Dennis "Roc.am" Jones Reaches for Solid State Logic's THE BUS+ on High Profile Immersive Mixing and Mastering Projects

Whether he is remastering a Frank Sinatra collection, mixing a Rihanna album, or working on a movie soundtrack, Roc.am says THE BUS+ has a lot under the hood: "It's so versatile that it's almost endless.”

October 9, 2025

Los Angeles, California, October 9, 2025 — On any given day, engineer, producer and artist Dennis "Roc.am" Jones might be remastering a Frank Sinatra collection, mixing a Rihanna album in Dolby Atmos or producing music for a movie soundtrack or for release under his own name. Whatever the project, he says, Solid State Logic’s THE BUS+ two-channel compressor is always in the chain.

Roc, born in the borough of Brooklyn in New York City and regularly working on both the east and west coasts, is perhaps best known for his immersive mix projects, reimaging and remastering material by legendary artists like James Brown and Frank Sinatra, global icons such as Mary J Blige and Mariah Carey, and rising stars including Ice Spice and H.E.R. He has also contributed to movie soundtracks such as Pitch Perfect and the original immersive soundtrack for Wicked and releases original material as an artist under his own name.

Bringing inspiration to life
“Since I installed THE BUS+, I've used it on every single project, religiously,” Roc reports. His principal focus currently is on reimagining and remastering releases from the Universal Music Group. When he embarks on a new project, he says, he carefully considers what using THE BUS+ can bring to it. “The obvious thing is that I can do standard compression, but I usually take it beyond that. With THE BUS+, I can go extreme, or I can add just a little touch. Often, multiple little touches, which add up to a much bigger whole, are my usual process. All the things this box can do: Saturation, dynamic EQ, transient enhancement, and the various compression types, they all make a difference while giving me so much flexibility across different genres. Just one- or two-dB gain reduction, a little bit of dynamic EQ and some 4K flavour to tie it all together. It gives me the tools to create a nice, smooth translation from what I'm imagining to delivering the final remaster.”

Specifically, he says, he will often work with the MID SIDE mode selected. The mode engages THE BUS+’s Mid-Side encode-decode circuitry, enabling the left side of the unit to process the mid signal — the mono sum of the left and right channels — and the right to process the side signal — that is, the stereo differences when the left and right signals are subtracted from one another. “I'm compressing my sides to widen the records a little bit, to give the record and the stereo portion of the sounds more movement,” Roc explains — depending on what is appropriate to that piece of music, of course. “Sometimes I'll work with the mid to give more of a solid low end or presence to the midrange frequencies.”

4K and F/B feedback modes
But his favourite workflow through THE BUS +, he continues, is using 4K Mode, which offers 9 different levels of saturation, in combination with the D-EQ dynamic EQ. “That's my general day-to-day use with this box,” he says. “And a lot of times, if the record is very powerful or aggressive, I love being able to tone it down with THE BUS+ in F/B Mode to slow things down, so we're not just hitting everything so hard.” takes the signal feeding the side-chain from a feed-back position (i.e. after the main gain-reduction VCA in the audio path). This results in a more 'relaxed' style of compression, in contrast to the traditional 'grab' of the Bus Compressor.

Getting creative with SSL SiX
While THE BUS+ satisfies his production, Roc’s go-to device for his music creation work is the SSL SiX mixer, he reveals. He picked one up a few years ago as a mobile solution and portable summing box. “I was travelling a lot — about every two weeks — from New York to L.A., so I was that guy on the plane with all this stuff in front of him, working. The SiX was cool because I could use its analogue circuitry to get all of the warmth and separation that I want from an SSL console, in a small, portable desktop unit.”

As Roc continued to use the SiX he started to dig into its capabilities. “I discovered how versatile it was for music creation and production. There are all these inputs, so I would hook up my microphone to it, I would hook up my vintage synthesisers and my [Teenage Engineering] OP-1 [synth], and I would use SiX to bring together all my sounds in the analogue domain and create music. It's a cool tool and has an SSL console sound to it, you can tell that SSL have put their SuperAnalogue^TM technology in it. It really is something unique. What's cool about SSL gear is that there’s an endless opportunity for creativity, and it's for us to discover more.”

The SiX offers two mono recording channels featuring SuperAnalogue™ mic pres, two-band EQ and one-knob version of the classic SSL Channel Compressor, along with two stereo line-level channels, and the unique Listen Mic Compressor on the talkback. “I could hook up all these instruments, use the SiX as a mixer and just take a line out into my interface,” he says.

Roc has been a fan of SSL since he was a kid. “My first board was the SSL Matrix, years and years ago, which still to this day is one of my favourite boards. I learned how to track and mix on it and do all sorts of things. I didn't go to school for any of this stuff; I learned everything by watching videos on YouTube.”

Summing up, he says, “I was into rap and hip-hop, and in the ‘90s SSL was a huge influence on hip-hop. I love Dre and Snoop, and they're using SSL boards. I love Jay Z, so I looked at what Jay Z's engineer, Young Guru, was doing. I remember the first time I was introduced to EQ and compression was on an SSL channel strip. I’ve always tried to incorporate as much as I can with the tools that I have. But if there's an opportunity for me to work with any new tool or something that I haven't worked with from SSL, I always go for it, because SSL has been part of my life.”

About Solid State Logic
Solid State Logic is the world’s leading manufacturer of analogue and digital audio consoles and provider of creative tools for music, broadcast, live and post production professionals. For more information about our award-winning products, please visit: www.solidstatelogic.com.