Having opened her own multi-room complex, Jungle City, in Manhattan in 2011, Multiple Grammy Award-winning engineer, producer and studio owner Ann Mincieli has now added the first SSL Origin Evo to be installed anywhere in the world to her three SSL Duality consoles.
Mincieli has been operating Solid State Logic mixing consoles almost since she first started in the business, working her way up from intern to staff engineer at some of New York City’s most prestigious studios beginning in the early 1990s. Mincieli, who is Alicia Keys’ engineer, album coordinator and studio director, oversaw the installation of various SSL consoles at Keys’ music facilities, first in Long Island, then in Manhattan and additionally in California.
‘I thought the Origin Evo was a great fit for my North Studio at Jungle City, and I was ready to redo that room,’ she says Mincieli, having seen the console launched at the 2026 Namm Show. ‘Alicia has a creative hub out west where we have an Origin that we purchased last year, and we also have a Duality there that packs up in a case.’
Each channel strip on the Origin Evo includes E Series dynamics, in addition to the E Series Black Knob 242 EQ, SSL’s high-pass filter and – new to the Origin Evo – low-pass filter, and flexible PureDrive mic preamp. Switching the filters into the dynamics sidechain enables de-essing or frequency-dependent compression. New compression ratios, an insert return for external processing and a built-in sidechain filter have been added to Origin Evo’s Bus Compressor.
Jungle City occupies the upper floors of a building on West 27th Street in New York’s High Line neighbourhood, and features a 48-input Duality console in its flagship Penthouse East, with a 48-input Duality in Penthouse West. South Studio, one floor below, houses a 24-input Duality. On the same floor, North Studio is home to the new 32-channel Origin Evo. All four control rooms, two Penthouse live rooms and all the studios’ associated lounges offer windows with panoramic views of New York City and there is a 2,400-square-foot deck on the rooftop. ‘I wanted it to be a destination studio,’ Mincieli says.
‘North Studio is one of our premier mixing suites,’ she continues. ‘We record, mix and edit there. It has a small iso booth, so we can also do vocals and drums. I wanted flexibility in my room, because I record every single day of my life, and I work with an artist who is a producer and a musician who works every day of her life on music. The Origin Evo fits perfectly in the room, size-wise. I built my own monitor arm and speaker stands, which really feel like they’re part of the desk. It’s not only me that’s going to work on it, so it also gives my clients 32 mic preamps, SSL EQ and dynamics. The headroom is also really good on the Origin. That’s something else that I really pay attention to.’
The new Origin Evo console has only just been installed, but Mincieli is already looking forward to diving in and fully exploring its capabilities. ‘It has eight stereo faders with direct outs to the mix bus. And you can assign the channel insert to the long or short fader path. Those are really useful features,’ she says. ‘Origin’s sleep mode is also amazing. We put ours into sleep mode because we want to preserve the electronics. If we’re not using the room, or the room is not booked for a time, that’s a real plus.’
Jungle City’s clientele includes some of the world’s biggest artists, such as J. Balvin, Cardi B, Lil Uzi Vert, Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Taylor Swift, Justin Timberlake, Coldplay, Rihanna, Depeche Mode, Ed Sheeran, Pharrell Williams, Mariah Carey and Usher. Keys often works there with Mincieli, if they’re not working at Real World, Criteria, Larrabee or some other SSL-equipped facility somewhere in the world. Whatever room they are in, Mincieli says, they mix as they record: ‘Because we’re honing in on our tone. We’re painting the sonic picture as we go along. That’s what I love about the Origin and the Duality – you have the flexibility to use the mic preamps and EQs on the way into Pro Tools as you record.
‘I have 32 mic preamps, so the desk allows us to have all her drum machines, keyboards like Jupiters and Junos, and her own virtual rig connected. Alicia uses a combination of virtual synths and real analogue synths, and the desk gives me so much flexibility, with twice the number of inputs and small faders and large faders. Having the mic preamps and compressors, and being able to patch everything up and follow her creativity is pretty amazing.’
See also:
Case Study: Jungle City Studios
More: www.solidstatelogic.com