A multi-room recording and mixing facility established by producers Carson Slovak and Grant McFarland on the Clair Global campus in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Atrium Audio has opened with a Solid State Logic Origin 32-channel analogue console in Control Room A.

Having opened in Atrium Audio in Lancaster in 2012 to focus on rock and metal, Slovak and McFarland relocated and ran Think Loud Studios in York, Pennsylvania, before undertaking a ground-up build-out of their new facility at Rock Lititz. Atrium Audio’s new location features a large, high-ceilinged live room encircled by three control rooms, including a Dolby Atmos mix suite.

‘It’s a great location because we’ve got this community of people who are all in the music industry and helping each other out,’ Slovak says. ‘One of the first sessions we had in here was Justin Bieber – he was next door rehearsing for a tour, so they booked the studio out for a couple of weeks.’

The decision to install an SSL Origin was made on previous experience with SSL consoles and Origin’s value. ‘They had an SSL Duality console at Think Loud, so we got a lot of mileage on that and did a lot of cool projects in that room,’ Slovak explains. ‘I liked working on the Duality and thought it sounded great. The Origin is a much simpler animal, but I prefer it. You’re getting a fully-analogue, 32-channel console for a fraction of what SSL consoles used to cost. I’ve always dreamed about owning an SSL console and Origin made it possible for us to afford one.’

‘We spent a lot of time making sure this room was laid out correctly,’ he continues. ‘We got hired Jeff Hedback from HD Acoustics to design the studio, so the environment’s really good. I feel like having the console and working through it has levelled our game up in a lot of ways.’

Slovak recorded several tracks in-the-box with a client last year, before the new facility opened. When they recently requested minor revisions, he took the opportunity to run it through the Origin and his Fusion. ‘It was the same mix, but they hit me back immediately and asked “What did you do? It just feels so much more open and full; everything feels a little more 3D”. The client noticed it themselves, which is pretty telling to me.’

There are various pieces of outboard processing in the room, but the only preamps are those in the Origin’s input channels. ‘I love the sound of the preamps. You get what you would expect from an SSL pre, but that Pure Drive function is really interesting. It reacts differently as you change the gain, so you can really crank something and get some interesting coloration.’

A 0dB switch on both paths of each input channel bypasses the large and small faders and sets the level to unity gain, enabling DAW outputs to be routed and summed through the Origin. ‘I’m doing all my automation in Pro Tools, so it makes everything a lot more recallable and easier, workflow-wise. You can hit that 0dB button and sum through the console and use the Bus Compressor. I used a plug-in emulation of that compressor on all my mixes for years, so having the real thing is fantastic.’

Slovak has the SSL Fusion analogue multi-processor across his master fader insert. ‘I’m using the Vintage Drive; I like a very subtle amount. The Violet EQ is great. I’m boosting 16kHz and 30Hz across the board, which gives it a nice gloss on the top and low end. The high-frequency compressor section is cool, too. I’m using it very subtly, just touching some of the peaks. I’m using all the bells and whistles, but in very subtle ways. I’ll have the vocals bypassing the bus compressor so they’re not ducking the mix and then they all just come back in on the one stereo track in the DAW.’

The partners typically work simultaneously on any given project from separate control rooms. ‘Over the past few years, we’ve worked out an interesting workflow where we’ll co-produce everything. Grant will focus only on vocals, and I focus only on the instruments and the mixing. We’ve got two rooms here that are mirror images of each other so, while I’m in here recording, say, guitars, he’ll be in the other room recording vocals at the same time.’

More: www.solidstatelogic.com