Enrique Perez, R&D chief at Solid State Logic (SSL) has spoken exclusively to Headliner about the company’s ongoing plugin rollout, market trends and why he believes subscription models for plugins are the future for manufacturers and customers alike.
Last year, SSL embarked on a product rollout that saw its plugin output expand at a rate of knots. From the Fusion Vintage Drive and Fusion Stereo Image to the Native X-Echo and X-Delay, the company’s range of new plugins drew rave reviews, taking SSL’s innovative approach to hardware and applying it to the digital realm.
Despite the firm’s flurry of new plugins, this wasn’t simply a case of flooding the market with new products – more a matter of identifying where value could be added and filling those gaps accordingly, as SSL director of new products, Niall Feldman, explained to Headliner last year.
Now, with another array of plugins set to hit the market imminently, Perez explains the philosophy behind the upcoming rollout and where he believes the home studio market is headed…
Last year saw SSL release a wide range of new plugins. Talk us through the strategy behind that rollout.
We had been thinking of doing this for a long time, and we put together a team focused specifically on plugins. We have a researcher who conducted a lot of market research on which plugins we should choose. The main idea was based on our heritage, what we understand about workflow, and then trying to come out with plugins that cover all the needs of the studio creative. We originally went for classic SSL products, but the latest ones, like the De-esser, is like a completely different tool. That’s part of our new range of modern DSP algorithms.
You’re now about to release another range of plugins. What can the market expect from that?
Apart from completing the whole virtual studio concept, we have also launched a subscription model, and we strongly believe in giving our subscribers continued added value. Independently, we have people who purchase the plugins, and for them they might feel we are going too fast, but for the subscribers it’s great. Also, we want to grow. We are adding value to modern production - with so many people working from their home studio they need really good plugins. The studio market understands the history of SSL, but they may not necessarily know all of the history and heritage we have in creating digital products, so they might think that we only decided yesterday that we wanted to make plugins. But it’s all based on the technology we’ve been creating for years.