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Message: [QUOTE="Queen, post: 90545, member: 27"] SSL's original Total Recall, introduced in 1981, stored every knob position on a floppy disk, then left an engineer to twist each one back by hand. A screen showed where each control sat, and where it needed to go. You nulled them one at a time, channel by channel, until the desk matched yesterday. On a big frame that was half a morning gone before anyone played a note. Engineers did it gladly, because the alternative was never getting the mix back at all. Now compare that with Sound On Sound's Oracle review, which clocked a full session load at three to four seconds. Same analog audio, same physical controls, and the surface simply arrives where you left it. Understanding why that took four decades tells you most of what you need to know about how these consoles are built today. [HEADING=2]An analog knob is the circuit, not a message about it[/HEADING] Turn the gain control on a classic desk, and you are physically altering a resistance in the signal path. The knob is not sending an instruction to anything. It is the instruction. That is why recall on analog gear stayed stubborn long after digital mixers made it routine. A digital console stores a number, and the number is the setting. An analog console has to store a number, then persuade a physical circuit to obey it. The way out is a control layer that sits beside the audio rather than inside it. SSL relies on multiplying digital-to-analog converters, or MDACs, which behave as resistances a computer can set. Your signal still passes through analog components. What changed is that the value of those components became addressable, so a saved session can write itself back into the hardware. The controls you touch had to change too. Faders are motorized, so they can drive themselves into position. Rotaries work as encoders with the stored value shown beside them, which kills the old problem of a pointer that lies about where the circuit actually sits. None of the audio becomes digital. The knowledge of where everything was does. [HEADING=2]Moving the processing out of the furniture[/HEADING] The second shift is physical. On SSL's current recall-capable consoles, the channel electronics live in dedicated racks rather than under the surface you lean on. What sits in front of you is a control surface driving analog hardware somewhere else in the building. SSL specifies those racks with active cooling and an acoustic noise floor below NR25, which suggests they expect them near the room rather than banished to a basement. That layout pays off twice. Signal paths inside a rack stay short and consistent, instead of running the length of a frame packed with moving parts. And the surface stays cooler and quieter, because the heat and the fans are not at your elbow. It also turns [B]near-instant recall of a fully analog signal path[/B] from a demo trick into the normal rhythm of the room. You can watch the idea scale across the range, from compact frames right up to [B][URL='https://goldmidi.com/community/threads/ssl-crowned-odyssey-its-flagship-analog-console.75866/']the newest SSL flagship desk[/URL][/B], which stretches the same architecture to ninety-six channels with dynamics on every input. [HEADING=2]What recall buys you, and what it quietly costs[/HEADING] The commercial argument is scheduling. If a session returns in seconds, a room can run three clients in a day and still take a revision request from a mix that was finished weeks ago. That was never realistic when every recall started with a printout and a lot of patience. The cost is dependence. Your console becomes a computer-managed instrument, and the control system, the software, and the racks all turn into things that can need service. Pricing at this level stays a dealer conversation, so a budget starts with a phone call rather than a web page. Anyone comparing options should price the support arrangement, not just the frame. Worth remembering as well, recall returns the desk and not the session. Mic placement, outboard settings, the amp in the corner, the way the room sounded that afternoon. None of that arrives with a saved file, and no amount of stored knob positions will rebuild it. The desk is simply the part that stopped being an argument. [/QUOTE]

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