Hello fellow Gearslutzers,

It's been a while since I've posted but I can't seem to get answers to these questions so I'm looking to you, my engineering community, for help.

I recently switched my summing system from the api 8200 system to the SSL Sigma and I'm currently demoing the SSL Nucleus as a control surface for the Sigma.

First of all the SSL Sigma is fantastic. Doing analog fader rides controlled from protools has opened up all sorts of amazing options. I'm no longer running into the gain-stageing problems of overdriving the D/A converter outputs when the artist wants something louder. With the Sigma you can really focus on the mix and not worry so much about how hard you are slamming your converters and summing mixer. Now I only really need to worry about the stereo buss and how hard I'm hitting the 1/4" Mara MCI JH110. The Sigma sonically fantastic and it hasn't lost communication once since I interfaced it with my ProTools rig. I'm very pleased with it.

Now I'm trying to interface a tactile control surface with it and the SSL Nucleus seems like a perfect option. But I have some interfacing questions and I'm hoping you guys can help me out.

The fader control all works perfectly well as I'm pretty much dedicating the 16 Nucleus faders to control the 16 stereo inputs of the Sigma. But I'm having some conceptual problems.

- All of the mute and solo functions of the Nucleus control the first 16 faders in protools - which are communicating level information to the Sigma. However those faders do not have the actual audio running through them so the mute and solo functions on the Nucleus are rendered irrelevant. Want I really want is to be able to map those mute and solo buttons to the mute and solo functions of the Sigma and not ProTools. I know the Sigma has a MIDI learn feature but I can't seem to get it to map the Nucleus mute button command.

- I'd like to be able to use the Sigma's "center section" control instead of the Nucleus as the Sigma is much more comprehensive by including simple mute, dim, small speaker select, and talkback functions (all of which which the Nucleus does not have). If there was a way to control these functions of the Sigma from the Nucleus that would be great. I can't seem to find a way to control these Sigma functions short of putting an iPad on top of the nucleus to control my "center section" which just seems silly.

As a final note and bit of constructive criticism for SSL. Both the Sigma and the Nucleus have combined the main external monitor input with their iJack input on a single monitor button. I'm really trying to understand the logic of this. It seems like the idea is that you can play reference ideas from an iPhone or laptop through the iJack while still being able to listen to your main external input without having to switch your monitor source. While I understand this concept the reality of having a 1/8" iJack input feeding my main monitor feed is an engineering nightmare.
If you are working on a track and the artist suddenly wants to play you some reference thing from their iPhone, they grab the 1/8" cable and plug it into their phone which send a loud pop into your speakers as well as the headphones (if you are sending the musicians your stereo mix). And when they are done they pull the cable out sending another loud pop all down the line. And if they decide to leave their phone to laptop connected to the 1/8" cable while you continue recording if they get a phone call or text message it's all fed into my main external monitor with no way to mute it or control it without physically removing the 1/8" plug from the device sending yet another lout pop through the system. This is all very distracting for the musicians and embarrassing for the engineer. The band can be in the middle of a great take and suddenly the phone starts ringing into the headphones.
The engineer really needs to control which source they are listening to. I either need to be listening to my live mix or the iJack reference the artist wants to play me - not both at the same time. Having two separate monitor sources that could be combined by pressing both simultaneously would have been a much more logical solution.
And the lack of a cut or dim button on the Nucleus or any talkback feature also is very confusing. There's just no way to control you monitoring and talkback in a traditional way on the Nucleus.

So, criticism aside, basically I'm looking for a way to control all of the Sigma's monitoring, mute and solo functionality from the Nucleus without having to use an iPad or web browser. I just want a volume knob, mute, solo, dim, talkback and alt speaker buttons sent from the Nucleus to the Sigma.

Is there anyway to do this and, if not, could SSL please start work on a Nucleus Mark 2 where all of the functions of the Sigma can be controlled from a non rack-mounted tactile surface. If I were designing it I would put a single dedicated EQ and compressor section (like the softtube console 1 idea) which could control whichever channel you had selected. That would be really great.

Any advice or comments are most appreciated. I've tried the Artist series, the S3 and now the Nucleus. I love the tactile control surface idea. I just can't figure out how to make it feel like a console. The fader part works great, it's just the rest of it I'm confused by.

Thanks in advance,
Ryan Freeland

all of the above, please SSL listen up!

