Efficient workflow with SSL UF8 and UC1
Avila says it took next to no time for DJ Quik, who has worked with the likes of Tupac, 50 Cent, Ludacris and a host of West coast hip-hop artists, to set up his SSL controllers at Encore Studio in Burbank and get the initial mix together. “It was over 100 tracks, but he plugged that sucker in and had the record bouncing out of the speakers in three hours,” he says. In fact, Avila was so impressed with the controllers that he called SSL and said, ‘I need these now!’”
The key to any Avila Brothers production is SSL’s famed bus compressor, which can be fully controlled from the surface of the UC1, complete with metering, in the SSL Native Channel Strip 2 software. “We’re from the SSL E/G console school, so that smack on the stereo bus is everything,” Avila says. “When you have the right kick and snare it adds that extra oomph right in the middle of your chest. The bus compressor gives us the punch and snap; it gives it that crack.”
On the new Avila Brothers single, he reports, “We squashed the snare with the compressor to make it really tight, then opened it up at the end. So you get the attack and the top end and then it would roll off at the end. We used it with the snares and the piano; we made the piano very aggressive.”