MILESTONE STUDIOS

CAPE TOWN'S PREMIER RECORDING STUDIO COMPLEX

Milestone Studios is Cape Town’s premier recording studio complex.

Whether you’re a musician looking to produce your next album, an agency wanting to record a world-class voice-over, a film company searching for a soundproof location, or a production house looking for award-winning composers, you’ve come to the right place.

We are SAG-AFTRA-approved for COVID safety and are set up to connect to studios worldwide via Source Connect for voice work and ADR. We have a Dolby-enabled 7.1.4 Atmos mixing studio available for spatial audio. We are also fully operational during load-shedding.

Our large music studio can accommodate an orchestra, choir, or film shoot. We use Pro Tools Ultimate HDX to provide you with crystal-clear audio. Our equipment includes a Raindirk Symphony console, Yamaha grand piano, Fender Rhodes, as well as a range of amplifiers from Fender, VOX, Mesa Boogie and Orange. We have hundreds of microphones and decades of experience.

Milestone Studios

WHAT WE DO

Large scale music recording in Studio 1
Post-production for film, radio and TV commercials in Studios 2, 3, 4 and 5
Final mix and sound design for film and television
Music scoring by our award-winning in-house composers
Music supervision and rights clearances for Feature films and documentaries

Murray Anderson started Milestone Studios with Patrick Lee Thorp and Zayn Adam in 1987, to record demo songs for songwriters who were contracted to Mountain Records at the time. They included musicians like Robin Auld, Lesley Rae Dowling, Robbie Jansen, Louis Ribeiro, and many others. The studio was one of the first tenants in the Old Castle Brewery building in Woodstock, and consisted of a four-track Tascam cassette recorder, a Shure SM58 microphone, a Yamaha DX5 keyboard and RX5 drum machine, and an SPX90 signal processor.

After a few years, Murray Anderson bought out his partners, and moved to the UCA Building in Bloem Street in central Cape Town. This was to be the studio’s home until 2004. During the years up to 2004, the studio expanded from a single room featuring a Soundcraft 2400 mixing console and a 24-track Otari MTR90 2-inch tape recorder, to three fully-equipped ProTools rooms, one of which had a live recording room capable of recording bands and choirs.

Engineers who worked full-time for Milestone in this period include Pat Foster, who later became heavily involved in the supervision of the building of the new studios mentioned below, Paul Zimmer, Al Etto, Lance Field and Madoda Mditshwa.

Murray Stewart, who had previously worked at Sonovision Studios in Johannesburg, and B&S Studios in Cape Town, joined Milestone as a partner in 1993, and played a major part in the growth and success of the studio. He decided to retire from the sound game in 2007 and go farming.

At the end of 2004, the building housing the studio premises was bought by a developer and demolished, and a new building was constructed. A section of this new building was purchased, and ex-South African architect Ivan Kadey, now based in Los Angeles, designed a state-of-the-art studio.

The studios were built over a period of three years, with the structural shell being completed in mid 2006, and the acoustic shell 18 months later. A dedicated air-conditioning plant room ensured the minimum of noise transmission to the recording areas. The studios are all built on the “room-within-a-room” principle: by a combination of floating concrete floor slabs, walls isolated from the structure by rubber sway braces, and acoustic ceilings suspended from spring hangers, the rooms are de-coupled from the structure of the building. This creates superior sound isolation.

The control room in Studio One was constructed around the “FrontWall” design, patented by Ivan Kadey and his former partner at Waterland, Vincent van Haaff. The aluminium structure was shipped from Los Angeles, together with the custom Waterland speaker system and other electronic components, and assembled on site. 48 microphone lines from the main music recording room, and another 48 from the four isolation booths, are fed into the Raindirk Symphony LN2 console, which was completely re-capped on installation.

The end result is a studio complex that can hold its own with anything else on the continent.

testimonials

The music you composed and produced is not only beautiful, but sensitively appropriate and helps to achieve the authenticity that has been my aim in making this film. I was also extremely impressed with your professionalism at all stages of the process. It has been a joy and a pleasure being in your company and working with you side by side.

