Fortuitously, the display console from the 2019 AES Show ORIGIN launch ended up at the Nashville office of Vintage King Audio, one of SSL’s sales partners. “I went over there and got on the console,” says Janas, who has taught his class on six different desks over the years. “I brought up some tracks through it, listened and thought, for the size, for the layout and the sound, and how things are presented, it makes perfect sense to teach these classes on it.” While at Vintage King, Janas also recorded a variety of sources through the ORIGIN’s PureDrive™ microphone preamps, which can add warm harmonically rich character to a signal. He was impressed with the results, he says.
Although access to the recently installed desk at REM Studios has been limited by Belmont’s COVID-19 precautions, Janas did have an opportunity to check out ORIGIN’s audio quality, he says, while preparing for the imminent return to in-person tuition. “I spent four or five hours working on it, taking stuff I do on the curriculum and applying it to the ORIGIN. Listening to a cue mix, for example, was not only very easy to do, it was also noticeably really punchy — much better sounding than the console we had in the room previously.”