Greg Wells, a multi-Grammy-winning musician, songwriter and record producer, recently invested in an SSL Sigma Delta summing mixer and hasn't looked back since. The producer and songwriter recently bought an SSL Sigma Delta summing mixer, which uses A/B Bus architecture and Delta control, for his Los Angeles studio.
The talent of Greg Wells, a Canadian musician, songwriter and producer and multiple Grammy winner, has helped sell more than 125 million records for artists such as Elton John, Adele, Taylor Swift, Celine Dion, Pharrell Williams, Katy Perry, Ariana Grande, OneRepublic, Kelly Clarkson, Pink and Aerosmith, with streams reaching into the billions.
The Greatest Showman: The film's original soundtrack, produced and mixed by Wells, was the best-selling album of 2018
The producer and songwriter recently bought an SSL Sigma Delta summing mixer, which uses A/B Bus architecture and Delta control, for his Los Angeles studio. The rack-mount SuperAnalogue mixer gives Wells complete, synchronized control via the Sigma remote control app and the Delta-Control DAW plugins.
"It's a different vibe," says Wells. "Mixing in the DAW has never sounded better: I'm an older guy; I used to be a session musician in the '90s, so I remember doing a lot of recordings and demos on tape, because there were no computers that could record audio reliably."
Using the Sigma Delta reminds Wells of those analog days: "There's a sensuality and a musical immediacy that I really love. I also really enjoy the physicality of the gear: it takes me back to great old recordings, and that has a certain romance for me."
With the Sigma Delta, Wells found a way of mixing in the DAW that suited him
"One day I thought: I have to do this in the DAW, I have to find a way. Now I'm happy mixing everything in the computer. I love big analog gear, I love big consoles and faders. I love having everything in front of me. The Sigma just hits me differently; there's something a bit more fun about the way it sounds".
For his film work, Wells has found the Sigma Delta invaluable: "I'm learning a lot, because that's how films are made now. You have to move really fast and there are lots of edits to make! The world is computer-based now, everything is digital: nobody uses analog gear anymore."
After moving from the studio he had worked in for some 18 years to a much smaller space, and with work piling up, Wells no longer had room for his usual console and needed to get to work quickly.
"I thought: I'll just work in the DAW and keep everything clean and simple. I was fine for a while, and then, of course, I started getting curious about pulling a couple of pieces of gear out of storage, and then a few more, and then some more... Anyway, I kept doing it! I had to install more and more racks and needed to find a way to hook it all up, and meanwhile I kept expanding my interfaces," he recalls.
Realizing he needed a summing mixer, Wells tried a few before landing on SSL. "There are some things that are similar to other summing mixers, but there's no other summing mixer that does what this one does so easily. It's the only summing mixer that can have captures on two mix buses. It can sum mix bus B into mix bus A, so it all comes down to the left and right cables and the left and right outputs. And most importantly, you can automate the channels in Pro Tools or whatever your DAW is. There's no other summing mixer that lets you do that!"
According to Wells, SSL's offering is far superior to other summing mixers because of its ability to automate levels
"When I have compressors plugged in that are much older than I am, it can end up being a little noisy, but even so, it sounds incredible. The Sigma is a real record-making machine!"
Recently, Wells has been working with a young rock band, deploying the Sigma Delta to mix tracks. "I think rock music is the hardest to mix, but I used the Sigma on this project, and when I heard it, I was really happy with how it sounded; there's huge, loud, punchy low end and a beautiful presence. It actually sounded exactly how I hoped it would, and that often doesn't happen! Someday I'll end up somewhere where I'm really happy with how a project sounds, but usually it's not exactly how I heard it in my head."
Wells likes to use four different drum buses, and finds that the Sigma Delta handles them well
"Mixing through drum bus one is incredibly appealing, after which you say, 'I wonder what drum bus three would sound like,' or 'I wonder what it would sound like if I put the first drum kit through drum buses one, two and three, with completely different signal paths.' The Sigma lets me do that so easily: it has 32 inputs and 16 stereo inputs, so three drum buses only take up stereo channels one, two and three, and I still have all these others to play with."
When it comes to plugins, Wells can effortlessly automate the output level of drum buses two and three and mix them in wherever he needs, which he finds much quieter than using drum bus no. 1.
"Nothing sounds like that," he says enthusiastically. "It's crazy. And I'm doing the same thing with vocals. I have a bunch of mono compressors I use on vocals, and I can send the lead vocal to three or four of these compressors at the same time into a mix and use the SSL plugins in Pro Tools. I don't have to leave Pro Tools to go to another application; it's all in the mix session."
SSL's Delta control has been another revelation for Wells
"It's extremely simple," he insists. "It made sense to me instantly and it's super intuitive. Everything is in front of you and it's easy. I like it so much that I'm not sure I'll go back to working on my console the same way. I think I'm going to have to find some way to incorporate both! There's no way I could stop using the Sigma, because the control and the results are amazing."
