When you mix OTB where do you send the final 2 mix?

[Snarl 12/8]

Hey,

I'm getting ready to start mixing out of the box via my DA7. It'll still be digital summing, but I'm going to send the individual tracks to the DA7 and mix there and then send the 2 mix back out of the DA7 to ... somewhere.

How do people usually handle this?

Here are the ways I've thought of: Do I just arm a stereo track in cubase and mix back to there like an overdub? Do people usually go to a second computer? Or a CD burner? Do I fire up something like audacity and do a cubase->DA7->audacity chain?

What are the tried and true methods?

Thanks,

[T-rex]

Here are the ways I've thought of: Do I just arm a stereo track in cubase and mix back to there like an overdub?

This is what I do, just arm a stereo track and mix back into the session. Then do the stems etc.

[Snarl 12/8]

Then do the stems etc.

Can you elaborate? What does that mean exactly?

[firby]

Hello Snarl,

Here I have a g5 with motu 1224s X 3 which connect to the mixer for ... mixing.

The Master LR output (currently broken .... see thread please). Is connected to a g4 with an Apogee Duet on it. I use peak to bounce to on the duet.

The mixes sound fabulous (to my ears) and I did not have to monkey around with a masterlink.

Regards.

[T-rex]

Hey Snarl,

Well the great thing about mixing in the box is the total recall, which can be a pain in the butt if you mix out of the box and the client wants something small changed. So when I mix through a console, after I print the mix I will print stems of the individual components. Usually it's drums, bass, lead vox, backing vox, guitars and efx. So instead of setting up the entire mix again because the guitars need to come up just a hair in the chorus, you just have 6 "stems" to mix together.

Also their great if you need a mix with no vocals or need to edit together a clean mix for the radio or whatever. Same concept as printing your mix, but just solo the drums and print that, then the bass, etc.

[drumsound]

[T-rex]

Sure, go ahead and brag why don't cha?!

[cgarges]

If I'm working somewhere with a tape machine, then I'm usually mixing to tape and to an Alesis Masterlink at 24/88.2 after the tape machine. If there's no tape machine, I'm usually mixing to two Alesis Masterlinks simultaneously-- one at 24/88.2 and one at 16/44.1.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[klangtone]

I mix to a Lavry AD-10 which goes to a Tascam HD-P2. After being recorded to the Tascam, I connect it with firewire to the computer and transfer a file over.

I could just go back through my Apogee AD-16X, but my philosophy is that the Apogee's have a somewhat colored sound for tracking, but when it comes time to mix, I want something more transparent. It's rare for me to fully trust an A/D on a box that wasn't expressely designed with that focus. So that has led me to using a dedicated A/D.
My thought behind the Tascam- you need something that can capture high resolution/high sample rate. Flash memory is better than hard drive as far as reliability goes. Avoiding recording back to the same computer avoids issues that happen sometimes when your CPU is close to overloading and glitches occur once the overhead of recording more tracks is added.

Obviously the Tascam is way overkill because it can do many more things than simply recording 2 tracks of digital input. So I've always wished for a "dumb" flash recorder with USB or Firewire for this purpose. But alas... I suppose I could always use the Tascam for some field recording if the need arose.

Anyhow... that's my very expensive mixdown deck solution. heh.

Roy