Reflecting the surge of consumer interest in Dolby Atmos Music streaming through platforms such as Apple Music and Tidal, US recording/live sound engineer Rick Camp has upgraded his Master Mix Live facility in Las Vegas to handle Dolby Atmos, 7.1.4 and stereo music mixing and remixing, both in the studio and remotely. Key to the upgrade is a new Solid State Logic System T S300-48 console powered by a T80 Tempest Engine.
The System T replaces an analogue desk, and will enables Camp to focus on live concert productions, including his own live immersive project – which is destined for the Las Vegas Strip – as well as film premixing. ‘The real reason I bought the System T was for my project that I’ve been working on for six years,’ Camp explains. ‘I’m not an in-the-box kind of person; I never have been,’ he says. ‘I did my research and due diligence, and found out that System T has a 7.1.4 mix bus, unlike pretty much any other console out there.’
Camp, an accomplished musician and Berklee College of Music graduate, has worked both in the studio and on the road since starting his career in Ohio 40 years ago. He established Master Mix Live around a decade ago with the aim of the offering live audio engineering courses as well as studio and broadcast engineering.
When he began work on the project, he says, immersive technology was not yet as accessible as he needed it to be, especially the Dolby content creation tools. ‘Five, six years later, all of that is built into Pro Tools. I’m also using the Dolby Atmos Mastering Suite, which is a standalone program,’ he says. ‘This immersive project is huge – I’m probably running 700, 800 tracks.’
Camp has integrated his 48-fader, dual-operator System T S300 with an assortment of SSL Network I/O interfaces that provide access to and from the various audio transport systems in the room. An SB32.24 Stagebox supports 32 mic/line inputs, 16 analogue line outputs and eight digital I/O; an A32 provides 32 SuperAnalogue line-level I/O to the Dante network; and a Madi-Bridge supports bi-directional conversion between Madi and Dante. An additional four Network I/O units bridge Camp’s dual Avid Pro Tools HDX Ultimate systems from Madi to the Dante network. In total, he says, ‘I can do 1,024 Dante inputs and outputs, 256 channels of Madi and 64 channels of analogue I/O.’
The S300 is also configured to remote-control any other SSL System T console in the world using SSL’s proprietary control protocol over the facility’s VPN network. Camp’s Dolby Atmos workflow is hybrid, with panning for the project bed accomplished through the System T rather than in the computer.
‘I use three separate beds: dialogue, music and effects,’ Camp says. ‘I also use the desk for object routing. It comes out of Pro Tools over Madi, into and out of the desk via Dante, and into a Dolby object channel. Since the desk can’t access the object panning, I use a separate panning tool to access the object channels over the Dante network. But the audio flow is out of Pro Tools, through the desk and into the Dolby Atmos renderer.’
More: www.solidstatelogic.com
