I've been watching a lot about mixing and mastering recently and noticed that most professionals who now mix virtually exclusively in the box still keep a summing mixer to run everything through at the end.

I know a few of them seem to be using the Dangerous Music 2 Bus, but at about £2.5/3k, I don't fancy that thanks, even if it is amazing!

Does anyone here using a summing mixer at all? Are there any affordable ones out there? And if you don't use one, do you use a virtual one at all, something like the Waves NLS maybe?

 

I sum when I have time to do so. I do a lot of work on the road lately and have been doing all of my mixes in the box. There are benefits to external summing tho. It really gives you tons of head room and depth to your mix. It also happens real time you can hear the clarity of the mix. It also gives me more room to play around. I can boost an eq a little more or not clean up a element as much as i need to.

I have a Dangerous Music D-Box which is a Active or amplified summing box and I love it! The price point is up there so I will give you some cheap options. One thing to keep in mind is the mix is only as good as the mic pre's on your sound card. I have a apogee ensamble but there are other cheap options.


SUMMING BOXES. 8 Channels is all you need. You might be able to find better prices on these with some googling:

DIY METHOD:
http://www.diyrecordingequipment.com/4203/how-to-build-a-diy-passive-summing-box/

PASSIVE (un amplified):
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Unit-Audio-Milli-Unit-8x2-Analog-Passive-Summing-Mixer-/300986263831

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Summing-Mixer-LittleOne-8x2-DB25-in-TRS-out-NEW-/271301359060

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Discrete-Su...stereo-to-2-mono-DB25-input-NEW-/271301360681

http://www.ebay.com/itm/LittleOne-8-Summing-Mixer-8-patch-cables-/161136885724

http://vintagemaker.net/

ACTIVE:
http://dangerousmusic.com/product/d-box/

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sm-Pro-Audi...mputer_Recording_Software&hash=item58a6ce87ae


TO "SUM" this up. I would recommend this setup from the reviews I have seen online.

Little One 8 with mono switch.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Discrete-Su...stereo-to-2-mono-DB25-input-NEW-/271301360681

 

Someone here suggested this a while back.
https://vladgsound.wordpress.com/2013/10/16/just-for-fun-t-analog-channel-plugin/

 

https://www.diyrecordingequipment.com/blogs/news/15851740-how-to-build-a-diy-passive-summing-box

 

Damn it! Now I want a new audio interface. I have an Onyx 820i (8x2) from when I was recording local bands. It has 3 ONYX pres on it but only 2 outs.

I definitely could build that DIY kit all day. Time to upgrade! I want to build some 500 rack clones as well. I love to get my hands dirty with this kind of stuff. I have a soldering station in my house (not in the garage) lol

 

Can you explain this more? In how I understand, headroom is just the 'headroom' before it peaks..

suppose I sum a -5db song on dbox... and it will give more headroom means what? it will go down to -15db or????

 

Can something this simple sound good?

 

yes it can, it is the weakness of digital daw the summing of channels dsp and errors(your at the mercy of your daw algorithm as well , but even more important is with passive analog summing you get a three dimensionality, ( but you also hit your converters on the way out and back in , if you have a good audio interface it worth doing analog summing with high end cables. but if your audio interface a/d ,d/a converters are poor it wouldn't be worth it i love mine 16 analog ins 10 analog outs and good converters, im going to build that analog summing, i built one before i lost everything in the fire it was fabulous 3d

 

The 'weakness' of digital is that it's perfect.

A simple example, 1+1=2.000

BUT in the analogue world with a non-linear summer,

1+1=1.9887 , say (with added noise, distortion & etc)

https://www.google.com/search?q=all+daws+sound+the+same

No, see above, If you want REAL 3D sound, you need to be working with 3D binaural, 3D surround, or 3D ambisonics.

Ambisonics with REAL 3D has existed since the 70s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambisonics . GOod luck buying vintage ambisonics equipment (but free modern software suites exist )

Do NOT confuse "3D sound" with stereo expansion. Stereo is only 1-axis (width), whereas 3D also includes (height & depth).

It's mostly an excersise in showing off & using their expensive quipment which would otherwise go unused.

 

our entire conversation is within a specific context. a person coming in , trying to use what we said in regards to a different context would be THAT person "confusing" Tit for Tat fine sir.

