I am thinking changing up my monitoring/ mixing situation at my studio and I was hoping to bounce my plan around this board for some feedback. I guess I?m looking for any faulty reasoning and wayward notions on my part. Anyone?s thoughts on the matter would be greatly appreciated.
I am a long time owner of a Soundtracs Topaz and it is finally showing signs of flaking. In lieu of paying out for a quick repair or the even the more expensive option of up grading to a more expensive board, I have been contemplating going the route of a summing box. Since getting my Digi 002r the BLA Signature Series upgrade, I have been pretty much ITB with mixing. The automation and recall were welcome features of Pro Tools once I got the lousy sounding interface taken care of. So now, I set my computer keyboard up on the Topaz and pretty much use the board for simply feeding headphones and monitoring projects. All of this has led me into thinking about getting the Presonus Central Station and a Rollmusic Folcrom, and putting the Soundtracs on mothballs for awhile.
With the Folcrom it came down to being attracted to both the price (as opposed to the Dangerous 16 channel summer) and the passive circuitry. I only have 3 good quality pres (Chandler TG2, Langevin DVC, Peavey VMP) at my place but it makes sense to me to want to get them in the mix chain. I would especially like to try the TG2 through the Langevin limiter using the passive summing route.
The Central Station makes sense to me simply because it has the in and out combos I need to use all of my monitors (KRK 7000b?s, Mackie 824?s and various small speakers.), a/b mixes and then use it to go back into the box to drop mixes. I like my Presonus DigiMax FS well enough and I figure with the Central Stations passive circuits, there is not much there to ?muck things up.? Does that make sense to everyone?
The Dangerous LT 2-bus instead of the Folcrom is another option I have considered seriously. Most people have very positive things to say about the Dangerous unit. It is by a small margin that I am leaning towards the Folcrom. Anyone have strong opinions about this one? Money is somewhat of an issue; I could cash out for the Folcrom but would probably have to credit the Dangerous unit. I am aware that Dangerous also has a monitor and summing combo but it is only 8channel on the summing part. I think I am definitely looking for 16.
I do wonder about supplying separate cue mixes while tracking bands (I had always used the board before), but I should be able to set up aux mixes through Pro Tools right?.
I have plenty of patch bays and cable. I think I can clear out the rack space. Is there anything else I am not thinking of? Thanks a million if you actually made it through this long winded question. A good beer to you if you respond.
A question for those who are o.k. with summing....
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Hucklebeam
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calaverasgrandes
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This is just me speaking here. A little demo making guy with no gold records or nuthin. But I say skip the whole summing thing. Also skip the whole central station thing. I just do all my mixing and monitor flipping ITB. I set up my monitors on the contrrol room outs, 1/2 and 3/4. So I have room for 2 more sets of monitors, 3 if I use SPDIF! i just go to my main buss and change what it feeds from the output dropdown box. I dont know if PT is cool with doing that on the fly. Some DAWS can, some cant.
My 828MKII has a volume knob up front, so its not too hard to pull down the mains if it gets crazy. I also have a small control surface for pushing faders, mute, solo, etc.
As far as getting color on the mix buss I use Sonars VC64 or the various excellent stillwell plugins. badbusmojo is the king! Major Tom is pretty good too.
My 828MKII has a volume knob up front, so its not too hard to pull down the mains if it gets crazy. I also have a small control surface for pushing faders, mute, solo, etc.
As far as getting color on the mix buss I use Sonars VC64 or the various excellent stillwell plugins. badbusmojo is the king! Major Tom is pretty good too.
??????? wrote: "everything sounds best right before it blows up."
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Ryan Silva
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Well I love my Central Station, and I am going in the opposite direction than you at the moment. I'm picking up a Toft ATB to do my mixing/summing, but my Central station still has a place in my setup.
At some point folks need to change things around to keep things fresh, so by all means experiment. You may however miss having a hand on a fader, I know I did when I started mixing ITB, and now I'm swinging back the other way. My point is this; workflow is a very personal thing, if you feel that things will be easier it's worth the investment. For instance I was happy with the speed of my mixing, but the speed in which I track and set up monitor mixes needs improvement, and I'm counting on a console to streamlines things a bit.
On another note, I wouldn?t go too cheap on the "summing' skimp on quality there, and you may loose quality in your mixes. I haven?t heard the Topaz or the Rolls summo, but I have a feeling that your summing on the Topaz may be on par or better than a low end summer.
Good Luck
At some point folks need to change things around to keep things fresh, so by all means experiment. You may however miss having a hand on a fader, I know I did when I started mixing ITB, and now I'm swinging back the other way. My point is this; workflow is a very personal thing, if you feel that things will be easier it's worth the investment. For instance I was happy with the speed of my mixing, but the speed in which I track and set up monitor mixes needs improvement, and I'm counting on a console to streamlines things a bit.
On another note, I wouldn?t go too cheap on the "summing' skimp on quality there, and you may loose quality in your mixes. I haven?t heard the Topaz or the Rolls summo, but I have a feeling that your summing on the Topaz may be on par or better than a low end summer.
Good Luck
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Nick Sevilla
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Stay with what you have now.