John Boorman, “In My Country”
Platoon has been working with Milestone Studios in many forms and for many years for studio usage, writing camps, post-production, content, and most recently on Atmos. Working with Milestone and their entire team has always been a beautiful experience, not just from my perspective but from the constant great feedback I get from artists about the super-caring engineers and the facility. Some special songs have been born in those studio walls, and I am looking forward to what is to come.

Hagar Graiser, Music Lead Platoon SA
Murray and his team have always gone the extra mile in providing an exceptional recording environment. Cinemagic regularly records works for full orchestra and we always know that by the time the orchestra arrives, everything is in place, set-up and double checked. The Milestone Studios team are always highly attentive to the needs of the orchestra and ensure that the experience is both extremely positive and artistically fulfilling.

John Walton, Musical Director: Cinemagic Scoring Pty (Ltd)
I have received nothing but glowing compliments on the score from a diverse audience and I can say without reservation that I am delighted with the work achieved. Working with Murray was, simply put, nothing but a pleasure. He was quick to understand the brief, always ready and able to inject his own creativity into executing it.
Throughout the months we worked together, Milestone achieved every significant deadline, and were extremely flexible when, on occasion, the production was forced to revise targets and shift goalposts. Murray is a brilliant composer, who has excellent performance skills and the necessary technical acumen required to execute the job at hand with grace and panache and minimal fuss.

Tim Greene, director of “A Boy Called Twist”
Together with the CBC Documentary Unit, I want to specifically thank you for the truly exceptional job you did on “Madiba: The Life and Times of Nelson Mandela”. In a matter of a few weeks, you managed to put together one of the finest documentary scores we’ve had here.
Not only were you able to assemble distinguished musical talents at short notice, to alter and amend according to the needs of a changing documentary structure, but you were able to transmit takes through cyberspace to our Toronto edit suit with amazing speed, accuracy and sound quality.

Robin Benger, director of “Madiba: The Life and Times of Nelson Mandela”
I’d like to thank you for the wonderful work you did scoring Hopeville. Despite the constraints of time, budget and distance, the process was nonetheless a fruitful one. You were able to interpret my brief with immense subtlety and intuition, creating a nuanced score that worked very well. Thank you for all the hard work and tireless commitment.

John Trengove, director of “Hopeville”
Even though we are based in Denmark and Murray has been working from Cape Town, we have found it very easy to communicate and work on the music together. All pieces have precisely expressed the feeling and atmosphere intended for the sequences.

Mette Heide, Executive producer Plus Pictures, Denmark
The soul of Felix and its emotional impact is evident in the superb music score by Murray Anderson. It’s music you will definitely remember and a soundtrack worth investing in.

Daniel Dercksen, BizCommunity review of “Felix”
What makes a recording studio truly outstanding? As composer and producer, I have worked in many of the UK’s most advanced studios, for the BBC and many independent broadcasters. I have found that what counts is not just the excellent quality of recording equipment and the skills of the audio engineers. Most of all it is the shared commitment to excellence and a sympathetic manner on behalf of the studio staff that make the recording experience most worthwhile. I have been delighted with the balanced recording quality of my “Song for Ukraine” project which Milestone recently recorded, edited and mixed.

For me, the studio ticks all those boxes of excellence I have mentioned and more. I would unreservedly recommend Cape Town’s Milestone Studio.

Michael Lawson, composer

MILESTONE STUDIOS

CAPE TOWN'S PREMIER RECORDING STUDIO COMPLEX

WHAT WE DO

testimonials

John Boorman, “In My Country”

Hagar Graiser, Music Lead Platoon SA

John Walton, Musical Director: Cinemagic Scoring Pty (Ltd)

Tim Greene, director of “A Boy Called Twist”

Robin Benger, director of “Madiba: The Life and Times of Nelson Mandela”

John Trengove, director of “Hopeville”

Mette Heide, Executive producer Plus Pictures, Denmark

Daniel Dercksen, BizCommunity review of “Felix”

Michael Lawson, composer

Location

Contact us

gemini award winners