Does anyone have a Neve summing mixer, or something similarly priced? I'm wondering to what extent slamming it makes that "glue" or record sound that we all seek, or if nice 2bus processing would be a better investment first. Mike Dean for instance swears by his 5060, and he's the goat

 

summing mixers work the moment you know that tone they give you back, mix it in and get a better result than you could get without summing mixer. many pros who mix 100% ITB don't use it, others do .. there are no rules. surely a good eq and a good stereo bus comp are more useful, but the results can also be obtained with normal plugins. The most important things are always:
- song well written
- well recorded tracks, great production / sound design
- before any mixing technique there is room acoustics! or better, acoustics & monitors.
- a great mix technique, where balance, pan and eq bring 80% of the final result.

 

Yeah I know it's not the gear that makes a mix but good but I'm still curious what it sounds like when you slam a summing mixer. Does anyone have one with transformers and would mind posting the result?

 

na

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jun 24, 2020

If you want hardware solution, a "cheaper" way to do it would be to get a passive Rolls Fulcrum and use a couple of preamp channels of your flavor for the makeup gain, such as x2 Avedis MA5s, Vintech 573s, even CAPI VP28s, etc... Or, poor-man's way, if you don't have db25 or limited outs, get a stereo pair of pres and 2 shure xlr attenuators and run your stems or tracks through individually - some guess-timation required; but at that point you're not in the summing "realm" anymore.

 

Last edited: Jun 23, 2020

We got the Dangerous Music 2-bus + It is less than half of what you pay for the 5060. for us it is the best add on to the AVID s6. You talk about "glue" but when you use an analog summing mixer there are some other things that come into play that are worth their price. For example, you free up your DAW of many plugins , and this results in more resources being available. Moreover, the colour they add to the sound is unique. In DM you get the Harmonics filter which merges odd and even harmonics to your sound. That is that analog sound many people talk about. Furthermore, the midrange in the mixes is much smoother, and the stereo field more detailed. On top of that, you have a a parallel process aptly named Paralimit which is n 1176 inspired FET limiter. With it, the compressed signal is sent to the mix while adding to the mids and highs which then get smashed by the limiter. Use it on acoustic guitars, and it is like magic. Another tone processing named X-former is done with a pair of customized CineMag transformers which fattens your mix. In sum, anyone that tells you that analog summing mixers don't make a difference, and that you can do it all with plugins has not tried one. If you have $2500 get the DM or something similar. You will not regret it.

 

Interesting, so you combine outboard at the summing stage with the dangerous? And do you slam it hard? I heard that in comparison to digital slamming the summing bus and the channels makes it sound always better and fatter. Too bad there are virtually no comparisons between itb and summed that aren't really timid and boring music pieces.

 

I already have a pair of 1073 clones. Tracking stuff like vocals or a moog through them gives you "that sound". It's pretty cool. It's just annoying having a 2 channel interface cause options are very limited. I'd like to try analog summing even through a shitty mixer to see the difference first hand. But for that to be worth it I guess your DA conversion should be stellar and that hurts your wallet. Honestly at this point i'd rather invest in a nice analog synth like a voyager or prophet before I go down that rabbit hole.It's more fun and more of a creative tool but I'm just curious I guess?

 

That is an advantage you have with a unit like DM, you can add other outboard gear and actually do parts of the mix inside of it send it to the DAW and bring it back.

All depends on the sound that you are after. It is not a corrective but an artistic process. As with any tone processor you are using in a creative way, you have to be cautious. This is the case with the X-former in the DM 2-Bus+ With that said, that is one of the big advantage of the DM over other units. It can sound clean or dirty. And that should be something to consider. Do you want a colored sound at all times? or one that you would be able to dial in?

Comparisons are few because once you have mixed it like that, eliminating the summing mixer from it does not make much sense. There is, however, plenty of music out there in different genres that has been mixed like that.

 

I have a dual 273 by Warm Audio which I bought used for cents on the dollar. it had a problem with one of its transformers. I ended up modifiying it with Sowter transformers. Even tough the WA came with Carnhill which were OEM in the Neve, I liked the sound from the Sowter better specially in the lower frequencies. Which 1073 clone do you have?

 

Thought I would chime in on this one to share my summing mixer experience. I always wanted to get some analog gear and narrowed my focus on a summing mixer almost a year ago. My first purchase was a 2-Bus + after I saw Lucas Pretolesi using one. I liked the 2-Bus + because it had some extra effects like compression and saturation that you could inject on certain channels. For my ad/da conversion, I went with the UA X16 interface. I had a lot of fun mixing into the 2-Bus +. You can hear sounds come to life and the mix separation was pretty awesome. What I quickly learned is that was I was hearing, was not the same sound being captured back into the computer. I could hear certain sounds disappearing or becoming more mono during the summing process. I then embarked on ad/da journey testing serval different units. From that, I decided I didn't like the 2-Bus + for my mixes any longer. I sold the 2-Bus + and got an SSL Sigma. I had the sigma for a few more months before I decided, SUMMING IS NOT WORTH IT UNLESS YOU PLAN ON USING ANALOG GEAR WITH IT AND HAVE HIGH-QUALITY CONVERTERS and that will send you down an expensive path for something that's more of a hobby for most people. There's no point IMO of running your mix through a summing unit and seeing any benefit unless you have very expensive AD converters. I'm talking Lavery or a mastering grade converter. Unless you're willing to invest in that, you will lose sonic quality going back into the box. Sure, you might gain a certain tone or sound using different summing units but your converters will easily become the weakest link in your chain.

I decided that I get the best mixes 100% in the box. I think a lot of "pros" came to the same conclusion as me through experience, trial and error, and or both. It's so much easier to recall tracks or sessions for revisions, edits, etc when you're ITB. Some day, If I have enough money and a studio that doesn't move every other year, I might consider building a new summing rig. For now, I'm happy with focusing on the hardware gear that I have during the recording phase and playback.