This thread should be bumped into the High End, giving what's discussed on GS these days. Also, to avoid this topic to be lost and buried at this side of the forum. Mods?

Another idea would be a dedicated "Fat" channel section such as the Sony DMX R100.

BUMP- The OP is saying it as it is.

I would have bought the Nucleus to go with my Sigma, but its just overlapping in certain unwanted/unnecessary ways...

I am building a full on mixing console made of Sigma and a bunch of X Racks filled with EQ's and Dynamics these days, and seems like the missing link from SSL for their modular nixer philosophy is:

1. A dedicated, REAL high quality, fader pack with mutes and solos and some rotaries that is on par with big console faders. Like some good heavy P&Gs. Lets enjoy for a bit. What have we done wrong that we have to suffer toy faders while our instrument is moving faders... Its like having to Play a little toy guitar after years of playing a good Les Paul.

2. A little hardware remote control for the monitor section of the Sigma, like you get in the Avocet. Its just very unreasonable to have this entire 2U mixer right besides for a tiny rotary knob and 2 push buttons. The IPad is too flimsy for real life sessions IMO.

Just my thoughts. Still madly in love with my New SSL modular mixer project.

Missed this one - sorry for the slow reply...

Simple things first:
Everything in the monitor section can be midi "learned". Set up a layer on your Nucleus as a CC (continuous controller) layer, then assign buttons/faders on the Nucleus to the desired monitor control functions. This will do what you need :-)

Mute/solo on "dummy tracks" in PT would indeed be very nice to have controlling Sigma. We're looking at ways we might do this. As a work-around (and something the OP didn't want) I have set up a TouchOSC preset on my iPhone to give me solo and cut buttons for the 16 Sigma channels.

Thanks Jim!!
Quick question,

- Is there a different, stripped down fader pack planned, now that SSL gone fully modular (w the addition of Sigma)?
- Is the Monitor rotary on the Nucleus also sending midi CC? (i suspect not...)

Last- In PT it seems that if Sigma is not assigned to the first 2 slots in the(ipmidi) peripherals page, it receives commands only for the first or the second 8 channel bank, but not for all 16. At the same time if i insert my V Control app(iPad control surface for PT) not in the first 2 slots it loses fader control over PT. So there is no way to use my V control on iPad to ride all 16 of the Sigma channel gains... Whats the deal with that? Cant sigma be inserted on any of the 4 peripheral slots to work properly..?

Thanks for amazing forward thinking products!!!

http://www.solid-state-logic.com/doc...User-Guide.pdf

Page 39 onwards. Substitute "Nucleus" for "V-Control" and your setup is sorted :-)

Cheers!

Jim, I've mentioned this before, but really would like the OSC BASED functions in a VST so these can be loaded and saved within the project, rather than a seperate webinterface.
For stereo channels the sigma offers no panning, so panning needs to be sorted in DAW, i've done a quite extensive guide how to setup your routing and get most out of your first 16 channels with dedicated faders.
(In my case AVID artist) If SSL really wants to go crazy, enrolling with AVID, getting their EUCON SDK and write their own EUCON sigma driver in the firmware would be the most neat solution, but I don't see that happening

We're looking in to some further OSC stuff.

ThnX Jim, OSC protocol in a VST plugin would be great too.
Or if you guys really want to go crazy with softube, ask them to map the volume on the console 1 controller to the corresponding sigma channel, so keep everything within console 1 as is, but map the gain to sigma, now thát would be cool heh

Thanks Everyone.
Not a lot of interest in this topic but happy for some feedback/info.
I did not end up buying the Nucleus as there were just to many strikes against it. I tried, I really really tried but I eventually had to move on.

I ended up with 2 artist mixes which I dedicate to the SSL Sigma. They work just fine and give me physical control of the Sigma at a much lower price. I'd still love to be able to map the mute and solo buttons to the Sigma but I'm guessing this is not that important to SSL. But I've solved this by also adding the Softube console 1 which is a home run in my opinion. I can control all my solo, pan, eq, compression, gates, drive, and pan from one unit. It's such a simpler workflow to have dedicated faders for volume and dedicated knobs for everything else. I also bought the Grace m905 monitor controller for all my monitoring needs and it too is fantastic.

