Electronic musician and sound designer Richard Devine has added the SSL UF8, UC1 and 360° software to his Atlanta studio, bringing hardware control and tactile mixing back to the centre of his process.
Richard Devine doesn’t lack for complexity in his work. The Atlanta-based electronic musician and sound designer juggles music production for record labels alongside sonic landscapes for TV commercials, video games, branding and sound effects collections – projects that can easily stretch past 100 channels. Getting more hands on the mix and less reliant on a mouse was the goal when he brought SSL’s U-Series controllers into his setup.
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The addition of a UC1 plug-in controller, a pair of UF8 eight-channel DAW controllers, and SSL 360° software has made a tangible difference to how Devine works through a session. “I wanted to focus on doing more things with my hands and less on working with a mouse,” he explains. “Now I can use both hands when I’m mixing – making automation moves or fader changes, soloing channels – and it’s so much faster than working with a mouse.” On an Atmos mix, he notes, writing automation with a mouse takes roughly twice as long as it does with his SSL setup.
The visual side matters just as much. “The visual feedback you get from each of those controllers is just amazing,” says Devine. Running 360° software across a 49-inch ultra-wide display, he describes having a complete eye over everything happening in the mix – channel strips, metering and all.
The UC1 comes bundled with the SSL Bus Compressor 2 plug-in, and it’s clearly a favourite. “Everybody knows that compressor; it’s just got that classic sound,” Devine says. “It’s great for your master mix, to give it a little more grabbiness and push things out with the SSL punch it’s known for.” He also reaches for the Channel Strip 2 plug-in regularly – inspired by SSL’s SuperAnalogue 9000 K console – particularly for its EQ and filters on drums and mix elements competing for space.
SSL’s Meter Pro plug-in handles loudness duties, covering True Peak, RMS, VU, PPM and phase correlation, along with presets for Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Netflix and international broadcast standards – essential for an artist distributing across multiple platforms.
For Devine, the system strikes the right balance between analogue and digital. “The UF8 and UC1, integrated with the DAW environment, take all the beautiful things about those consoles and modernizes them into a small form factor that makes sense.”
Full details at solidstatelogic.com. For local enquiries, head here.
