Fanshawe College recently installed two Solid State Logic Duality SE consoles in the first and second year Music Industry Arts recording studios as part of a program wide upgrade to next generation equipment.
Fanshawe offers a two year Ontario College diploma program that covers everything from music recording, mixing, music production and audio post production to music business, entertainment law and artist management.
The Duality SE consoles are the ideal educational platform for Fanshawe College combining both analogue signal flow, sterling sound quality with DAW control.
“Our Music Industry Arts program is highly competitive with only about 115 students being accepted out of 800 applications every year and this is because our program is high level and very comprehensive,” said Steve Malison, program coordinator for Music Industry Arts at Fanshawe College.
“The Duality consoles cover all bases for our program. They integrate fully with Pro Tools, Logic and Nuendo to do any type of recording and mixing scenario that we need them to do.
Also, the Duality consoles work in a way that is very teachable so both staff and students enjoy an industry relevant learning experience.”
The Music Industry Arts program has six rooms that operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The Duality SE consoles occupy the two main studios.
Studio 1 is designated as the first year studio where the focus is primarily music. First year students record, mix and produce projects as well as word on “lift projects,” where they have to re-create every nuance and sound of a popular song, and a cover project, where they rearrange a popular song into a different musical style.
The second year classes in Studio 2 use the Duality for different purposes entirely.
“Our second year studio is the place our students take their first year skill sets and in addition to extensive recording, production and mixing projects, apply their skills to 5.1 surround mixing, and sound for picture- sound effects, backgrounds, music, dialog and Foley,” said Malison.
“Our philosophy here at Fanshawe is to keep the course work wide, active, progressive and leading edge. The Duality, in addition to having a well implemented monitoring section, is extremely well built, giving us the durability and robustness necessary to hold up to 220 students using them around the clock year after year.”
“While we looked at other manufacturers, SSL’s response and attention made us think that this is the type of company we want to develop a relationship with,” states Malison. “In the end, it is not only the hardware, it’s also the people behind the company.
“The Duality consoles are fantastic sounding, robust boards that also communicate as control surfaces. Duality is also the perfect platform for routing our extensive set of outboard gear.
“With Duality as part of the recording/mixing chain, we always begin with a great sound and that is the foundation for producing a great final recording for any discipline. The Duality consoles are an investment for the future of Music Industry Arts here at Fanshawe College.”
