Among the first 10 customers is renowned songwriter/producer Peter Vettese, whose recent musical collaborations have included Mark Owen, Beverley Knight, Mel C and Annie Lenox's 'Bare' album. Peter is upgrading his Andy Munro-designed production room - Production Suite 2 - at Sphere Studios, south London, having used a Soundtracs Virtua console for several years.
Peter comments: "A lot of production rooms in London are focused around ProTools, which I use at Sphere, but I find that having an external mixing desk with plenty of headroom gives me much more flexibility. I always thought the Virtua was completely brilliant and the DS-00 has even more operational capabilities, and it sounds great. It gives me at least 24 channels of high quality tape returns and routing that is completely flexible but easy to specify into ProTools."
Adding the DS-00 is part of a complete refit of the suite including acoustic remodelling by Munro Associates, new monitoring and an upgrade to the latest ProTools HD system. "The main thrust of the work on the room," adds Vettese, "is for the equipment to become transparent and for it to be more about the vibe than emphasising the gear. Because I'm aware of how the DS-00 works and how brilliant it is, I know it will become transparent!"
(Lee Baldock)