Terminal3 goes to SSL HQ...

[terminal3]

Breaking news kids, Terminal3 has been invited to SSL HQ in Oxford this Friday for a factory/studio tour, Duality hands-on and more...

I shall post a report and hopefully pics maybe sometime at the weekend! Bookmark this thread! And if you have any interesting questions about any of the hardware/analogue products (not the digital/Duende stuff this time around, sorry, time is limited), send 'em my way and I'll see if I can get answers either through my awesome powers of observation or direct interrogation.

Watch this space!!!!

[TrevCircleStudios]

Nice one T3!

Ask them if I can have a free Duality please. I'm willing to show people around the board at weekends in recompense.

[Tifstorey]

I'll pay 80% RRP of whatever gear you can smuggle out.

[terminal3]

Alrighty boys n' girls... what a day!!!

Rather than post a pile of pics here I invite you to a Flickr set which has photos and descriptions of all I snapped here.

I got to Oxford just before 11am where the inimitable Jim Motley collected me from the station and took me to SSL HQ just north of the city in Begbroke. It's a lovely campus - a factory building, a studio building and what they call "the Pavilion" which is a staff fun area, all surrounded by village pubs, former convents and green space filled with wild bunny rabbits.

We started the day in the studio complex, playing with a Duality - well, more specifically noodling around with the original multitrack of Peter Gabriel's 'Sledgehammer' through the console. WHAT A F*CKING BOARD. That's all I'm gonna say - the entry-level price is £80k and they know I'm not gonna buy one but honestly it is the best console I've ever seen - so many flavours of sound are possible - the DAW returns can be patched via the line-ins or the pres, which means VHD is possible (look it up) if you like on your returns. Both E & G EQs and dynamics are available. The classic filters are all there. Pro Tools control is amazing, and other DAWs are even better. Surround is easy. The profile is low so monitor reflections are not an issue. Basically, if they had Kool-Aid I'd have drunk it - but instead I drank way too much coffee instead, so had to use the loo. See the pics - their sense of humour is very good indeed - and I'd like to think that Peter Gabriel himself wee'd in the same loo that I did.

Moving on from that, we had a lovely Q&A with the design engineers where I told them what I loved and what I, erm, did not love about my SSL kit (in this case, my two Alpha Channels) - although we also talked about the X-Rack/Mynx system and what I'd like to see happen with those in the future given the choice.

I let rip here, too, don't worry - even though many of you know I'm an SSL fanboi I certainly told them what I'd like to see in the future on the so-called "low-end" stuff, and where they went right and where they've gone not-so-right.

We also got a very close look at the X-Desk and an X-Rack filled with 4k modules [although it wasn't "wired for sound"] - this was cool as in the end it was actually really obvious that it's a steal at around £1600, and of course the expandability via the X-Rack system is unbelievable.

Next up was the factory tour - they actually build consoles in Begbroke, and ship 'em out all over the world. You'll see pics of Dualitys either ready or nearly-ready to go and you'll see pics of AWS900s in various stages of undress. Their test rooms all have Tannoy Little Reds, too, something I neglected to take a picture of but it shows they've got some vintage taste there.

After seeing all that, wandering around the digital area a bit (this was amusing, the Duende beta test area has all sorts of crazy stuff lying about, from an Mbox 2 to a Mackie MCU to a copy of Cubase 5... clearly they're trying to test anything and everything with the Duende system) - we headed back to the studios to see all the different rooms. Each of the C-series consoles, plus the AWS900 has its' own "demo" room, each one designed by a different acoustician but all of them interesting in their own right!

After that, it was time to collect my free SSL T-shirt and head back into town! Because I had my train booked in advance, I wandered around Oxford a bit (hence some of the silly non-SSL pics) before coming back to London.

All in all, t'was a very cool day, and mucho thanks to Jim & Sam especially for feeding us way too much caffeine (& biscuits) and making me lust after many things I will not be able to buy in the short term...

[TrevCircleStudios]

Thanks for posting T3... Am off to look at the photos!

[modz1]

Great reading, I'm behind Trev for pics..

