Milan, Italy (June 10, 2014)—Italian producer, recording and mix engineer Tommaso Colliva has installed the new SSL Sigma remote-controlled analogue summing unit in his private mix room, Toomi Labs.
Colliva’s studio is housed within Edizioni Ishtar’s Blue Spirit recording complex, which has an SSL Duality in the main mix room. Colliva’s work on SSL equipment goes back to his early days 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+. It was there that Colliva struck up a relationship with British rock-fusion outfit Muse, which would see him work on every record of theirs from 2005 to the present. Having previously relied upon an SSL Matrix console in his private studio, Colliva recently took delivery of an SSL Sigma remote-controlled analogue summing unit.
“Shortly after buying the Matrix, I decided to move to the U.S. for a while and, unfortunately, had to sell it,” says Colliva. “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.
“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. 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 colored tube compressor across the master bus. So, with Sigma, I’m able to control the gain in a very neat and very recallable way.”
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