 

@junh1024 He wasn't referring to that kind of 3D space. Analogue with it's small instabilities in loudness, frequencies, phases give your mixes the impression of being bigger and "more 3D" sounding. So yes, one of the weaknesses of digital is that it's too perfect - no instabilities of any kind and no noise. Another weakness is that its bandwidth is limited and you have Nyquist frequency which introduces aliasing and ringing. This weakness can be circumvented with oversampling at least 4x for best results, but the instabilities and noise which is natural are a bit harder to achieve. It's actually not that hard in my mind, but for some reason there aren't many plugins who really sound completely analogue. T-Analog Channel is good and ReelBus is good t emulating analogue behaviour as far as I know.

 

I used to sum in a TUBE-TECH SSA2B. You can get some color and separation between instruments.
But it's not so easy. In this case you have to maintain your tubes and of course you have to like their color.
for my music style this one was too creamy, fluffy etc. in other styles it's just shines.

There are so many solutions out there for ITB summing that are better IMO.
Far more convenient and in some cases, better sounding.

For example in one faster and harder track you can throw an SSL and in a deeper one a Neve which can match lets say 90% (even more) of the original.
When you have one only option that costs thousands of dollars that kinda limits you. Not to mention the setup etc.

Dangerous is another case, way more cleaner and with nice soundstage, worked only one time on it so i can't have a complete opinion.
It was pleasant to work with it though.

And let me tell you a little secret:
Instead of mix in your DAW try to send your tracks in your sound-cards channels. Assuming you have an RME or MOTU with plenty channels ofc.
You cannot export but you can record either with virtual loop in RME and DigiCheck or a physical loop in MOTU.
Better?

 

Will try the Waves NLS, thanks for the info.

 

What about mixbus? Strictly for mixing though. Does anyone do this? Export all of your tracks/stems out of your daw (print the fx returns and all?) and do the mixdown in the Harrison daw? Ive heard nothing but good things about it. Just wondering if anyone here works, or has worked like that before.

 

Let me know how you get on. There is meant to be a good free plugin too by Prime Audio called CHARLY, that I think uses Acustica Audio's Acqua technology.

https://primestudio.at/magento2/index.php/plugins/primecharly.html

 

Good to see there are others of us out there that have some electronics experience under their belt! I was planning on building one of the DIY 1176 Kits, but after looking at the prices of say the WA-76, it hardly seemed worth the effort. Still, there's that smug satisfaction of being able to say yeah, I built that. Plus you can always put in higher spec/more critical tolerance parts if you feel up to the effort.

I tried this on one of my mixes. I've got the MOTU HD192 and the 828, so I had plenty of channels to break it down into a 24 track 8 bus Mackie. To be honest, it was a nightmare to me routing the thing, take good notes as you go! That coupled with the fact that there's no way to get back to where you were easily if you need to come back and tweak something, I decided instead to run the 2bus through 2 channels, and use some external hardware (an ART MDA and ART MPA Pro II) through an insert on the mixers 2 bus. The board's output was then ran back into the MOTU inputs and recorded (here you can clip your AD's a smidge like the big boy mastering engineers talk about )

My take on the results is improved definition and separation between the left and right, and better depth and dimension overall. And the clarity when you hit the 2 bus right just jumps out at you. It gave me what I felt I was missing ITB. I didn't see enough improvement running each channel separately to warrant the extra work involved moving between projects. I feel like you may get a different result and see a much greater difference if you are running through say an SSL board, or a Neve or something really high end like that. If anyone has experience trying such a thing, please give some feedback.

 

Before you spend money on anything, try using a summing plug for free (Airwindows Console 4): http://www.airwindows.com/category/consoles-2/ Either Slate (and now, Waves) copied this plug or vice-versa. Either way, they pretty much share the exact same features and work exactly the same way.

Personally, I'd end up with a 2-Bus LE (about $1,000 cheaper than the new 2-Bus) or, if I were independently wealthy, a Burl Vancouver 32. Radial actually makes an active 8-channel tube summing/line mixer that's cheaper than Dangerous' stuff: http://www.radialeng.com/spaceheater.php

 

Whoa, Prime Studio CHARLY? and free? I got to try this one in a session. Adds some nice air and weight. Subtle but its there. Acusticas aglos too?

 

Talk to @Jaymz about it.

 

You`ve got to love this community.
Had no fucking idea they even existed, powered by acustica audio.
Thanx bro