Solid State Logic (SSL) mixing...

[Daniel_Isaiah]

I'm having trouble understanding how these massive studio boards work. You see them in all the big Studios around the world. Everbody thats somebody in this biz says mixing on an SSL board sounds better. Now, I realize that the board is analogue in such that the signal is being EQ'd, filtered, compressed all on the board before anything digital can even touch it....but...what does the board playback from? Do these boards have hard disks in them for audio playback and if so, what is the sample rate??...I heard that you can bind them to pro-tools somehow....but I don't see anything on the digidesign site that has some sort of SSL driver. (I never heard of an SSL board being a control surface!!!) so what gives?? what's truly alalogue these days???

[Calvin]

The one thing that you have to know is that there are tons of ways that audio flows threw those giant SSL's. They are completely analog. So what happens is the audio goes threw them gets compressed and eq'd depending on what the engineer decides to do before going to tape and what he wants to do in the mixing, then all that audio goes out in huge snakes to Audio to digital converters and into pro-tools. Depending on what the engineer wants to hear he can listen to the audio before it goes to pro - tools or after it goes to pro-tools and is comming back out. They don't have to have any sync at all to pro-tools using these boards.

[slickrick]

.....and they, just like any other in-line board, mix the line input/output.

There's no HDD; they take external sources, like ProTools or 2inch (or whatever) and manipulate the audio.

Hmmm, was this a trick question?

[img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

Rick

[Stone Knife]

SSL makes digital consoles, too. Here is an example.

[mjames08]

From my experience, when someone uses an SSL, they are usually going to a 2" tape machine..

[iplaymusicsoftly]

From my experience, all SSL consoles contain a magic knob that summons tiny audio gnomes that furiously polish the audio as it goes by on the wires of the console....However, they can only be summoned if you are a producer who makes $100,000 or more a year. they can smell the money and are attracted to it, like moths to a flame.

Either that or I gotta stop inhaling... [img]images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[marcusb]

Originally posted by Calvin:
They don't have to have any sync at all to pro-tools using these boards.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">If that was the case you'd lose the benefit of using the transport and automation on the board!

The basic synopsis .. PT can be connected up as if it were a tape machine, in my limited SSL experience PT has basically been a tape machine with all the 888 inputs and outputs patched discretely to the board. All faders at unity, maybe a couple of special effect plugins here and there but all the mix automation is run off the board.

Smart research make a box called 2tools which allows you to drive the protools transport from the SSL board transport controls and automation. During a session you basically never have to look at the PT screen unless you need to edit something or load a new session, it's great! [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

I haven't had any first hand experience with the 9000J or K but I think there's more comprehensive support for driving protools from the board .. minimoog ?? [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

Cheers,
Marcus