As the touchstone of its 45th anniversary, Ardent Studios in Memphis, Tenn., has completely remodeled the control room of Studio C and installed a Solid State Logic Duality console. The studio’s Neve V 40×40 console has been decommissioned and resides as a sidecar to accompany the Duality.
Pictured at Ardent Studios in the the new Studio C control room are, from left: chief technical engineer Chris Jackson, founder John Fry, and studio manager/Big Star drummer Jody Stephens.
Photo: Don Perry
“The musical energy at Ardent and in Memphis is really inspiring,” says studio manager Jody Stephens. “We have a video competition, a special series of 48-hour marathons with 16 bands recording over two days, and a celebrity session and new song to benefit Memphis’s St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.”
“It was time to bring Ardent into the 21st Century world of recording, yet keep the legacy intact,” says Ardent founder John Fry, the studio’s first engineer. “Studio C has a star-studded history that includes landmark work by Bob Dylan, ZZ Top, 3 Doors Down, R.E.M., and B.B. King, among so many other great artists, and we are keeping that traditional acoustic tracking space alongside our new control room with SSL’s flagship console.”
Adjacent to a 32×26-foot tracking room with three isolation booths, Studio C’s control room houses the SSL Duality SE 48-channel console with in-board patchbay (RHS). The SSL I/O package comprises one Delta Link HD-MADI unit and two Alpha Link converter units for a total of 48 analog inputs and outputs. Duality’s hybrid approach combines a traditional analog path and signal processing along with DAW control, all within a single hardware surface.
To learn more about Ardent’s new Studio C, visit www.thenewstudioc.com.
For information about Ardent Studios, visit ardentstudios.com.
Visit Solid State Logic at www.solidstatelogic.com.
