With two Grammy wins, multiple nominations and credits including Shakira, Santana, Ricky Martin, Enrique Iglesias and Plácido Domingo, songwriter/engineer/mixer/producer Juan Cristobal Losada recently moved from his own Studio Sonic Projects studio at peermusic in Miami, to New York – setting up his own Sonic Room facility in peermusic’s New York office. For his new facility, he needed a powerful console with a modest footprint and chose SSL’s AWS 948 Delta SuperAnalogue Hybrid console.
‘I love Miami, and I still have a lot of work there,’ says Losada. ‘But I wanted to explore other things – to expand. My affiliation with peermusic was an important aspect of that move.’
Losada’s relationship with peermusic –the largest independent music publisher in the world – allows him to continue with his own creative pursuits, while working with peermusic as their in-house engineer. ‘It was one of the first publishers to have its own full-on, in-house studio – a very attractive proposition for prospective songwriters.’
Before New York and the AWS – a 48-channel console in a 24-channel frame that incorporates sophisticated DAW control – Losada had spent ten years on his SSL 4000. ‘I loved the sound of that console, but I feel like it was stuck in that sound,’ he says. ‘On this console the clarity and transparency gives me options. I can get the crunchy sound by going harder on the gain controls and on the EQ, or I can choose a transparent path that doesn’t add anything.
‘It’s like comparing a 1986 Ferrari to a 2018 Ferrari. They’re both great, they’re both Ferraris, but the 1986 one is a collectable; the new one has GPS, Bluetooth, new leather seats, an auto-shift gear box, and it doesn’t rattle. This console is my new Ferrari.’
Losada characterises his new set-up as a ‘truly hybrid system’. He mixes analogue channels and DAW control, along with a flexible mixture of dual path channel modes – stereo or inline, depending on the input: ‘I have my drums separated across eight or ten analogue channels, then I have bass and lead vocal, and then I go to stereo channels for stems from BGs, keyboards, percussion, and so on – and the print bus.
‘I’m also sending the aux sends on the board back to Pro Tools and my UAD plug-ins, using Pro Tools as an FX processor, as well as the main DAW.’
Having instant access to DAW control across the faders, also means Losada can drill down into stem mixes without any down time. ‘The background vocals can be up to 16 channels of Pro Tools premixed and then sent out to a stereo channel in the AWS 948. As I’m EQing that, I might need to switch and rebalance the pre-mix, and come straight back again. The AWS makes that easy, and fast.’
He sees the AWS as a core creative junction that not only facilitates a range of analogue paths, but brings more choice and more freedom: ‘My creative process involves many different stages, intertwined. That’s why the flexibility I have now is amazing.’
Losada is confident his move to New York will be a fruitful one, and certainly seems to have got the timing right: ‘Latin music has become very influential in the general market over the last few years,’ he notes. ‘Helped by songs like ‘Despacito’, which has broken all YouTube records... I didn’t think of it before the move, but as soon as I got here my phone started ringing. People in New York want a Latin influence in their music and there aren’t many Latin producers in the city – at least with the background and experience that I have.’
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