Solid State Logic’s System T New Tempest Engines Offer Scalable and Agile Signal Processing Capacity

SSL’s new licensing reflects a trend within the broadcast industry toward a pay-as-you-go model, which allows users to temporarily scale up equipment capabilities by adding software processing for a limited time for special events, thereby providing better utilization of capital expenditure. For example, a production rental company or centralized broadcast hub operation might purchase an SSL System T running a processing pack supporting 256 paths, then license a pack supporting 800 paths for a client working on a large-scale entertainment or sports event for a couple of weeks.

System T V3.1 software additionally provides alerts and warnings as any processing pack license nears its expiration. SSL has also built a licensing platform through which the company can deliver and manage licenses and clients can retrieve them and add them to their console systems.

The bus and stem mono path count, processing resources such as path EQ and dynamics, and effects rack are dependent on a system’s hardware configuration. System T’s Compatibility Mode allows a user to allocate processing resources on lower capacity engines or software processing packs, or lower capacity when working at a higher sample rate. This means that a showfile built on a larger engine or processing pack can be loaded onto any system, even one with a lower capacity. The user simply chooses which channels, buses and effects modules not to use on the lower capacity engine.