ENGINEER DAN RUDIN DAZZLED BY RIGHT TRACK RECORDING’S SOLID STATE LOGIC SL 9000 J SERIES SUPERANALOGUE™ CONSOLE
The Acclaimed Classical Men’s Choir “CenturyMen” and the “Broadway Inspirational Voices” Group Put the SL 9000 Through Its Paces
No sooner was the door open for business at Right Track Recording’s massive new orchestral recording room, A509, than top engineer Dan Rudin entered with the acclaimed classical men’s choir “CenturyMen” and the gospel choir “Broadway Inspirational Voices.” Adding tracks to a continuing project produced by Buryl Red and BR Productions, the Solid State Logic SL 9000 J Series SuperAnalogue Console installed in A509 provided excellent sound quality for the sessions.
“Recording the CenturyMen is a challenge as the choir covers more than a 4 1/2 octave range,” explains Rudin, a veteran of pop, jazz and classical recording, a Grammy winner for “Riders in or the Sky: Woody’s Round-up Adventure,” and who has worked with artists as varied as the Newsboys, Diamond Rio and Wynonna Judd. “Because we went with Decca tree and spaced omnis, we depended on the sound of the room and the great performance of the console’s mic preamplifier to capture the power and subtlety of the group. When recording something as dynamic as a 100-man choir, I usually go to an outboard preamp, something I know has an extended frequency range. But, with the J Series, we opened up the pre amps and they delivered a clean, accurate sound. This was the most exposed application I could imagine for a console mic pre and the SL 9000 came through with flying colors.”
The CenturyMen choir consists of 100 professional singers representing music directors from churches and schools around the country. The initial tracks for this project were completed in a church in Knoxville, TN, with the orchestral sections added in Nashville through another SL 9000 to Pro Tools. The New York connection came about, according to Rudin, because the producers decided to add two more tracks to the collection, this time including performances by the 40-piece Broadway Inspirational Voices.
“We needed a very large room for this, and Right Track has the best room for the job,” says Rudin. “The acoustics are wonderful for this type of recording. The room was simply silent. There was a very low noise floor and the acoustic treatment using wood panels and wood floors is also terrific, with nice fat early reflections and a pleasant reverb tail. When you have singers producing such low notes, the sound can get lost in the tone of the room, however, the sound in the room was great and the SL 9000 captured everything. I didn’t lose a single note.”
Right Track’s SL 9000 J Series offers 96-channels, fully loaded with a customized film monitoring center section tailored for surround sound. For the CenturyMen project, Rudin extensively used the cue mix facilities on the J Series.
“Routing things to different cue mixes is always a snap on these consoles,” says Rudin. “The way that all the bussing and effect send architecture is set up is wonderful. The SL 9000 really performed beautifully for this session. We are all very pleased with the outcome and couldn’t have been more happy with the help from Right Track’s staff.”
