SSL BIG SIX - An Honest Review

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[teashea]

interesting video ---- I have two Big Six's that I use for small projects in my studio. I really like them. High sound and build quality with very fine functionality.

[DaspacestationBeats]

Appreciate your opinion. The Big Six is the best option if you're looking for a small mixer. Yeah you can spend about $2, 000 on a real Ssl G comp with a 500 rack. About $2, 000 minimum on a quality summing box. About $700 a piece for a Ssl eq for 8 channels. And about $500 for a decent patch bay. You can also just buy a large mixing console starting at $20, 0000 for that price. I have the Big Six. It has that Ssl sound, good headroom and low noise. Its better than stacking 1, 000 plugins to get an analog sound. And the routing is great.

[raymondbriars]

BIG SIX is the cheapest in-line console by a long way. I wanted inserts, and it has them. It all suits me very well, at relatively low cost.

[HardyNahtal]

Thanks for the video!! I have the SSL Six and a Cranborne Audio 500 series interface. For me, that has been awesome and much better than the Big Six for cheaper($2300 or so), at least through slightly used/demo options. The Cranborne 500 interface is so underrated!

[adamin]

I own a Big Six. I also own two Rupert Neve Newton channels. The Neve preamps are true magic. The Big Six preamps are very very nice. I was concerned about the converters but they are truly excellent (a lot better than UA Apollo and can handle proper level).

I compared the eqs on a drum bus once with extreme boosts and was not expecting that the SSL would even come close to the Neve. It certainly did; just as punchy and clear in midrange with great bass response but obviously lacked a little bit of the Neve ‘shine’. Both sound classic to be honest.

As for the compressors, they compress better than plugins but they are still compressors ;)

[pierreblenderbuss]

Love your pragmatic, straight talk--have learned a lot from your channel. (The RME TotalMix tutorials are really great!)

[Juan_lauda]

My honest review for candid people looking for a utilitarian vocational piece of equipment and not just a click bait title

The hardware is nice, sounds clean, the routing is very flexible, stereo sends perfect for in ears.
Excellent plug in and go recording in logic.
And g series compressor I wasn’t that bothered about turns out to be really nice sounding.
If you want something adequate there’s plenty of cheaper options. If you want a top of the range desktop multi media mix pad this is probably it.
The long faders make a big difference as well

Also the dedicated TB input is really handy.
You can use it as a discrete return from FOH so that show can talk to you without using up any of the monitor channels.

[pensado]

i have the six, and it sounds amazing. the six has that ssl sound. i don't use the compressors and the eq's are a bit dodgy. but it's the ssl sound, proper.

[smokey]

I love my SSL Six for my hardware synths so much that I added a Big Six to my setup. You're correct that it doesn't color the sound but it does sound more expensive.

[kwrigh]

I usually agree with you....but some of the things you slammed SSL things the COMMUNITY asked for. Original SiX HAD D-Sub...users cried about it. Six didn't have an interface (traditional console) users asked WHY not. Those alone, like you said, this could be a different piece. Its okay to dislike a product, but in this form factor what would you like to see from them? Better everything? Less channels? Its challenging for anyone to build a mixer and keep the cost down. Use ours all day everyday, to route External Inputs.

[SmokeMD]

I have a lot of outboard gear. The reason I bought a big six is to be able to incorporate it all in tandem with a patch bay. (I do also use it for stemming out mixes) Would I use it as my standalone piece? Naw, but using it as a hub for all my gear when I am mixing (I'm tracking full bands at a different studio) Its great and flexible. It's clean (all my outboard gear has nasty tubes, dirty transformers, and the like) I Think that your suggestion to have SSL pull them off the self is pretty short sided, as there are people that really know how to utilize this type of piece in a work flow. You are not one of them (and that's OK!) I have a really good master bus so I am able to use the compressor that is on the big six as a Parallel comp, which is pretty amazing (SSL encourages that behavior ) I appreciate and understand your view on everything you put out, and mostly agree with you, and even agree that if you are buying an SSL Big Six as your only piece of analog gear, that, no its not a be all end all piece of gear. But it really hits a pretty high note for those of us that have outboard gear, but dont have a reason to jump up to a Toft, Trident, or Api Bigbox type of tier.

