X-Desk brings happine for grammy-winning mix engineer/producer Rob Burrell

X-DESK BRINGS HAPPINESS FOR GRAMMY-WINNING MIX ENGINEER/PRODUCER ROB BURRELL I can get to the happy place in a mix so much faster. NASHVILLE, USA Solid State Logic, the world's leading manufacturer of creative tools for audio professionals, is pleased to announce that Grammy-winning Nashville mix engineer and producer Rob Burrell has improved the tone and workflow in his personal workspace, emotionmix studios with an SSL X-Desk.

Rob Burrell is an audio all-rounder. Along with numerous GMA Dove Award-nominated productions, he has RIAA-certified Gold, Platinum, and Multi-Platinum albums to his credit, has produced and mixed for television series, short films and two feature films, but is perhaps best known for having engineered or mixed five Grammy-nominated albums and two Latin Grammy-nominated albums including the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir's Live - God Is Working (2000 Grammy-winner); Michael W. Smith's Worship Again (2003 Grammy-winner); and, more recently, Alex Campos' Lenguaje de Amor (2011 Latin Grammy-winner), often on large-format SSL consoles in NYC and around Nashville.

Burrell is also a long time personal studio owner, I've had my own studio since 1999 across four different locations two in my home, and two in commercial facilities. I've always been in-the-box' with my private studios to facilitate budget needs and time constraints when clients cannot put me in a commercial mix facility. The latest incarnation of my emotionmix studios resides in my 1,100 sq. ft. basement to accommodate the comfort and needs of my clients mixing, recording, and recreation are all available to make everyone feel relaxed and at home.

Burrell is a self-confessed SSL lover, who says, There's something about the combination of the sonics and workflow that just makes sense to the way I hear things and helps me arrive at the end result. And the sound it just sounds like what's in my head! Whether tracking, or mixing 4000 Series or 9000 J or K Series, I feel at home.

Of course, it's just as important for Burrell to feel at home, equipment-wise, when working from his home, which is exactly why the X-Desk was a perfect fit, but getting there was quite a journey: I have owned and/or used many different summing boxes, but kept going back to doing in-the-box mixes to see what I was gaining by analogue summing. I continued to find that whatever tonal changes the summing boxes provided, when I mixed ITB I would compensate to achieve similar results, because I was just trying to hunt down the sound in my head. In the end, there was always something about tone and workflow still not sitting right, so I would sell the summing box in question and return to ITB a fruitless quest. However, the more I looked into the X-Desk, the more I became aware that not only would it provide the sonic stamp I was after it's an SSL, after all, but the deep flexibility would do something positive for my workflow and hybrid mixing creativity.

How so? Ergonomics is such a key to being creative for me, so I built exactly what I needed in my new setup. I wired it into a 192-point patchbay with all my outboard and I'm loving it! I can pick a signal off the inserts or direct outs to send to effects units or parallel compression, I can insert analogue gear with the push of a button. It just allows me to be more tactile in the mix experience, which is how I love to function.

Rob has also found a canny method for 5.1 production, I also have a template and patching scheme that allows me to mix music stems in 5.1 for film or trailer scores through the X-Desk. All the dialogue and FX stay in the digital realm, where they are best handled, but the added dimension to the music mix is wonderful.

Thanks to the X-Desk, Burrell is obviously one happy mixing man: The X-Desk has made great impressions on both me and my clients; I can get to the happy place in a mix so much faster, and that's good for my clients, my business, and my family! This is especially helpful, because not all projects are well recorded anymore not just indie projects, but even label projects are often engineered' by producers that believe engineering is just hitting CMD+SPACEBAR'. I understand this is a product of the technological and financial times we're in, so I won't fight it, but my setup allows me to use the X-Desk and my outboard compression and pre-amps to often re-track the entire record after the fact, effectively healing' a lot of technical errors, to bring the mix to a more professional-sounding end result much more efficiently than ever.

LINK:	http://www.solid-state-logic.com/news/article.asp?ID=509&T=P...
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