MIXING WITH THE SSL PLUGINS / Waves SSL 4000 collection

Hi everyone! Two days ago I was hanging around at my friend's studio/office and he was playing one of his latest mixing efforts. The sound was fantastic and it was probably the best mixing work he's done in a long time. Yesterday night I stopped by again and he had remixed everything with the SSL plugins in the meantime. We compared the first mix and the SSL plugins mix and the SSL was far superior. So, I went home and wanted to test the difference myself. However, let's start from the beginning:

WHAT THE HELL IS AN SSL?

This big ass boy right here is the original SSL 4000 console. In other words, SSL stands for Solid State Logic and they produce state of the art mixing consoles. This particular 4000s series is now considered to be a classic and it's still popular amongst bad ass mixing engineers in the music industry today. I've read online that SSL claims to be behind more platinum albums than all other consoles combined which is probably not entirely true but if you look at the work that was done on this console, it's not so far fetched either and here's to name a few: a couple of Bruce Springsteen albums (including Born in the USA), Green Day's American Idiot, Madonna, Metallica's Master of Puppets, Nirvana, Paul Simon's Graceland, Queen, Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street etc.

For some reason, there's something in the SSL sound that beats other consoles and, as everything with music and sound, it's a bit hard to explain. I've seen many videos where people work on the console or talk about the console and I've heard a lot of albums mixed and recorded on the console and the best description of the SSL sound would be punchy, very clear, very present, very well melded together and, as someone said, surgically precise. The console has so many sensitive components that once you plug it in, you never turn it off. You just let it be and whenever something stops working, you need to call a guy to replace the parts with new, original SSL parts. In other terms, it looks like and acts like an Enterprise main computer. Since the console is both huge and way too expensive, SSL plugins were created so that people with less money or small home studios can get close to that legendary SSL sound.

THE SSL PLUGINS

Most of the time you don't expect your plugins to be like the real thing. If you think about it, taking something analogue and turning it into endless lines of digital code simply cannot work as good as the real thing. Most plugins do the work and can even come close to the real life compressors and EQ's but there's always a certain amount of quality missing. Since the SSL prides itself in unique sound and quality, the developed plugins are really the closest to the real thing I've ever heard from any other plugin. It's still NOT the same as using the actual console but if you know how to work around the plugins, you can get the signature SSL sound if you are looking for it. There are a lot of plugins available but I use the classic SSL 4000 collection since it was developed on the basis of that particular legendary console and since I've heard the plugins in action at my friend's studio and loved them. Here's a short video where the development of the plugins is discussed:

THE DIFFERENCE IN THE MIX

I've beend working with Dimitrije Dimitrijević again and this time we decided to make split songs. We did two of those split songs. In the first one, the first part of the song was written entirely by Dimitrije and for the second part he used my riff and my guitar solo but sang his own melody and his own lyrics. The second song is also a split song because it consists of a blues intro, then it surges into this hard hip/hop rap part and ends with an acoustic variation of the intro. He wrote the lyrics but the music was co-written between the two of us. The rap part was done by the both of us and we are doing it in unison and in perfect sync. It was probably the most challenging part of the entire process, reciting the lyrics in unison and in perfect sync and it took us a while to get it right. Anyway, I mixed the songs using the plugins I usually use and I was very pleased with the result but after hearing the SSL plugins, I wanted to test if I could make the mix even better using ONLY the SSL bundle. Of course, better is a relative term but I wanted to hear the difference and see if the SSL plugins fit with the songs better.

MIX 1 - NO SSL PLUGINS

Here is the original mix with no ssl plugins. For this mix I used plugins I usually go for because I know (after a long time of using them) how they work on my instruments (and Dimitrije used my instruments) and how they go with the sound of my recording room. In other words, I can work quicker with them because I already have presets in my head. For the bass I used my stock StudioEQ Precision Bass set up. It makes the bass well balanced and adds to the low end which my fretless is naturally missing when recorded directly into the preamp. I used the same StudioEQ for the acoustic guitars but with the Picking Guitar 1 set up and a very light stock compressor called simply Compressor. I used the same compressor on the vocals but I also EQ'd them a bit to make them sound more clear and present. The rest of the components are virtually untouched.

Here's the SAME SONG but using ONLY THE SSL PLUGINS. This time around I used the SSLEQ and the SSL Compressor on both the bass, the vocals and the acoustic guitar. The difference is amazing. The sound is way more present, it's clear as hell, it's punchy, crunchy and it adds to the loundess of the input without me actually touching the faders. I don't know exactly why this is so, but an untrained ear can hear the difference instantly (I played this to my mum and she said the SSL mix is better and she doesn't even know what mixing is). This time I also decided to use the SSLEQ and Compressor on the electric guitar that's playing the riff. It just cleared it right up and gave it insane amount of presence.

I didn't have the time to try this on the other song but I will because I'm very interested in how the rest of the SSL plugins work and how the gate works because it seems you can gate the hell out of everything and it still comes out. In this case, there was no need of gating anything so I didn't use it at all. I also didn't use any reverb or other SSL features that I have so it will have to wait for another post. Anyway, I really recommend anyone mixing anything to try these plugins as well. They are not for everyone and some people might not enjoy the sound of the SSL but for those of us who do, this is the really an amazing thing to have in your plugins stock!

The last thing I wanna know is - what do you think? How's the difference sounding for you? Has anyone tried these plugins before? Feel free to comment!