[modz1]

Be-Jay-Zus.. Look at the difference between the Beatles '87 'Strawberry Fields' remaster waveform and the '09 Keane one..

Beatles

Keane - Ouch!

PS Nice pics T3!

[TrevCircleStudios]

Hilarious. I've spent a lot more timein Exeter college quad than you could shake a stick at!

56 is the radcliffe camera

[TrevCircleStudios]

Originally Posted by modz1

Be-Jay-Zus.. Look at the difference between the Beatles '87 'Strawberry Fields' remaster waveform and the '09 Keane one..

Beatles

Keane - Ouch!

PS Nice pics T3!

Ah yes. Dynamics. Sigh. I remember when I were't lad. We used to go down't pit....
[etc]

[sureno]

Great read T3, would of loved to hear how the character and sound of "sledgehammer" changed while you where tweaking

[sphelan]

Top job...I reckon a full-time position at DV is in the bag now!

[terminal3]

Originally Posted by modz1

Be-Jay-Zus.. Look at the difference between the Beatles '87 'Strawberry Fields' remaster waveform and the '09 Keane one..

Beatles

Keane - Ouch!

PS Nice pics T3!

Those screengrabs were for a different thread. Search for 'Keane' on this board..

[terminal3]

A few other interesting facts about SSL -

1) They used to be based in a former convent across the road from their current HQ.

2) X-Rack and Duende stuff aren't made onsite - there's a subcontracted factory which makes them elsewhere (but still in England!) - only consoles are manufactured in Begbroke - everything from the Duality down the Matrix.

3) In case you're wondering why all the "old-school" consoles - well, they're not that old - 10-15 years in some cases and the reason they have them onsite is because many clients are still using them and if they need to troubleshoot/replicate problems etc they can fire 'em up and work it all out. No 4ks around though. In some cases if they even need to pull a whole channel strip out of one, for example, and ship it to a client as a replacement they will - then they'll get the non-working one in, refurbish it and put it back into one of their consoles. Very, very good customer support!

4) There is an SSL Japan office too! Some very important people from NHK and SSL Japan were visiting yesterday too. NHK is a big client of theirs, LOTS of consoles in use there, mainly broadcast of course!

5) Their studios are surprisingly well-equipped in addition to of course being excellently designed, acoustically - I didn't have time to snap too many pics of all the details (I was paying attention mainly to the Duality!), but they've got a mic locker filled with vintage mics, lots of outboard, everything from TC effects units to an old modified Teletronix LA2A and more... all are Apple Mac/Pro Tools HD based.

6) They make great coffee, especially for Brits. Drank way too much of it.

Anyway, they're a first-class operation with a genuine passion for what they do - this is the complete opposite of the stack-'em-high-sell-'em-cheap attitude that many companies have these days, and even the stuff that is built to hit a specific pricepoint (which they admit can be challenging in this day & age) is done with love and care. They're interested in ALL of their customers, not just the ones who drop £80k+ on the big boards. Definitely a top notch group of people!

Now go buy a Mynx!

[terminal3]

Originally Posted by sureno

Great read T3, would of loved to hear how the character and sound of "sledgehammer" changed while you where tweaking

We messed about with a number of things - everything from VHD distortion on the line returns on a variety of instruments to parallel compression on drums (basically demonstrating bus routing and how easy it is) to showing the 2 different flavours of EQ and dynamics on channels to even knocking up a rough surround mix of it in about 2 minutes. So easy to do all of those things... I would say we didn't end up with "one different mix" - we just screwed around with a whole pile of things.

Some of the keyboards in that song are what any of us would call "very badly performed," actually, but you'd never know it until you solo them in the mix! It's a good lesson that cutting and chopping to modern grids as is possible in modern DAWs is not always a great idea - if you've got some "groove" going on that is borderline "off-time" then leave it in and see what happens when you build everything around it.

[sureno]

Originally Posted by terminal3

if you've got some "groove" going on that is borderline "off-time" then leave it in and see what happens when you build everything around it.

almost serendipity like