The Trials and Tribulations of the Avid S6

George Hickman
Jun 7, 2017
6 min read

Hello! Today I will be going over a recent session I hosted with Jonny Bullpitt and Callum Hicks in the Avid S6. My initial booking was based around the hopes to become familiar with the new control surface, and familiar is what I became. The session started off a bit rough but by the end I had become familiar with the signal flow of the studio, creating two different track samples (Drum loop and minute long track demo), had a go at sending the signal through the external processors and printed some mastered demo's.

Signal Flow:

The session started rough, really rough. Entering the session I found Callum, looking stressed and confused, nothing was working. He went on to explain how there was no audio coming out of the speakers, yet Pro-Tools and the interface were sending / receiving signals. From the top, we started again; Turning off the monitors, then S6, computer and Interface's after and then back again making sure the S6 and Interfaces were on before the computer. We made sure the S6 was reading the internal monitor control; making sure the control software was synced to the USB2MIDI channel, then syncing up the desk and testing the controls. Following, we booted Pro-Tools and and set up a session, importing the correct I/O settings and testing out the desk by listening to a drum loop. BUT, No Sound.

We tried everything we could think of, setting up the S6 Routing, menu diving the S6, re-installing the I/O settings, making sure each channel was sending to the right output, etc. We resorted to restarting the whole system again.. but this time, let it all sit off for ten or so seconds... still NO SOUND!

Well, we were getting sound out of the Avantone Cube Monitors.. but we had no idea why only those speakers were working. We were at our wits-end.. About to go over the start up procedure a third time when, Callum, god bless the kid, remembered there was a Sub-Woofer in the Signal Flow. My God. There was sound finally!

Things to remember:

USB2MIDI - make sure that the computer, interface and S6 all talk to each other
Sub-Woofer - There is a sub-woofer and its a crucial part of the signal flow
Shutdown - The S6 shutdown is in the menu system, make sure not to turn off via wall plug
Callum - Listen to him!

Pro-Tools Production and Routing:

The session was my first real exercise within my projected side project, a 4 track sound design orientated EP on Pro-Tools. The Loop started off as simply a Drum loop from a Jazz Trio Callum, Keely Menzie and Myself recorded last Trimester. This progressed into a Down-Tempo house / techno track through a series of loops and chopped up samples. Taking advice from my brother, I took a series of percussion loops and chopped them every into beat sized loops. Each sample looped every beat and most where side chained to the 4/4 Kick Drum, giving the track a great deal of groove.

I decided I wanted a bit of 'interest' within the loop, so I took a snare hit from the original jazz loop (which was now muted) and placed it on the off notes. This gave the groove some more flavor and a bit of syncopation as I was using slide mode. To also add more 'interest' to the track, I opted to send the snare to the external reverb unit in the S6 Studio, the Bricasti M7. The Bricasti is a beautiful reverb unit, capable of every style under the sun, plate, shimmer, spring, hall, room, etc. The Bricasti is also routed beautifully in the S6, having to only allocate a I/O insert, you have access to all of its wonderful features. Unfortunately, you still have to use the controls on the external unit but to me that is only beneficial, being a man who favors physical hardware. Though the S6 does allow support of third-party plug ins on the S6, it is still a preference to use the rack unit due to its own ergonomic differences. I opted for a large room reverb (from memory), adding 30ms pre-delay and a 2.5 second reverb time. The result sounded amazing, so good i ended up send the whole track (with a lot less level in the bus) to the reverb unit.

Finally I added a chopped up Broken Harp sample (hence the name of the track below) to give it some final touches. The sample itself was spaced out without any real timing or phrasing, so i opted to chop it up and give it a bit of flavor and variety. The sample was quite dissonant itself, so I used that to my advantage, making the chops unpredictable and sharp. I once again sent it to the Bricasti but let the level sit a bit in between the snare hit and average send level. This allowed it to sit above the track, with a broad enough soundscape to give the loop the dissonance I was after while, still letting the snare hit and reverb to shine through.

808's and Mastering:

By this stage of the session, it had been two and a half hours and Jonny just left, so Callum and myself thought about mastering a drum loop. To do so, I quickly made a 808 drum loop with samples from LegoWelt. I wont go into a lot of detail about the Drum loop, but it was quiet simple; Kick, snare, hihat, clap, crash. all made on slip mode allowing the loop to have more groove and natural swing.

We routed all of the tracks in the loop to bus 3&4 (bus 1&2 used on the Bricasti) and send them to an auxiliary track. That track was then routed through I/O insert 10-11 for the external mastering gear, then sent back into Pro-Tools. To avoid doubling up of the signal, we then set the auxiliary track into another bus (5&6) which fed into another auxiliary, then muting all tracks but the final auxiliary. Upon looking back at the signal path, it is unclear why we chose to route the signal back into another auxiliary before sending to the output, 'cause if all outputs were muted, the initial mastering auxiliary shouldn't need to be routed again? well, maybe that is something we should look into next session, but at-least it allowed us to master the loop.

We send the output through four different units, a Pair of Avalon VT 737sp Pre-Amps, a Dangerous Bax EQ, FCS PS3 ME Stereo Mastering Compressor, and then a Manely Stereo compressor (I am unsure of the exact model we used), thought the manly was used solely as a limiter.

We ran a few different tests, mostly through the FCS, to see how the different units features affected the sound. We initially ran the signal through the Avalon Pre-Amps for the 32khz boost, to see how that sounded. I will touch on the 32khz boost in more detail in a later blog, but for the moment; the boost brings a really nice clarity to the signal, giving the high end some room to breathe. Sounding a lot like 'pop' is a great way to put it. From the manly we went into the Bax EQ, cut below 30khz to avoid rumble and cut above 18khz. From there we entered the FCS.

The FCS sounded fantastic! Both Callum and Myself realized why they are the price they are, both hearing the warm and beautiful quality that our signal had created, we were more then pleased. We decided to test how the compressor sounded when completely crushing the signal. Running the input and threshold at max, we then messed around with the RMS / Peak system, to see how each sounded, the result was quite astounding..

RMS

Peak

As you can hear, the Peak absolutely destroys the signal, crushing and distorting all the peaks of the signal, where as the RMS crushed the middle, pushing all the sounds together, thinning out the sound. It would be more interesting to do more test's like such on the units, to get some creative results. Due to the lack of knowledge I have on Mastering, I don't want to go into as much detail yet, thus, more tests and knowledge to be shown in the coming trimesters! To conclude, I leave you with the final 808 Loop, mastered to the best of our limited ability!

Thank you for Reading!