UPDATE: Replaced the Analog Heat with SSL SiX

Elektron Gear Analog Heat
#62

I’ve been eyeing this one for a day or so now, the SiX that is. On the one hand, it seems its glorious for what it does. On the other hand, I’m wondering if it’s overkill for me.

Here’s what I’m thinking -

The Blackbox has three stereo outs. They’re re-routed within the box through the interface, so essentially it’s like plugging and unplugging on a whim.

I intend to connect all three into something like the SiX - two stereo, one mono.

One stereo is the master. One stereo is anything that goes through the Polymoon, which could be one or multiple samples from the Blackbox at the same time, for either hardwired resampling back into the Blackbox from the Six then, or just mixed with the master and record live. The last one, mono, has the same idea as the Polymoon but goes through the Chase Bliss Mood pedal instead.

Once I’ve done my resampling and structuring within the Blackbox, I reconnect the outs from the Box into the SiX for the actual finished track, which could be just the one stereo track from the Blackbox, or tracks divided between the three outs into the SiX if appropriate, but now for the purpose of recording the track finished.

Any mixer can do this, I can get one from A&H with enough channels and a USB recording interface even for like 150€ or so. But everyone goes “The SiX is so magical”, whereas other mixers really don’t get that kind of praise.

But again, is the SiX overkill for this purpose? It seems it can do so much that I won’t be using.

#63

I had the SiX, it’s really great but I ended up selling it due to the fixed ratio comps and limited eq’s. It was great for singer/songwriter stuff but lacked the sonic versatility for electronic music imo. I really miss the aux, monitor, and insert options. I’d do my best to afford a Twelve with adjustable G-bus and channel compressors.

Be aware, there is a bad resonant ring in the low bass frequencies on the channel 1-2 compressors. A strange oscillation that made it unusable for bass synth/guitar processing.

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#64

Ok, thanks. I had a feeling there was a reason it didn’t show up much in electronic music context.

Really, the Heat with more inputs would’ve been enough. I realise that’s a moot statement, it just describes my conclusion as to what I need.

I guess, an Elektron mixer :slight_smile:

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#65

Until then, I think I’m going for a Go:Roland Mixer Pro. Lets me split and mute the separate signals, and send it all into the Heat for overall monitoring, and hardwired resmapling becomes a lot easier this way, since I can just turn on and off the outs from the Blackbox I don’t want to sample.

A good enough compromise to allow for the flexibility of separate routing into the Heat.

Makes me wonder what Elektron’s cooking (cause I know they’re up to something).

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#66

Nevermind. Figured out a way to do it within the Blackbox without the need for a mixer.

The Heat’s out for the moment, replaced by nothing. The thread is restored. All is well.

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#67

Isn’t the term you “circutghosted” your analog heat?

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#68

Not quite :slight_smile: I need to sell it, for it to become truly circuitghosted. And we’re not there yet :ghost:

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#69

So now I’m in trouble. We got no SSL SiX around here, but when I just briefly mentioned my new setup to the local dealer, he mentioned - without me leading him on - that man, an SSL SiX would do wonders in that context.

I dunno, I said. I don’t see any around, do you? And there’s no way I’m buying that on speculation. Makes sense, he said.

Calls me up a few hours later, said the supplier would be fine to borrow me one for a few days, since he’s curious to see what comes out of it in the kind of context I’m using it in.

So now I got an SSL SiX coming my way, on loan. Which, of course, is available to buy if I like it.

Let’s all hold hands and decide I won’t like it, okay?

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#70

:open_mouth:

I’m sure there’s no way you’ll like it…

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#71

Major downgrade I bet. No need to worry :yum:

There is no info in the net about an electronic context to the six. You could be a pioneer dude.

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#72

I know, right? It’s gonna suck. Already pissed it’s wasting my time😗

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#73

I disagree. There are some examples out there, including some folks on this forum. It’s greater than zero, but not by much. One of those things that reminds you that for every bedroom electronic music producer, there are 3-5 (or more) garage bands out there. It’s up to us, folks! I do think the SiX has a lot to offer people who have more than a couple Elektron boxes. I keep thinking about how it could improve my workflow, but that opens up a pandora’s box of placement of gear, routing of cables, etc. (the “fun stuff”, right?).

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#74

Yep, well, the dealer had an interesting perspective on it. He’s got vast experience of SSL and work on one of their older, big boards since years back and he’s got some time with the SiX as well.

Essentially, his angle on this was that for what’s there, in terms of eq, compression and whatnot, it’s glorious. There’s not a whole lot you can do to get around it if you don’t personally approve of what those parameters do to your music, but as he put it, if it fits the sound I’m after, he couldn’t imagine a better quality at that price. And the routing that can be done on the board can open up other opportunities as well. He was of the opinion that this is the same level of quality, but not flexibility, that gear three or four times the price can get. So if you gel with it, you got premium stuff. If not, walk away

Seeing as much of the character in my stuff comes from the source material, and my mixing’s mostly to clean it up and glue it together, it’ll be interesting to see what this will do. But it would have to be substantially better than the Heat for the purpose, for me to even consider it (and sell the kidneys necessery to fund it (cause I really can’t afford it)).

