SSL C-100
A broadcast console that carries the Solid State Logic name into rooms where a 40-fader desk would never fit.
Overview
Say Solid State Logic and most people picture enormous, high-ticket, state-of-the-art consoles. The C-100 works against that picture. Mix (2003, p.94) described the C Series as compact digital broadcasting consoles. It noted that a modest complement of stereo, mono, and 5.1 channels could deliver the equivalent signal processing of a 40-fader console, each channel controlled from a single fader. So it's a broadcast desk that behaves like a much larger one.
The C-100 is a digital broadcast console, and by the middle of the decade it had grown a family. Mix (2007, p.91) covered the C100 HD-S, a version designed specifically to fit in tight spots, with an enhanced feature set and a significant boost in processing power over what came before. The same coverage notes that the "S" and its larger brother, the C100 HD, both accepted the Centuri HD-S, a new smaller front-loading processor option. The HD-S also supported direct control of a DAW over HUI protocol and added a new low-cost MADI interface. Anyone chasing documentation should note that the HD-S was priced per configuration rather than at a fixed list.
What the C-100 was not, at least in the resale record, was cheap. A Mix (2001, p.242) classified listing from the period shows an SSL Axiom AX40-32 at $200k and a refurbished SSL 6064 G+ at $115k. That is large-format SSL money, moving through the same channels as the broadcast desks. The listing does not name the C-100 directly, but it establishes the price neighborhood these consoles occupied when they changed hands.
The documentation on the C-100 is thinner than on its siblings. The available material covers the C Series launch and the later HD-S variant in detail, but the plain C-100's own production years and original list price are not established here. What can be said with confidence is the lineage: a compact digital broadcast console, built to put SSL processing into installations where a full-frame desk was never an option.
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