[eugenepugachov]

I use the Big Six with my 8 track tape machine and I love it. The converters are great, definitely better then my Antelope Audio unit. Also the fact it has converters makes it easy to run tape outs from my machine back into it. The monitor out is great too, everything sounds so much more punchy, my A77x’s sound amazing through this. Also headphone preamp is very good. Routing is very flexible and I actually like that it has only 1/4 jacks. The fact that you can record digitally any analog channel without running into extra converter is amazing, very convenient. The bus compressor beefs up the mix in a pleasing way. Is it worth 3k? Maybe not but I haven’t found anything better yet for my analog/digital setup.

[bruce_from_oregon]

To some extent a swiss army knife is going to be a jack of all trades, master of none.

You can get a big six plus violet EQ 500 module now for 2.7K on Sweetwater. You can sell the violet EQ module for at least 400 on Reverb, I think, so that gets us to 2.3K.

I think it would be neat to see a couple "builds" of alternatives to the big six, lets say in the 2.2 to 2.8K range. What kind of packages could someone go get, for that price, that would be a better bang for the buck? I think that would be an amazing video.

Cheers Barry! Keep on keepin' it real!

[ShazammtheProducer]

its an Analog /digital mini console with an audio interface built in?
Analog EQ on every channel (RARE)
Analog Compressor on ever 4 channel (RARE)
Analog Bus Compressor (RARE)
16x16 Audio interface
SSL Super Analog Mic Pre's
Great Metering (RARE)
Listen Mic Compressor (RARE) (RARE)
Bruh this thing is a monster sir
and inserts

[kevinbailey]

I just ordered one and here’s why. I used to own a commercial studio. Got kind of a bad business deal with my partner. Lost a lot of great gear. Pretty much all of my analog, console, converters, mic’s and etc.
I didn’t want anything to do with music anymore. But got in a horse wreck and couldn’t do much but sit around and play guitar for a while. Then I started to put a small project studio together.
The reason I bought it is I don’t use more than two channels to record at a time. I already have focusrite isa pre’s. But it is a fairly cheap option for eq for tracking, inserts for my pulteq clone and la2a clone. Plus two additional mic pres.
And it’s also an interface so I can record with it. Or sum back to it and use it to reprint tracks through other analog gear that I will eventually purchase. I think it has a decent place in a small project studio for someone kinda like me. But I wouldn’t use it for anything else than that. Because that’s really what I think it was intended for anyway. But will I keep it forever no. As time goes on I’ll upgrade things. This just made it easier to get things going. And I bought it cheap enough to re sell and not lose too much money on the investment.

[kittykegard]

great video - your honesty is refreshing and much appreciated

[LexBravary]

I understand this unit to be a one-stop-shop piece of gear. If you have nothing, you can buy this and have a little of everything and an interface.

[RomellAlaman]

Thank you for this. I was actually trying to get an honest perspective from someone that has a good amount of experience with recoding gear, especially with more expensive gear. Maybe SSL will take your feedback and work out something to the service of the average user. Keep it coming Barry, for the community, for us. Love your honesty !

[LawrencePaulPreston]

Wow, it's so refreshing to see an honest gear review on youtube. Thanks, for that.

[NyakzOTSD]

You missed the Synthesizer/instrumental community. The SSL BIG 6 is a medium to connect potentially 6 stereo or 4 stereo and 4 mono synths (8 in total) hardware synths right into a computer. In theory, if I use Jack to XLR, I could add an additional 2 stereo synths or 4 mono synths (of course, not using them all simultaneously) connected to channel 1-4 Mixer. In addition, it lets you use Hardware Inserts on Channels 1-4 and all channels combined via Bus B - its master insert effect. It also has a 2 stereo FX sends and returns on all channels (1-12). 

Let's talk about connectivity to the CPU. It is pretty much the only Mixer on the market that allows you to route channels directly to the mixer itself. For example, in Pro Tools or Ableton, I can (AT THE CLICK OF BUTTON) route the audio out my DAW to the mixer, add effects, and send it back into my DAW via the same mixer.

They got this right. At the time it was released, there was nothing like it. NOTHING. Barry is right, if you break the mixer down and buy parts individually, you can get better. The EQ and compressor are blah.  They could remove them for all I care. However, to buy all the things the mixer can do, you would easily spend $10k +. A decent interface with 16 ins and outs is about $3k. A great-sounding external compressor (G Bus compressor) or EQ unit (i.e Fusion) is about $3k,

When I bought this, I did not care about the EQs or the Compressor (they could have removed them for all I cared). I bought as a hub for my synths - and for that A+. 10/10.


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