Airshow Mastering in Boulder, CO, headed by Grammy Award-winning founder and chief engineer David Glasser, recently added a Solid State Logic THE BUS+ two-channel compressor to a studio toolkit that also includes an SSL XLogic multichannel compressor in his console that’s been in place for about 15 years.
“I saw THE BUS+ when it was announced and it seemed to be a very deep and versatile solution for many of the different types of projects that I work on,” Glasser says. “It turns out that it’s very flexible and can produce many different kinds of compression, providing wide ranging options that extend well beyond the classic SSL bus compressor.”
Glasser masters and remasters projects across a variety of music genres that range from hard rock to jazz. He founded Airshow in 1983, moved from Virginia to Colorado in 1997, and currently works out of the new facility he built in Boulder in 2016. His two Grammy Awards to date have been in the Best Historical Album category, for a compilation of American folk, blues and country music originally released in 1952, and a collection of the remastered recorded works of blues singer Charley Patton, who passed away in 1934.
“THE BUS+ can sound really heavy-handed,” Glasser notes. “It can also sound really, really subtle. You can make it even more subtle with all the sidechain compressor and sidechain filter options. You can dial out frequencies in the areas where the compressor is hitting it too hard. That turns it into more of an enhancer than a compressor. I basically use it to lift things up and tie the different musical elements together, for mixes that need that. Depending on the program material, it does also seem to make some things wider and deeper.”
Front panel controls offer three options — Low THD, F/B and 4K — that shape the unit’s overall sonic character. Glasser: “I mainly tend to use compressors as a color and vibe thing rather than a sledgehammer. With the Low THD mode, for instance, it’s a really clean compressor. I seem to use that almost all the time,” Glasser reports. “I also seem to be using the Wet/Dry Mix at around 40 or 50 percent all the time, too.
“It’s laid out really well and really efficiently. There are some clever things in there. There’s a lot of almost hidden features that you can still get to pretty easily,” he adds. “The dynamic EQ section is just crazy. I’ve really been liking that. And selecting the frequencies of the dynamic equalizers using the meters is clever.”