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#75

Ah, I see what you’re getting at. It seems that, in simplifying the interface, limitations were imposed on the hardware. This is to be expected though, as they are cramming a ton of functionality into a small package. Given the range and flexibility of a lot of synth gear (Elektron boxes very much included), I would think that the EQ’s and compressors on the SiX would be best used to finesse and polish vs. making dramatic changes to the source material. One of the things I like about it is that it doesn’t preclude usage of the Heat. Heck, in one of their examples, they talk about putting a coloration box (their Fusion, naturally) on the master insert loop. To me, that opens up more flexibility in using the Heat or not, depending on the project. Of course, you could also choose to put the heat on an individual channel FX insert - there are many options!

At any rate, you’re thorough, so I’m looking forward to how you find the SiX in your setup. It could be enlightening for a lot of people, SSL included!

side note: I wonder if you could share some of your Heat presets for mastering. It sounds like you’ve put more time into fine tuning the use of Heat on the master than I have.

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#76

Hot take: I’ve never heard an AH demo that made me think it was worth the price of admission (new, anyway).

But I’m finishing tracks in my DAW.

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#77

You can always replace the Analog Heat with the gain knob on a Mackie 1202 :thinking:

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#78

The SiX is a pleasure to use. I use headphones most of the time and everything sounds better through the headphone amp vs my Babyface. People talk about headroom with the SSL which means nothing to me :man_shrugging:t2: Just sounds good. Going to use for summing stems from the DAW

#79

My presets - I got two :slight_smile: - are very specific to my material, so I don’t think you’d find much use for them. But I can share my learnings, that might be of some interest. So this is a bit off topic, but since I’m the OP, I declare myself the right to stray :slight_smile:

So essentially, I settled for two circuits - Clean Boost or Saturation. Enhancement is also cool, but was a little too bright for my taste. And the distortions weren’t an option for me.

Before I made my master presets, I tried to get the source material in the Blackbox as close to what I wanted as possible. The only tools that go some way to accomplish that is the filter - which is pretty great though - and the level itself, combined with the internal compressor, which all seems to work as some kind of gluer and limiter at the same time. Watching the source material, I figured this would do.

I mixed in my AKGs and then shopped around at friends to try it out at their monitors. Then, I listened to a few different set of consumer headphones to tweak it further, and finally ran it through some half crap home systems. A low range Bose, some Marshall stuff, whatnot, even a car stereo.

After that, I was close enough to what I wanted. In the Heat, I then applied some careful EQ to pull back the low-ends - always too much low end - and carefully open up and clean away some of the mud. The two channel EQ is simple but efficient. I went for the Peak filter with careful settings to fatten the sound - it really came down to decimals in the end, especially the dangerous Resonance setting which tore my ears apart a few times - and applied subtle filter panning. Not much, but enough to make a difference.

The envelope I mapped to the High Eq, to pull back not at every kick, but slightly more forgiving, to give a more organic and not so predictable rythm to when it applied. A fairly short release a fast attack, so it behaves kind of like a sidechain thing, but to different effect.

I mapped the first LFO to the filter cutoff, a veeery slow sinus wave with maybe around 10 as depth, and the second LFO I applied to the filter panning. I didn’t touch the filter envelope for this purpose.

The Drive, I pushed just enough to get a hint of distortion. Enough so that you’d notice it if it wasn’t there, but not so much that it’d stand out and demand your attention. And full wet.

Something like that. I record straight from the Heat into my iPhone and upload to Soundcloud, so it is what it is. I’m not very good at these things, so I’m not particularly proud of my mixes. But I do enjoy making them and there’s some character to them, maybe because I don’t really know how to get these things right. So for what it’s worth, that’s how I do it.

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#80

Ha - thanks for sharing. That was way more in depth than I was expecting. I know what you mean about the filter resonance. The first few times out I was like “holy hell, what have I done? Is it brokennn??!” But then I found out that if you turn up filter dirt, the resonance calms down to a more usable level. I like your usage of the modulation (envelope and LFOs) – I should take advantage of the second LFO destination, I always forget that (since it’s in the mod menu it’s not front of mind).

I should probably tone down the low end. I always find myself cranking it up! Probably due to my 5" monitors not telling me the whole story. One of these days, I’ll do some proper testing, where I figure out settings that sound good everywhere. I have to try the iphone earbuds out, at least. Cheers.

#81

I’ve realised I don’t care so much about the sound… It’s either I prefer my tracks without it or so subtle I can’t even hear it. It’s for sale…

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