Berlin, Germany (April 8, 2022)—Creative arts and technology learning institute Catalyst, located in a former 1950s broadcast facility in Berlin, has outfitted the largest of its three large-format tracking studios with a Solid State Logic Origin analog console.
The Origin console, installed at the beginning of the current scholastic year, was supplied by Audio Pro, SSL’s distributor in Germany, and is being used by students on Catalyst’s Creative Audio Production and Sound Engineering programs. It was installed and integrated by Catalyst’s in-house team of technicians in the institute’s K4 control room, named for its designation on the original blueprints.
“K4 has probably 135 square meters [1,450 square feet] of space with three live rooms,” says Nathaniel Suter, operations lead for Catalyst. “We use K4 for all of the practical studio lessons for the Creative Audio Production course, from Year One to Year Three, on the certificate and BA degree courses. When students work on projects, they’ll split up and some of them will work in K4 and some will work in some of our other studios. They potentially have a lot of hands-on time with those studios, and especially the Origin.”
Mix LA Adds New Desk, Appoints Veteran Engineer
The Catalyst staff elected to upgrade the mixing console in K4 to an SSL Origin during their annual summer development period in 2021. “The Origin is more of an instrument,” Suter says, compared to the previous desk. “It has a sound. It has character and tone. It has a workflow that is perfect for the classroom, and it’s enjoyable to use. That all contributes to the experience in the studio for the students. That’s not something that you can really describe, but we’ve seen it practically in the fact that the students are using that studio way more than they used to.”
Catalyst’s premises house over two dozen studios and production suites, including a mastering studio, a multi-speaker sound studio and vintage radio production studios. Courses include electronic music production and performance, music production and sound engineering, film production, visual effects and acting. They range from four-week summer courses for beginners to bachelor and masters degree courses validated by a university partner in the U.K.