My final piece of advice for anyone out there thinking that a summing unit will give them the pro sound they've been looking for like Mike Dean or any of your other favorite engineers, keep working on your mixes ITB. Don't spend thousands of dollars thinking that a piece of gear will give you the secret sauce edge that no one wants to talk about. The secret sauce is your ears, some basic acoustic treatment, and decent monitors & headphones. Unless you're making money at this or have years and years of mixing experience, you really have no business shopping summing units IMO.

 

I have not experienced any issues with mine. I got my unit recently so I have not have much time on it but have used it extensively on a couple of projects. I am using Crane Song Solaris, and a Brooklyn ADC. However, I did tried it with a lesser quality, Focusrite interface too, and did not have any issues with it. I am not saying that it did not happen to you but if it was happening with every interface you used, maybe it was not due to the DM unit. I know 2 other people that use it without any problems. Do you mind telling me what interface you tried with it, and if you ever tried it with another system?
Finally, I agree that the ASM is not a silver bullet that will turn shit into gold but when used correctly it is as you said pretty awesome.

 

I had the 2-Bus + paired with an Apollo x16. I think my issue was on the DA side and probably not the 2-Bus + itself.

A couple of other things I noticed with my 2-Bus + while I had it:

The X-Former added a nice overtone to the sound (particularly to the low end), but the distortion sounded unpleasant on most of the material I used it on.

The Harmonics knob was useful on some materials ( particularly percussion instruments or synths) but the range was either very subtle or too much. It was hard for me to find a middle ground that I liked.

The Paralimit I liked the most out of all the knobs but with my mixing style, I didn't need to use it as much as I compress a lot ITB before summing. I did find it useful on Vocals to bring them up in the mix. A lot of people seem to like it on their drums but my drums are already heavily processed before summing so the Paralimit was overkill for me at the summing stage.

Looking at the 2Bus vs the Sigma from my experience, the 2BUS is a bit fatter and has a slight roll-off on the highs, a bit more 3d depth, and the sound is colored in a nice way but has less focus overall summing everything together. The sigma has a little more low-end punch and tightness, and the transients are more lively. I was able to get more of a "glued" sound using the Sigma on my music.

For EDM Music, I would go with the 2-Bus +. For other genres like pop or hip/hop, I liked the Sigma more. That's the hard thing about Summing Units. There are so many units that you really won't know which one you'll like the best until you can try it out for yourself (which is not cheap to do btw).

 

in our studio we have a control room with some outboards and a Vintagemaker summing mixer with Neumann cards, excellent in relation to the price. and another 100 ITB control room, where I work to make pre-productions and mixes, I'm the mix engineer.
We've done a lot of testing in the past few months, and the summing mixer is totally useless if it's used when the mix is finished, just to get us through the tracks. It must be used while mixing, but at that point absolutely excellent converters are needed, and even more a very high level listening. If used with a finished mix, any summing mixer does nothing but introduce small variations in harmonic content, which change the result, but the change can be better or worse than the ITB sum. And then, those variations ( if good ones) can easily be recreated digitally, there are hundreds of exceptional plugins today, each with different characteristics, if you know them thoroughly you can emulate any variation of harmonic distortion - eq - compression. If you want to take advantage of a good sum mixer, it makes sense to do it by adding a nice stereo comp, a stereo eq, excellent converters, good monitors placed in a good environment. $ 15-20-25,000 investment, and this investment should be made the moment you squeeze all the equipment you already have, no outboard turns a bad arrangement into a good one, no outboard turns the sound of a bad recording into good sound ...

 

Most likely you are using a passive summing mixer. To start with passive summing mixers are full of compromises in their design. The need for make up gain is an inherent issue with all passive summing mixers, and one that should to be taken into consideration when choosing between a passive unit and an active one. For example, a -35dB to -40dB gain loss, will require +50 to +60dB gain make up. Indeed, if you are going to be using it as part of the artistic/creative process I don't see the need for a passive summing mixer. The beauty of analog is found in active circuitry. Conversely, those passive units need to be complemented with high end pre amps, comps which will add significantly more to the cost of your system, and complicates everything further.

 

Built myself a pair of MP573s by sound skulptor. They have DI and a line switch.

It's weird how so many pros with limited time still seem to use analog summing even though its time consuming, expensive and a pitb. Surely it must do something

 

One of my partners has a couple of MP73 (I don't think they still make them) He loves them. According to him, they sound a little better than the MP573s because of the way they use the transformers amplifiers.They are use in series, as in the original 1073. It results in a fatter low end and lower THD. I have been thinking of getting their tape sim, the STS, and modifying it by sticking a pair of transformers in it. Problem is thatt I dont think they sell those and has been replaced by the TS500. For what you get, those Sound Skulptor offerings certainly are a bargain.

 

Last edited: Jun 26, 2020

At the end it is subjective. Hard for one side to convince the other. Purely math vs. electicity. Who wins?

 

I have a Dangerous music Dbox and a UAD Apollo. I really like the forgiveness and headroom I get from summing. I can boost a little more or I don't have to cut as much when it comes to EQing. It def helps my low end get fatter and highs clean. My mixes seem to have more "depth" to them when I sum.

That being said it been almost 2 years since I've done a summed mix through it. I just find ITB workflow is so much faster. A lot of modern plugins have oversampling on render which helps.

 

I would recommend getting Analog Obsession's free NCAR plugin and start routing your mixes through it. See if you like that workflow. It's almost like a "DEMO" for summing. If you like the process and what you hear. Then go ahead and upgrade to a real piece of summing gear.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/ncar-35428355