In NYC’s Precision Sound Studios, owner and engineer/producer Alex Sterling has created an oasis of technical excellence and creative expertise on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. As part of a recent re-fit and overall technical upgrade, he has installed a 48-channel Solid State Logic Duality δelta Pro Station SuperAnalogue mixing console in Control Room A.

The upgrade was specified by Sterling and implemented by the Malvicino Design Group, and includes a comprehensive wiring scheme, a large video screen for Film/TV post work, and overall layout adjustments and refurbishment

‘I have always wanted to create a working space for music production that has the comfort of a person’s home or living room but with the technical and professional capabilities of a larger commercial facility,’ Sterling explains.

The live room can host around 15 musicians, which means that Sterling is as in demand for band recording, film and television work as he is for electronic, pop, and hip-hop mixing and production. The new Duality δelta console is a creative tool that meets his own standards, yet also puts his studio onto a more high-end commercial footing with outside producers: ‘During my console search I carefully researched and demoed several other modern consoles, many of which did have some substantial sonic attributes, however the Duality has the most developed functionality for a modern workflow and its sonics are spectacular.’

‘The integration with the DAW was very important to me, as was the high channel count – and having a full complement of processing available on every channel,’ he adds. ‘I could be spending twice as much to get full filters, dynamics and EQ on every channel with another console, and I still wouldn’t be getting any of the DAW control functionality that Duality offers.’

One of the most striking features of the studio is the live room space, which also happens to be a library of around 3,000 books. ‘Believe it or not, they have an acoustic value as well as an aesthetic value,’ says Sterling.

Precision Sound has  been operating with the new console for several months; the first session was a TV scoring session for composer Michael Bacon. ‘That was a good first test,’ Sterling reports. ‘Everything was flawless, everything sounded great...

‘I’ve used the console’s channel preamps for most of the tracking that I’ve done through the desk. I was not expecting to like the preamps as much as I do. For tracking, the SSL preamp is as transparent as any of the esteemed, clean boutique pre-amps, and it’s extremely low noise, which some other preamps just can’t claim.’

Sterling is also complimentary about the SuperAnalogue bus architecture of the Duality: ‘One of the things I’ve been experimenting with is using the console’s mix bus to give me volume and level for a final mix print, but without having to use peak limiting. By driving the console mix bus with a lot of level, I am able to get a much more aggressive full and forward sound – without needing to lose or cut off transients with a dynamics processor for volume.

‘I’ve been shocked how rich and full I can make things sound by essentially ignoring the vu meters and letting them pin completely into the red – completely brutalising the capture chain. The desk can really take it. You can clip the channels a bit, but the mix bus itself is pretty much unclippable. At least, I haven’t managed to do any damage with it yet.’

For Sterling, the last few months have proven that the Duality delivers sonics, an integrated DAW workflow and a creative approach to production: ‘To my ear, signal processing is generally superior in the analogue domain,’ he says, ‘But some of the creative things that people are doing now really only exist within the DAW environment. To not become disconnected from the DAW while working on the console was very important to me because I’m working on modern productions that have modern production requirements. This console really has set the professional standard for this decade.’