‘Redefined and streamlined’: SSL SiX and masstige music production technologies

Abstract

Software has been fundamental to the transformation of music production in the past few decades. Digital tools have replaced many hardware-based equipment once almost exclusively available in large recording studio contexts. This article examines the possible resurgence of hardware as a tool in an emerging environment and explores this process as an example of ‘masstige’. Here, brands associated with large-scale music production create cheaper hardware for mainstream markets. It considers the SSL SiX desktop mixer as an example of this phenomenon. This article argues that the hardware form intervenes in a previously stigmatised and disused tool in home production, and the prestige of SSL potentially redefines the cultural status of the technology. Show more