My dream (and I'm assuming Analogue Mastering would agree) would be to have something like the console 1 with it's own dedicated faders. I really think SSL could pull of something great like this to go with the Sigma. Essentially the Nucleus with a dedicated knob section to control SSL plug-ins. Like a single channel strip in the center that controlled whichever channel you wanted. That and a slightly more complete center section - like a simplified version of their consoles. If SSL can't do it then Softube should come up with a fader pack. Call it the console 2. Combining both of those ideas is the only thing missing for me at the moment.

I recently got the sigma to replace another summing box that I have (which I'll be selling soon), I gotta say the sigma sounds amazing and I can't wait to fully integrate it in my setup. I'll eventually need another patchbay and more i/o but that's another story.

I briefly tried to control the sigma with the first 16 faders of protools, I have to give it another shot soon, but I had a weird behaviour. The faders' value in protools didn't match the one in sigma. Is that normal? For example, 0dB in protools was -0,2dB in sigma.
I also bought the delta control plugin but since I can only control 1 instance at a time with my artist mix I think I'd rather use protools' faders but if the value doesn't match the one in sigma it makes it kind of confusing to operate.
I also had some audio glitches when I was setup in HUI mode, in delta mode it seems fine. I have now changed my ethernet setup and will have to try it again with the new recommended configuration.

I'd really appreciate some help with that.
thanks

Bear with us - an update will be coming for Sigma and Artist.

Great, any timeframe in mind?

Meanwhile, is it normal that the HUI faders in protools aren't the same value as the gain in sigma?

Not 100% certain - I'm out in Poland this week doing demos but will look in to it next week when I'm back in the office.

This is great news, my Artists are for sale as the integration is not where it should be, It would be great if the artists could just be "hardwired" to the sigma control app for fader/panning/mute/solo

Jim, I need some help here.

I setup my ethernet network with a switch, as instructed in the manual, it works fine, my artist mix and internet work, the new sigma app works too. (I upgraded the sigma to v2)
So Sigma and Artist mix are connected to the switch, the switch is then connected to the computer and goes in another room to another switch to get internet from there.

As far as controller goes, I also have the Softube Console 1 in usb.

When I use the HUI mode with the 16 audio track at the top of the session I get some audio "glitches", It sounds as if every now and then there's a fast audio level dropout on some instruments, like an abrupt but really fast change of level or like the sound a dirty pot makes when it is being turned.

It happens maybe once per minute or so, it's random. It happens more often in HUI mode but yesterday I noticed it happened in Delta mode too but a lot less often. It seems more prone to happen when I change a volume value but also happens randomly.
I can't have that happen.

Any idea what it can be. Can a cheap switch cause that, or something else on the network? We're 3 studio on the same network, I don't know a lot about networking..

I'd really like to resolve this otherwise I'll always be paranoid that this might happen while mixing in front of a client or printing the mix. I can't have something put a doubt in my mind or in my client's mind.
Please help, thanks!

PS: is there an official SSL support system? I couldn't find any except for an email address but I got no answer from that.

Far better too have the experts check this rather than me. If you go to FAQ | Solid State Logic and then click on the blue "Ask a Question" tab on the right hand side of the page you can log this with the support and product team.

Thanks I will do that.

I was so excited to see a new version of the Nucleus at AES last week.
Sorry to see that the new version of the Nucleus doesn't address any of the problems I have with the unit.
In particulate still combining the the main monitor with the 1/8" jack is the same. This still makes no sense. If you want to reference something on the 1/8" jack - the normal thing would be to switch between your main mix and the 1/8" input. Combining them is a real problem for me.
Also the fact the talkback mic automatically feed the Nucleus headphone jack also makes no sense. The headphone feed on the Nucleus is for my monitoring, why would I want the talkback to feed my headphones? I want to be able to feed the talkback to the artist headphones. This makes no sense.
I feel like SSL is missing bringing the Nucleus into a much more professional environment by just adding a little more flexibility.
I love my Sigma.
I just also want to love the Nucleus.
It seems like a missed opportunity for SSL.
Either that or I'm not the sort of client they care about.
Ryan Freeland

I think a lot of the issues you are talking about are more related to Sigma AND Nucleus (as the thread suggests) ratherthan either product alone.

