Duality’s VHD Circuits Capture the Attitude for Hard Rock Recording
When Kevin Shirley, a.k.a. The Caveman and head of Caveman Productions, went looking for a console to drive the surround sound future for his hard rock projects, he selected a 48-channel Solid State Logic Duality. Shirley is a world renowned producer and recording/mix engineer for some of the defining names in American and International rock including Aerosmith, Journey, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Slayer, Silverchair and the hugely successful Led Zeppelin retrospective DVD. Duality delivers the unique capability of Variable Harmonic Drive (VHD) circuitry on every channel, offering the edgy tonality Shirley needs, along with the ultra-clean, signature SSL sound, making Duality the best of all worlds for creative recording and mixing in stereo or surround.
“I had been mixing in surround for several projects with Led Zeppelin, Metallica and Iron Maiden and I wanted my studio to have this capability,” says Shirley. “The first surround projects we will run through Duality are the upcoming Journey live concert in the Philippines, and Joe Bonamassa at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Duality is the first new generation console where the applications are only limited by your imagination with so many ways you can program it and so many ways you can change the way you mix. I just think Duality is an absolutely stunning console — it’s super.”
Because Shirley is such a big fan of analogue consoles and classic analogue outboard gear, Duality’s VHD circuits are extremely useful to capture the right attitude for hard rock recording. He recently started a session with VHD enabled on all channels, showing Duality’s other sonic face, and then blending clean and dirty from there.
“I was a little apprehensive about the console at first because SSL consoles have the tendency to be really clean and I generally like to get a little grit in the mix,” Shirley explains. “But sometimes that grit can be a bit too much, especially full time. So, it was very encouraging once I saw what Duality could do. It’s actually the best of both worlds — you can drive the console really hard and get a nice warm fuzzy sound out of it, or you can get super clean audio as well. I’ve got to say it’s the best console I’ve ever used.”
Solid State Logic is the world’s leading manufacturer of analogue and digital audio consoles and provider of creative tools for music, broadcast and post production professionals.