Summing boxes are a mythical being, which one day will go away.
They are not very useful, compared to a real mixer.
they were created for people with money who wanted to replace their very large expensive mixers, who are a maintenance headache. usually these people keep the Eq sections of their old consoles for recording, and use the mix boxes to keep the idea of coming out of a computer to analog channels.
If you do a proper job ITB, there is no reason to split the mix out. No reason at all.
This whole "run it through the iron" business, is usually done improperly, and adds unneeded distortion to the mix.
In the days when large consoles existed and were used as the principal mix medium, it was a BAD THING to be able to hear the artifacts of the mixer.
A good console was one that was clean sounding. Clean Sounding.
Yes, there are differences between the Neve, API and SSl consoles, but this is due to their different overall designs philosophies, NOT just individual components.
Cheers
Summing boxes are a mythical being, which one day will go away.
They are not very useful, compared to a real mixer.
they were created for people with money who wanted to replace their very large expensive mixers, who are a maintenance headache. usually these people keep the Eq sections of their old consoles for recording, and use the mix boxes to keep the idea of coming out of a computer to analog channels.
If you do a proper job ITB, there is no reason to split the mix out. No reason at all.
This whole "run it through the iron" business, is usually done improperly, and adds unneeded distortion to the mix.
In the days when large consoles existed and were used as the principal mix medium, it was a BAD THING to be able to hear the artifacts of the mixer.
A good console was one that was clean sounding. Clean Sounding.
Yes, there are differences between the Neve, API and SSl consoles, but this is due to their different overall designs philosophies, NOT just individual components.
Cheers
Howling at the neighbors. Hoping they have more mic cables.
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Ryan Silva
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So I get what you?re saying about the need for these boxes being slightly hyped, but when I used a Delta 1010, I would have given anything for one of those Dangerous boxes. The Jitter and spatial smearing I got with the cpu doing the work was awful. Now with better converters on the way in I don?t notice it as much, so I lost my desire for a summing box.noeqplease wrote:Stay with what you have now.
Summing boxes are a mythical being, which one day will go away.
They are not very useful, compared to a real mixer.
they were created for people with money who wanted to replace their very large expensive mixers, who are a maintenance headache. usually these people keep the Eq sections of their old consoles for recording, and use the mix boxes to keep the idea of coming out of a computer to analog channels.
If you do a proper job ITB, there is no reason to split the mix out. No reason at all.
This whole "run it through the iron" business, is usually done improperly, and adds unneeded distortion to the mix.
In the days when large consoles existed and were used as the principal mix medium, it was a BAD THING to be able to hear the artifacts of the mixer.
A good console was one that was clean sounding. Clean Sounding.
Yes, there are differences between the Neve, API and SSl consoles, but this is due to their different overall designs philosophies, NOT just individual components.
Cheers
However this is where your point becomes clear. With the improvements in AD conversion (getting better and cheaper all the time) the improvement made by a summing box will lessen.
Just my guess
"Writing good songs is hard. recording is easy. "
MoreSpaceEcho
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calaverasgrandes
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if you have jitter effing up your mix, it will be compounded when you have 10 channels of jittery audio being mixed on a summing buss.
It is better to get you levels going in to the box nice and headroomy, so you have tons of room for your mix. PT is what? 44 bit mix buss?
Sonar is 64 bit, a lot of others are 32 bit on the mix buss.
jitter and smear as a function of conversion would only affect what your mix elements are, and what you hear of your mix. Conversion doesnt really affect ITB mixing itself though.
It is better to get you levels going in to the box nice and headroomy, so you have tons of room for your mix. PT is what? 44 bit mix buss?
Sonar is 64 bit, a lot of others are 32 bit on the mix buss.
jitter and smear as a function of conversion would only affect what your mix elements are, and what you hear of your mix. Conversion doesnt really affect ITB mixing itself though.
??????? wrote: "everything sounds best right before it blows up."
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chris harris
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http://www.tapeop.com/tapelog/2009/03/s ... igital.php
I prefer analog summing. I bet that if people were really honest, you'd be shocked to find out how many of the people who make arguments against analog summing have never tried it. There's a strong desire out there to want ITB summing to sound just as good as analog summing. I mean, I want ITB summing to sound as good as analog summing. It just doesn't. Believe me, it would save me a lot of headaches if it did. But, it doesn't. And, trust me, it's not because I haven't figured out some trick about tracking or mixing that ITB home-recordists have been keeping on the down low. It's because analog summing simply sounds better to me.
Analog summing sounds different from digital summing. Anyone who tells you otherwise is full of shit. They're likely fooling themselves because they can't afford or don't want to pay for a quality analog solution. But, it's an obvious fact that there are differences in the sound of analog and digital summing. Whether or not one sounds "better" than the other, or whether it's worth the expense and change in workflow to you are things that each of us should decide for ourselves.
I'm curious to those of you insisting that this summing thing is "hype" or a "fad" or a waste of time, what kind of analog summing systems have you tried out to form that opinion?
