French producer Barrera Productions has added a Solid State Logic Duality to its equipment roster. The introduction of the large-format 48-input console has cemented Barrera’s reputation for producing original music and audio post production of the highest quality, writes Adrian Pennington.
“We are called in to produce soundtracks where the music is the most important element,” says the facility’s owner Bruno Lambert. “It’s great to mix scored music, record live performances and record to 5.1. We also need to be ready for HD as it becomes more important, but I still believe in analogue to record and mix. I love DAW’s and all the improvements the digital world brings to post production, but the music still needs to breathe in the warmth of analogue machines.”
Barrera Productions clients include Pepsi, France Telecom and Masterfoods. The console has already been put to use mixing a session for a Nestl_ commercial with 60 musicians and has now become the centerpiece and focus of the Barrera set-up.
“It’s the heart of the system,” confirms Lambert. “We use it all day to work on music, sound design, voices and final mixes. Sometimes we might just use it as a DAW controller, finalising the soundtrack of a film in Pro Tools. The next day we will use it to record and mix music in a ‘classic’ way, so the DAW is simply used as a tape recorder.”
He adds: “I very much like the way you can organise the signal chain and look at it clearly on the TFT screen. I also like the concept of the three mix busses working as a matrix. It’s an engineer’s dream to have control over stems without patching. You can set different compressions and EQ on the three stereo busses, which is fantastic. And, of course, it’s very easy to switch from stereo to a 5.1 set-up.
“Before Duality I had to mix the music on its own using a big, commercial studio. Now I can mix the music with a state-of-the-art console while I balance the sound design and voices in the DAW. And of course I can also produce music and my own records, so maybe this console is the perfect bridge between post production and the music industry.”