On a Nucleus, you'd usually be using the internal soundcard(as an assumption of it as a standalone product). The "main mix" you're talking about is actually, as far as the Nucleus is concerned, the "External input" to the monitor section. So, having your "main mix" coming from the soundcard and your "reference mix" coming in to either the XLR external ins or the 1/8" internal in makes absolute sense. Your point of the 1/8" jack being summed with the XLR EXT inputs does indeed make sense within the context of the Nucleus + Sigma conbo, but in that sense why not use the monitoring section on the Sigma instead of the Nucleus and set up a control layer on the Nucleus to control the monitor section of the Sigma by midi learn? This would achieve what you're describing in one way.

Talkback to headphones? Well, again, using Nucleus as a standalone product we imagine that you (engineer) and vocalist are both working in the same room, so 2x headphone outputs which have the TB signal injected in to it means you both hear each other. On Nucleus2, you can also send your TB signal over the Dante network to communicate to other rooms etc.

We do make a product that is effectively a Sigma and a Nucleus in one box - Matrix2. This has all the functions that you're asking us to do for you.

Further integration between Sigma and Nucleus will happen, but please don't imagine that just because what we're doing right now doesn't immediately match the functions you want it to have that we don't know people need them... that's why there's a Matrix as well as a Nucleus + Sigma combo.

I think Jim is right on this...Nucleus is very effective on its own and Nucleus2 fixed the important issues.
I am sure talkback works very nicely as the rest did on the original. Superanalogue is super!

Only, I couldn't find a way to map the volume control of Sigma on Nucleus...is this possible Jim?
I really would like Nuclues to control the master section of Sigma in full.

For anything midi on the sigma, you need to create a loopback to IPmidi port 10
So as long as you can make the Nuc send out to IPmidi10 the sigma can learn whatever you want to assign. For me the Sigma is under my fingertips, so i never had a need to do this, but IPmidi10 is where it needs to receive it commands

Thank you, I must clarify that I was able to map all controls except Volume pot.
Obviously I am missing something here...
Did you assign your volume to a fader or a pot?

I did not asign it, I tested with a simple midi keyboard controller and never looked into it again, I own sigma, but not a nuc

There's a Nucleus profile for Sigma Delta in the installer bundle of the software download package :-)

Thanks for the response Jim. Sorry if my frustration comes across as more critical than constructive. The Nucleus is just so close to being a great tool for me and I just can't get it to do a few things that are important to the way I work.

Because I'm working with the Sigma my mixes are going through an extensive two buss analog mix section and then to my Apogee AD/DA. So I'm monitoring through the Apogee DA and not the sound card. So I really need access to an external input. Thus my problem with combing those two inputs.

I understand your suggestion about using the Sigma center section control but sonically I had some trouble with the Sigma center section. The center section on the Nucleus sounds absolutely amazing and reminds me of working on larger SSLs. If you tell me that they are identical center section design I will humbly offer my apologies. But the Sigma center section just sounded weird to me. I ended up getting the Grace m905 which is a wonderful center section control as well. But when I demoed the Nucleus the way the center section sounded was just beautiful - I wish I could use it.

Regarding the talkback system it seems like I'll need to access the talkback point through Dante and then find a way to route it out to the musicians headphone feeds. Just seems like having a talkback access jack on the back of the Nucleus would have been simpler to access and feed the talkback system wherever needed.

I totally hear what your saying about the Matrix. Can you run 16 stereo pairs into the Matrix the way you can with the Sigma? It looked to me like the Matrix is 16 mono channels with a way to get a separate input on each channel. The Sigma has me locked into the 16 stereo channels idea which was weird at first but now I love.
Also I travel with my gear a lot so the rack mount thing was a big attraction for the Sigma. I'll take another look at the Matrix and see if it can handle 32 line inputs in the same way the Sigma does.

Thanks again for paying attention to this thread (I started it). Believe me I just want to be able to use the Nucleus with my Sigma and am frustrated that there are a few missed opportunities that would make it such a great combination for me.

I'll stop complaining now.
I've just been a huge fan of SSL since I got started working at Bob Clearmountain's studio in 1995. I really want to be able to use as much SSL gear as possible and I really wish I could use the Nucleus.

Thanks again,
Ryan Freeland

Thanks Jim, I am already aware of it and have been using it for a while now to control DIM CUT TALK MONO etc., but the Sigma layer for Nucleus doesn't allow me to control the rotary encoder level (meaning: volume)

I tried using the MIDI LEARN function via CC Layer on Nucleus but while I had success with learning all other functions, the rotary encoder doesn't seem to give any response for MIDI learn....help!