Paradiso the legendary central-Amsterdam music venue, has chosen SSL Live consoles for both its Front of House and Monitor positions. Supplied by Dutch pro audio specialist and SSL partner Audio Electronics Mattijsen (AEM) and SSL L500 will be used for FOH, and an L300 will be used for monitors.
After recently investing in a new Adamson PA system, it was time for the Paradiso team to look at audio consoles. After three days of testing, the criterion was straightforward. The consoles had to be reliable and flexible, visiting engineers had to be able to get hands-on without a long learning curve, and, above all, they had to sound fantastic.
Marian Emmen is the Head of Sound and Production at Paradiso. “Because of the names we have coming here, we have to be at the top of our game,” she said. “System failure is not an option.”
“Importantly, in Amsterdam there is great support from AEM – a solid company that has its own service department, which makes our system engineer very comfortable when it comes to maintenance and support.”
It was during the test sessions that Paradiso’s Principal Sound Engineer Dick Versteegh was convinced: “It has the wow factor – other consoles have a lot of toys but with the SSL I thought, this is a sound desk, everything has its place. It sounds musical. Everything has space without being separate,”
“I also like the crazy amount of routing you can do. Some like it easy and simple, I sometimes like it a bit complicated. With this you can do either. With the Stem busses, being able to route to an output or another buss, I find myself dreaming about how I might layer a drum kit!”
For visiting engineers who have not experienced SSL Live before, the set-up can be easily simplified to familiar input channels, traditional buss types, and straightforward fader layouts. “If you set it up properly,” continued Versteegh, “An engineer can ‘get it’ within five minutes and start mixing straight away, and of course it really helps that you can change things without disturbing the sound. That’s a big improvement on what we can do now.”