Italian producer, recording and mix engineer Tommaso Colliva has worked with SSL equipment since his time as an assistant engineer at Milan’s Officine Meccaniche, hosting sessions for the likes of Michael Nyman, Shania Twain and Erykah Badu on the studio’s SL4000G+ mixing console. It was here that Colliva hooked up with Muse, and has worked on their recordings from 2005 to the present.

Having previously also used an SSL Matrix console in his private studio, Colliva has now taken delivery of a Sigma remote-controlled analogue summing unit: ‘Shortly after buying the Matrix, I decided to move to the US for a while and, unfortunately, had to sell it,’ he explains. ‘When I returned to Italy, I was missing the Matrix a lot – especially the automation side of the console – so I was immediately excited by the Sigma. It has more channel inputs than I thought it would, along with all of the summing options that I loved.’

The Sigma is installed in Colliva’s private mix room, Toomi Labs, which housed within Edizioni Ishtar’s Blue Spirit recording complex – also in Milan.

‘Since we have a Duality in our main studio, Sigma also gives me consistency as the two units basically have the same components and sound,’ he continues. ‘Though Sigma can take incredibly hot inputs, I don’t slam the box because I’m going for that classic clean and wide-open SSL sound. That’s how I started working with the Matrix. I basically found this combination that I liked, which is SSL summing with a very coloured tube compressor across the master bus. So, with Sigma, I’m able to control the gain in a very neat and very recallable way.’

With no desk or controller, Colliva’s set-up is minimalist and modern: ‘Basically, it’s just Pro Tools HDX, Sigma and a lot of outboard,’ he says. ‘From the DAW, I use the first 16 channels of Midi for Sigma because it allows me to not worry about the fader position. ‘Plus, it feels more natural to have the first 16 tracks just dedicated to automation. It’s also very easy this way to translate from session to session because I basically have a template with 16 Midi tracks plus 16 master fader tracks and I import them all into the new session file and I’m ready to go. That makes it very, very simple.

‘Similarly, I find the hardware insert thing in Pro Tools way too complicated and with a lot to think about, such as always checking to make sure that I wasn’t overloading converters on the way back in. But, if I am in the analogue domain with Sigma, it’s more like, “okay, I want to use this compressor and if it sounds good, it is good, and go with it”. No worrying about headroom and digital distortion in hitting the A/Ds too hard.’

Although Colliva has a patchbay to tap into his outboard, the stereo bus injects and direct channel outputs on Sigma are another advantage: ‘Having the two separate mix buses is great because you can think about doing parallel compression plus many other tricks without needing anything else,’ he says. ‘There was one project where I used the Sigma for automation only, no summing, to level a bunch of EQs going into a legacy console. In essence, Sigma was acting as an automated insert box. I can’t think of anything else that gives you the kind of flexibility that the Sigma provides. It’s a real Swiss Army knife of audio.

‘I’ve also had the monitoring side working and it was really handy. Sometimes my needs are for very basic level control and dim, so I’ll just rely on the two physical buttons and knob on the Sigma. But, if I know a session’s going to be more complicated, involving talkbacks and re-recording some bits while I’m mixing, I may use my iPad that I’ve configured to complement the summing unit. Overall, the web-based GUI is just great.’

More: www.toomi.it

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