BAPS’ North American Headquarters Installs Solid State Logic ORACLE 24-Channel "Future Analogue" Console

The new Oracle, which offers a fully analogue signal path with Instant Recall and reset of every console function, is being used for diverse applications, Aksharmurtidas Swami reports, and frequently needs to move quickly between projects. The mixing console that was originally installed in the studio when the campus and the studio officially opened in 2023 offered only partial recall, which affected not only Aksharmurtidas Swami’s workflow but also his creative contributions. “You need to make recall as efficient and accurate as possible,” he says, “because I'm not going to sit there and recall everything every time someone wants to make a little change. Unless it's instantly recallable, we're just going to use the bare minimum of its functionality.”

In contrast to BAPS’ previous console, SSL’s Oracle provides complete recall across the entire worksurface, from the 16 bus routing switches and integrated THE BUS+ compressor, to the 4-band E/G series parametric EQ and 10 aux sends. But while the reset capabilities are significant for BAPS, SSL’s audio performance and the fully analogue signal path are also important. “We've been using SSL consoles for quite some time,” he explains. “We bought one of the first SSL AWS consoles in 2004; it's still being used in Mumbai, India. And we have an SSL Matrix 2 in Sarangpur, India. So this is the third SSL console in our organisation.”

Oracle’s hybrid capabilities, marrying digital control to an all-analogue signal path, have enabled Aksharmurtidas Swami to exercise his creativity to a greater extent than the limited recall functionality of his previous console would allow. “I love the fact that you can have snapshots and multiple versions of a mix, and you can load a file, and it just picks up right where you left off. I really like the BUS+ compressor on this console, so I mix into THE BUS+ now, and that opens up a lot of different things that I normally wouldn't do if I didn't have this recall capability. It’s cool that I can make a lot of changes really fast and not have to worry about if I may need to back track on decisions, because I know it's recallable. It doesn't necessarily make you faster, but because you can always go back to a certain point without having to do anything, you're willing to try more things.”

As for the audio performance, he continues, “I'm familiar with the E and the G EQs because of our AWS console. I opened a previous mix just to mess around with the Oracle, pushed it out to all the channels on the console and started mixing, and the sound to me is exactly what I remember the AWS sounding like.”