Slate Digital The Virtual Console Collection - Manual (Page 22)

22
Slate
Digital
Virtual
Console
Collection
XI. C
ONCLUSION
MAKING
THE
VIRTUAL
CONSOLE
COLLECTION
By
Steven
Slate
One
of
the
first
studios
that
I
worked
at
when
I
was
about
sixteen
years
old
was
a
two-­‐
room
facility
that
had
two
vintage
consoles.
I
remember
that
we
began
to
think
about
the
desks
in
regards
to
their
tone.
One
desk
was
the
one
that
sounded
fat
and
warm,
the
other
was
the
bright
and
punchier
of
the
two.
We’d
choose
which
room
to
mix
in
based
on
the
sound
of
the
band.
The
more
modern
bands
would
always
get
mixed
on
the
brighter
punchy
desk,
and
the
more
old
school
bands
would
get
mixed
on
the
fat
and
warm
desk.
Given
these
experiences,
I’ve
always
thought
of
analog
consoles
as
part
of
the
sound
of
the
mix.
This
is
why
things
started
to
get
odd
for
me
once
I
began
mixing
digitally.
The
digital
mixes
didn’t
add
any
of
the
nonlinearities
that
my
ears
grew
to
love
from
the
analog
desks.
I
started
experimenting
by
running
my
mixes
into
my
mic
preamps
in
order
to
get
some
color.
But
because
my
mixes
were
line
level
and
the
mic
preamps
were
not,
this
was
not
a
match
made
in
heaven!
I
needed
someone
to
design
a
mix
system
that
would
allow
me
to
use
my
mic
preamps
for
tone
and
gain
in
a
more
intelligent
way.
In
2001,
I
was
introduced
to
an
extremely
talented
tech
named
Justin
Ulysses
Morse
of
Roll
Music
of
Minnesota.
Justin
and
I
got
to
talking
and
he
quickly
understood
my
goals.
He
designed
a
16-­‐channel
passive
summing
mixer
that
would
require
a
mic
preamp
for
make
up
gain.
The
unit
was
called
the
RMS
Folcrom,
and
became
one
of
the
best
selling
analog
summing
solutions
in
the
industry.
Years
later
when
I
teamed
up
with
algorithm
guru
Fabrice
Gabriel
to
start
Slate
Digital,
I
asked
him
if
it
would
be
possible
to
replicate
the
sound
of
an
analog
console’s
“sound”.
After
doing
a
few
tests
on
a
famous
British
vintage
console,
his
first
answer
was
“No”.
The
reason,
he
said,
was
due
to
the
nonlinear
dynamic
response
of
the
desks.
While
many
plugin
companies
have
reproduced
some
simple
static
nonlinear
characteristics,
and
some
even
have
algorithms
that
are
somewhat
dynamic
in
their
response,
none
had
gone
into
the
detail
that
would
be
needed
to
reproduce
the
dynamic
nonlinearities
of
a
vintage
analog
mixer.
“It
would
take
up
too
much
CPU
and
be
unusable,”
he
said
to
me,
in
his
classically
French
accent.
So,
we
put
the
project
on
hold
and
kept
developing
our
flagship
mastering
processor,
the
FG-­‐X.
But
as
the
FG-­‐X
algorithm
came
to
a
close,
my
analog
fever
would
return.
With
a
vengeance!