Mostly thought of as a tool for music, the SSL Channel strip can be used by sound designers really effectively to help the tone and dynamics of all kinds of sounds. I was lucky enough to work on SSL consoles throughout my 10+ years working as working a recording engineer, the above photo is the console in a studio I ran in London. The console was a 48 channel SSL 4000 and was the hub for the whole studio and was an absolute DREAM to work on, making large and complex sessions a breeze.
A bit of history… SSL Channel strips are simplified emulations of a single channel from SSL (Solid State Logic) mixing consoles. Originally the SSL 4000 B was released in the 70’s, but this was followed the two most famous revisions of these consoles which were the SSL 4000 E and G series in the early 1980’s. As well as the famous channel strip design the other famous feature of these desks was the SSL bus compressor. I’d say that 95% of my audio work has gone through either a hardware or software SSL bus compressor as it sounds AWESOME. People describe it’s tone as gluing tracks together. But the scope of this post doesn’t cover this, and I hope to write a whole article on this compressor at some point as it is such an iconic piece of gear that I can almost guarantee people have heard in action countless times.
What are Channel Strips?
Put simply, a channel strip is the path that audio follows through a mixing console. If you imagine the audio like running water, the water starts at the top and flows downwards. The input of the pipe is where traditionally the microphone would come into the desk, but for sound designers this would be a sound from a DAW. From there the water flows into the next module, then the next until it get to the output which is where the audio would go to “tape” or in plugins this is where the audio is routed back to the DAW. The various modules between the input and output stages differ between consoles and include features to move the position of each module up and down the flow.
Each channel strip on the original SSL consoles actually contained two audio paths. This is known as an in-line mixing console. What this essentially means is that the EQ and Dynamics sections could be used either for the signal going to tape (or DAW) or the output from your recording method – meaning lots flexibility for printing the processing and being incredibly useful for a number of workflows – which is one of the reasons why these consoles became the industry standard – the other reason is they sound great and allow engineers a huge amount of control or the signal.
But why is this important for sound design? Crucially sound designers have very similar needs to recording engineers. We need to sculpt sounds in a way that is both intuitive and often quickly.
There are essentially 3 sections on a SSL Channel Strip. EQ, Dynamics and Gain.
EQ
There are high and low pass filters and four bands of parametric style EQ, split into Hi, Mids and Lo. The 2 x Mid EQ have controllable Q-Width controls, where as the Hi and Lo have only controls for gain and freq. You’ll often hear these EQs being referred to as having a musical tone, which describes how the EQ curves respond to control – if you sweep through frequencies you will notice how smooth and polished the EQ sounds without any noticeable resonance.
Dynamics
There are 2 sub sections – Compression and Expansion.
The compression section is what you would expect, simple control over Threshold, Ratio, Attack and Release. On the original console, the attack was changed through pulling the knob up, but on the plugins these will just have a switch.
The Expansion section is similar and can be switched to act as a gate too with simple controls for range, threshold and release with again, a switch to set a fast attack.
Gain
A pot for input gain and a fader for output gain to help level the signal either before or after processing.
The limited but great sounding controls has an added benefit of encouraging you to listen and use the tools far more effectively instead of just reaching for another plugin or EQ band which can often lead to over EQing and killing the dynamic of a sound.
Plugins
There are a lot of SSL channel strip plugins from various manufactures. Each company will say their version is a “true emulation” or another similar bit of marketing spiel. The subtleties of an SSL console are so wide and varied that the ability for these emulations to be accurate are a near impossible task, but in truth, this is not really something anyone should particular care about.
The sound of an SSL is a subtle one, there popularity instead came from their workflow, and this is the same for the plugin versions. Having EQ and dynamics set out in such a intuitive way on one single plugin is so good for workflow that the actual tone of the channel strip almost plays a secondary role. For this reason I struggle to recommend any particular manufacturers plugin, and instead recommend getting a version from anywhere as the controls will all be the same.