Sheffield Audio/Video Productions Builds on its Legacy with Solid State Logic, Installing new Duality Fuse SuperAnalogue™ Mixing Console

A landmark facility with history

Sheffield opened at its current location just north of Baltimore, Maryland, in 1981. SIRA, which was established at the complex in 1995 and is approved by the Maryland Higher Education Commission, offers three tracks of vocational programming to prepare students for jobs in the AV industry. In addition to SIRA’s classrooms, tech labs and other teaching facilities, the complex also houses Sheffield’s original two commercial recording studios and a 2,000-square-foot video production soundstage. Sound engineering students attending SIRA’s AudioWorks program have access to both professional recording studios. The new Duality Fuse replaced an older Duality that was installed in Studio A in 2007.

According to owner Jeff Mund, who partnered in the business with Andrew Dunn and Scott Lloyd, the Sheffield staff discussed several alternative mixing console brands for Studio A. But considering Sheffield’s extensive history with SSL, and with so many SSL consoles in production facilities across the country and around the world, it made sense to install the company’s latest analogue technology in the A room, he says. “After a couple of conversations with our engineering team and with the folks at SSL, it was clear that we wanted the industry standard. We wanted the interoperability, so that if our students learned the SSL SuperAnalogue format, they could work on an SSL console anywhere,” Mund says. “So it wasn’t a tough decision.”

Keeping it in the SSL family — for now and future generations

Sheffield trailblazers John Ariosa and Vance Van Horn used SSL consoles dating back almost to the beginning of the company. The Duality console that was in Studio A until recently, for instance, replaced a 4000 E Series that was previously in place for 17 years in the room. In 1991, an SL4040 E/G was removed from Studio B, reconfigured to support 48 inputs and installed in Sheffield’s newly built mobile recording truck’s 48-foot trailer. That SL4048 analogue desk was replaced in 2001 by an SSL Axiom MT+ digital console in the truck, which now offers fully redundant 64-track recording to Pro Tools.

Mund believes that Duality’s ability to support a hybrid workflow by fully integrating with the DAW alongside SSL’s SuperAnalogue signal path makes it a useful teaching tool in addition to meeting the expectations of the studio’s high-end commercial clients. “I like to say we’re meeting students where they are, with their pre-college experiences of working in-the-box. Then there’s the quality of those Duality mic pre’s and equalizers that they are exposed to in that moment, and the ability to flip, roll old-school and do some analogue summing, which gives them the best of both worlds,” he says.