Seattle's Shoreline College Anchors its Music Tech Programs With Solid State Logic ORIGIN Consoles

ORIGIN inline architecture helps students attain a practical understanding of recording, mixing, routing, and gain staging through hands-on operation within a broader environment that also includes SSL interfaces

10/13/2026

Shoreline, Washington, October 13, 2026 — Shoreline College, 10 miles north of downtown Seattle, Washington, opened its recently constructed Bracken Building, the new home of its Music and Music Technology programs, in April 2026. The new facility houses two recording studios with associated live tracking rooms, three small production/mixing rooms and two MIDI/computer labs that all feature equipment from Solid State Logic, including ORIGIN 32-channel and ORIGIN 16-channel inline analogue mixing consoles and dozens of SSL’s USB audio interfaces.

Stepping into analogue
“We had two goals with this new space,” says Matt Jorgensen, Music Technology Faculty, Shoreline College. “Number one was to have two recording studios that were nearly identical, and the second was to almost take a step back from the digital world and have the consoles be purely analogue.”

The ORIGIN consoles were selected not only for their sound quality, but also for their value as teaching tools. Their inline architecture and dedicated controls help students develop a practical understanding of recording, mixing, routing, and gain staging through hands-on operation. Studio A, a teaching studio with room for 20 students that has two adjacent iso booths and a large tracking room that doubles as a music ensemble rehearsal room, houses the ORIGIN 32. Studio B, a smaller tracking studio with a single tracking room that doubles as a small ensemble rehearsal room, features the ORIGIN 16. A retractable door between the large tracking room and a tiered seating area allows the space to be expanded for performances.

Perhaps the biggest attraction of the consoles and interfaces was the SSL brand, says Jorgensen, a former Shoreline student who left for New York City to make a name for himself as a jazz drummer and music composer for TV and film before joining the faculty 30 years later. “When I recorded in Seattle I spent a lot of time at Studio X, which famously has a big SSL console, and all the engineers in town have always raved about SSL,” he says. “But I think having a giant SSL would have been a bit overkill for what our students are doing, so I think what drew us to the ORIGIN board was the fact that it’s simple. We are an educational institution, and those consoles help us to get the students up and running as quickly as possible so they can do the things that they want to do.”

Jorgensen teaches some first-year recording classes but mainly teaches second year music composition and MIDI production, and only recently had his first opportunity to mix on the ORIGIN, in front of a class. “The fact that I could sit down in front of it and get a mix within five minutes, having never sat in front of this console ever before, just goes to show how simple it is. It’s been great.”

There are identical patch bays on the right of both ORIGINs, he also reports. “That way, students, who are here for two years, can seamlessly go between both studios and focus on the fundamentals of audio, signal flow and getting good mixes.”

With SSL interfaces across its teaching labs, production rooms and recording studios, Shoreline has created a consistent learning environment that allows students to move between different stages of production while remaining within a familiar SSL workflow. Two 25-station MIDI/computer teaching classrooms feature an SSL 2+ MKII 2 in/4 out USB audio interface with MIDI I/O for each student. The instructor’s stations in each of the two rooms include an SSL 18 USB audio interface with MIDI I/O that supports up to 26 inputs and 28 outputs. Three small mixing rooms are also each outfitted with an SSL 2+ interface. Again, Jorgensen comments, having uniformity across all the stations makes operation easy for students. “It's something as simple as the +48V phantom power buttons looking the same on each channel. Having that aesthetic for all of our students to adapt to it has been great,” he says. “So we went SSL all the way.” The SSL 2+ MKII interfaces also introduce students to SSL's console heritage through the 4K Legacy analogue enhancement circuit, inspired by the character of SSL's renowned 4000 Series consoles. Together with the ORIGIN consoles, they provide a connected production experience built around a common SSL design philosophy and sonic DNA.

Lift AV in Renton, Washington, supplied the ORIGIN 32 and ORIGIN 16 consoles. Vintage King supplied most of the SSL USB audio interfaces. Kevin Bressler, who teaches multitrack recording on the program, designed the studio wiring and patch bays, Jorgensen notes, for which the wiring was supplied by Sweetwater. The Music Technology faculty staff handled integration and installation.

Fully featured facilities for students and professors
The faculty and students moved into Bracken from its ageing and cramped previous digs in the middle of the current school year. “We just had our portfolio show,” he says. “The instructors were commenting, ‘We're listening to stuff from the old building and stuff recorded this quarter in the new building, and it's like night and day. ‘Some of that is the new control and tracking rooms, but it is mainly because of the new SSL ORIGIN consoles.”

To prepare students for today’s audio world, he continues, “We teach classes on game audio, and live sound and we do a lot of post-production work. We teach a project where they strip out all the video and audio from films and they do all the ADR, sound design and composition. We're trying to recreate the modern employment ecosystem within the confines of the college, so a lot of my music production students collaborate with the drama and the film departments. That means you're doing music production on your computer or in the MIDI lab, and you may do some overdubbing with the SSL interface. But then you might go and track something big and go into one of the ORIGIN studios. Or you're going to do drums in the studio, and then you bring it back to a production room, where you do overdubs.”

Back when Jorgensen was a student, and through the 1980s and ‘90s, the college trained students to be assistant engineers at commercial studios. “Obviously, those jobs are few and far between. I think most of us now are working in a hybrid environment,” he comments. Now, with the easy availability of the company’s USB audio interfaces and small consoles, “The fact that you can now have the SSL sound at home in the studio is incredibly beneficial,” he adds.

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.