SSL X-Desk used on Jennifer Lopez hit

Manufacturer of analogue and digital audio consoles, Solid State Logic, has announced that Troy ‘Radio’ Johnson has installed an SSL X-Desk and X-Rack in his home studio.

As a songwriter and producer, ‘Radio’ is used to working on SSL consoles, but during the production of Lopez’s ‘Until it Beats No More’, a track co-written by Johnson, the X-Desk and X-Rack allowed him to produce the final mix from his own studio.

Johnson explained: “We originally wrote the song for Leona Lewis but she didn’t go for it, so my manager played the song to J.Lo’s people and they liked it. I wasn’t there for the recording because Kuk Harrell took care of the vocal production, but when I heard her performance I was like, ‘oh my gosh, she killed it’, she was great! They told me they wanted me to change the drums around a little bit and add some more synth stuff etc. While I was [in the studio] doing that they asked me to mix the track, and I was like, ‘really? Alright! So I mixed the record on an [SSL] G-series console and when they heard it they thought it was great, but they said they wanted me to make a couple more changes.

“The problem was that the next day the studio was booked out, and so my first thought was, ‘It’s a good job I have my X-Desk and X-Rack here, ’cos I can pull up these channels and change things and still get the same analogue quality that I would get at the studio. For me it was the perfect opportunity to utilise this whole set up that I have. And it came out great. I wasn’t sure if they thought that this might still be a demo mix, and then they sent it off for mastering. So I guess I finished the final mix at my house on the X-Desk.”