Having relied for decades on SSL analogue consoles, Dr Dre’s Aftermath Entertainment has upgraded the main room at its studio facility in LA with a 96-input Solid State Logic Duality Fuse SuperAnalogue mixing console.
Hip-hop artist, producer, record executive and entrepreneur’s debut1992 solo album The Chronic introduced G-Funk to the world and defined West Coast hip-hop, with Dre having owned or worked on every model of large-format SSL analogue console since the E series ‘The first love of my life was the SSL board,’ he says.
Alongside Dre, Aftermath Entertainment head engineer Quentin ‘Q’ Gilkey has worked with many of the artists on the Aftermath label, including Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Anderson.Paak, The Game and Earl Sweatshirt.
‘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,’ he says.
Additionally, 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,’ he says. ‘In today’s studio, things move much faster than when tape was involved. Now, we’re able to retain that analogue sound without the maintenance that once stood in our way.’
The team had previously tried to persuade Dre to swap his 9000 K for a Duality, but he resisted until they were working on Snoop Dogg’s Missionary album: ‘We’re sitting in Dre’s studio with Eminem, and Dre’s playing him the album. Dre asks Marshall [Eminem] “Don’t you use a Duality? How do you like it, and is the recall faster?”. Marshall praises the Duality and Dre turns to me and says, “Let’s order one”. And that was it.’
It was an easy transition from the older console to the Duality Fuse, Gilkey says. ‘An SSL team came in and gave us a crash course over two days on new features, routing, et cetera, which really made it painless for us. But if you have experience with SSL’s previous large format consoles, you will be able to sit down and navigate this rather easily. Visually, it is an easy transition; the difference comes in sonic options – you have a lot more now.
The Duality readily accommodated studio’s production workflow. ‘Usually, we have Dre’s production team all set up at their computers running Logic, Pro Tools, et cetera,’ Gilkey says. ‘Each computer has its own interface, which is output to the Duality on individual channels. Dre sometimes likes to “EQ to tape”, as he would say. Once we like the sound of those specific channels the signal is sent direct out to Pro Tools, where they’re recorded. Sometimes we’re capturing a single producer recording a single sound or sometimes all five producers at once.’
‘I’ll organise and arrange all the files for playback, outputting each separate sound to individual channels for Dre to have control over level, EQ and compression as we’re creating,’ Gilkey continues. ‘In essence, once we’re done with the production, we also have a great rough mix ready to be printed. When it comes time to mix, we’ll check all levels for proper gain staging from Pro Tools then zero all EQ and compression to give Dre a blank slate to start with.’
The new desk offers the Aftermath team four-band parametric EQ based on SSL’s ‘242 Black Knob’, which was developed for the original 4000 E series console. It can be switched to deliver the characteristics of SSL’s G series console EQ, allowing engineers to choose per-channel between the git of the ‘E’ or the precision and tightness of the ‘G’ as needed in a session.
‘We have all 96 channels set to G-EQ, which maybe plays into the punch and great harmonic gain we get from the Duality EQs,’ Gilkey says. ‘You can also add harmonic drive to each channel path on the Duality, and you can push the EQ and compressors differently than, say, the 9000 K, which we previously owned.’
‘The Fusion is an incredible tool,’ Gilkey reflects. ‘I couldn’t be happier with a piece of hardware. I’ve always said that SSL’s give depth to any sound when used properly and the Fusion takes it to a new level in harmonic distortion and stereo field.’
More: www.solidstatelogic.com