Hip-hop artist, producer, record executive and entrepreneur Dr. Dre has upgraded the main room at his Aftermath Entertainment studio facility in Los Angeles to a 96-input Solid State Logic Duality Fuse SuperAnalogue mixing console
Aftermath Entertainment’s Head engineer, Quentin “Q” Gilkey, has worked not just with Dr. Dre but also many of the artists on the label’s roster, including Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Anderson.Paak, The Game and Earl Sweatshirt. He began working with Dr. Dre 15 years ago, becoming Aftermath’s lead engineer in 2014. He reveals that there were two main reasons for the upgrade to the Solid State Logic Duality Fuse. Firstly, Gilkey says, “Because Dre mixes utilising the whole board — in our case, all 96 channels — we require a method that allows us to recall at a fast pace, and Total Recall offers this.”
The fact that multiple people can work simultaneously to recall the console’s previous settings was a major influence on Dre’s decision to purchase a Duality Fuse, he says.
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Secondly, he continues, older analogue consoles inevitably require maintenance, resulting in downtime while issues are resolved. “With the Duality Fuse, we knew we were not going to have to deal with that issue. In today’s studio, things move much faster than when tape was involved. Now, we’re able to retain that analogue sound without the analogue maintenance that once stood in our way and remain creative.”
Dr. Dre
Dr. Dre has owned or worked on every model of large-format Solid State Logic analogue music console since the E series, commenting:
“The first love of my life was the SSL board.”
Aftermath Entertainment has relied for decades on SSL analogue consoles for the depth and punch they deliver, Gilkey says. “There is nothing like the depth you get from mixing on an SSL Duality Fuse has somehow taken that to a new level, and we hear it. That is the biggest difference to my ears — when everything is spread out and mixed on the Duality Fuse you can really accentuate and elevate the height, width and depth, compared to when mixing in-the-box.”
For local Solid State Logic enquiries, keep reading at Amber Technology.
