workflow — plus, it made the initial installation virtually plug and play. “We brought the desk in, plugged in the Ethernet cables and 10 minutes later we had music coming out,” he recalls. Further, he has also recently integrated Harrison Audio’s D510dante, the only 500 Series rack with a Dante interface, outfitting it with Harrison Comp dynamics modules. “So there are 10 compressors that I can assign anywhere.”
Two 16-channel Dante interfaces, one either side of the room, allow Hale to select a different set of sources to send through the 32Classic in just a few minutes. The system offers much more flexibility than having everything permanently wired through a patchbay and into the console, he says.
“It's effectively a patchbay,” he explains. “When I want to change my way of working or use a different set of equipment, that's a five-minute job, and then I've got 32 new things coming out of the faders — and I'm not even behind the desk. I didn't want to go down the route of having everything plugged in and then change my way of working. It also enables me to have a live room with mics on the piano and then a little Dante box to integrate it back into the control room. All these things are just huge problem solvers.”
Hale says that after considering the available new console options he was ultimately drawn to Harrison’s new 32Classic, which builds on the heritage of Harrison’s classic consoles of the 1970s, designs which introduced the inline module concept and pioneered 32 multitrack bus switching. “Nostalgia was a big part of it,” he admits. Sade’s debut album, 1984’s Diamond Life, and second full-length, Promise, released in 1985, were both produced by Robin Millar at his Power Plant London facility, which had Harrison MR3 consoles in two of its studios. In a Billboard interview at the time, Millar described the Harrison console as “full of beefy goodness.” Both chart-topping albums sold millions of copies and Promise earned the band their first of many Grammy Awards.
Hale and the band were always drawn to the musical warmth of consoles like the Harrison, he says. “I trusted that the sound of the 32Classic would be somewhat what I remembered or as had been described. The sonics are as important as the chords to me, and I get a kick out of the fact that the 808 drum machine sounds fantastic going through six channels of the desk. Other desks that are currently around could have done the job technically but maybe wouldn't have had that difference in sonics — and they certainly wouldn't have had the ergonomic feel.”