I prefer analog summing. I bet that if people were really honest, you'd be shocked to find out how many of the people who make arguments against analog summing have never tried it. There's a strong desire out there to want ITB summing to sound just as good as analog summing. I mean, I want ITB summing to sound as good as analog summing. It just doesn't. Believe me, it would save me a lot of headaches if it did. But, it doesn't. And, trust me, it's not because I haven't figured out some trick about tracking or mixing that ITB home-recordists have been keeping on the down low. It's because analog summing simply sounds better to me.
Analog summing sounds different from digital summing. Anyone who tells you otherwise is full of shit. They're likely fooling themselves because they can't afford or don't want to pay for a quality analog solution. But, it's an obvious fact that there are differences in the sound of analog and digital summing. Whether or not one sounds "better" than the other, or whether it's worth the expense and change in workflow to you are things that each of us should decide for ourselves.
I'm curious to those of you insisting that this summing thing is "hype" or a "fad" or a waste of time, what kind of analog summing systems have you tried out to form that opinion?
This is a hot topic with Lots of mis-information out there...and lots of crappy products that claim to be the bees knees.
Basically if you can't hear the difference taking even 8 stems out to a desk and back through your 2 bus you aren't listening. I'm not saying it's better...sometimes it's too wide and too revealing to go to the desk. But the difference is staggering.
As far as summing boxes go... the folcrom is a PERFECT fit for your setup if you pack up the desk. You will get TONS of character out of the preamps you listed. Shoot who wouldn't want to mix through a chandler desk? I know I'd want to hit that with my mixes.
Justin and Johnny at Roll are great guys... i've heard the folcrom in action its not hype. it's the antithesis of hype. It's a box that lets you rock your automated DAW mix through any preamp you've got. Turning your rack of pre's into a virtual mixing desk.
I say go for it. I don't know about putting the soudracs in mothballs through....
Basically if you can't hear the difference taking even 8 stems out to a desk and back through your 2 bus you aren't listening. I'm not saying it's better...sometimes it's too wide and too revealing to go to the desk. But the difference is staggering.
As far as summing boxes go... the folcrom is a PERFECT fit for your setup if you pack up the desk. You will get TONS of character out of the preamps you listed. Shoot who wouldn't want to mix through a chandler desk? I know I'd want to hit that with my mixes.
Justin and Johnny at Roll are great guys... i've heard the folcrom in action its not hype. it's the antithesis of hype. It's a box that lets you rock your automated DAW mix through any preamp you've got. Turning your rack of pre's into a virtual mixing desk.
I say go for it. I don't know about putting the soudracs in mothballs through....
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calaverasgrandes
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chris harris
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I've tried ITB summing with Cubase, DP, and PT. For analog summing, I've used Mackie, Hill Audio, and DDA Profile mixers. In all cases, I preferred the analog mixes. I think that it's tough to dispute that digital summing and analog summing sound different. Which sounds better is definitely a matter of personal preference.
Many of the arguments against analog summing are purely theoretical. I prefer to judge with my ears. "Jitter", for instance.... sure, there's theoretically more possibility for jitter to be a problem when taking several stems from several channels of DA. But, I simply don't hear it as a problem. Maybe you could point to some of Joel Hamilton's or Larry Crane's mixes where jitter problems are apparent?
Many of the arguments against analog summing are purely theoretical. I prefer to judge with my ears. "Jitter", for instance.... sure, there's theoretically more possibility for jitter to be a problem when taking several stems from several channels of DA. But, I simply don't hear it as a problem. Maybe you could point to some of Joel Hamilton's or Larry Crane's mixes where jitter problems are apparent?
If I were to go the mixerless route, and I had a few D to A channels to work with, I think I'd build a couple of these: http://www.prodigy-pro.com/diy/index.ph ... light=gssl
I mean, the cost for something like this is next to nothing, and it's about as clean and un-tampered with as you can get. Then, if I was you I'd probably build a switchable pad into the thing after the channels are summed to stereo so I could go directly into the Chandler thing for some mojo if I wanted to.
I mean, the cost for something like this is next to nothing, and it's about as clean and un-tampered with as you can get. Then, if I was you I'd probably build a switchable pad into the thing after the channels are summed to stereo so I could go directly into the Chandler thing for some mojo if I wanted to.
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HeavyHand
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in the case of the folcrom, where the summed mix is dependent on the pre's you use, what is the benefit of having 16 passive channels? is it just the added analog goodness? it seems like it would be the same as sending the mix out and then back in through your pres.
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in the case of the folcrom you're sending your DAW automated mix THROUGH the folcrom where it gets summed... and sent back out to your preamp for gain/character/eq/etc... Where the preamp itself is acting as the 2bus of the mixer days of old.
Me... i've ran stemmed mixes through ramsa, soundcraft, audioarts, neotek and amek desks. My current setup is with an amek bc2 which is pretty plain and clean. but even so, It still puts out a much wider stereo image, with lots more muscle than in the box mixes. And each of those desks sound wildly different from each other.
I use plugins for most all of my signal processing as i don't have a lot of outboard gear... and i'm no analog purist... but it's hard to beat even the simple parametric eq's on the amek desk. Plus you can slam the crap out of the 2 bus which is really nice.
As far as converter hash goes.. i think you've got to either have super crappy converters for the extra trip out and in to be a factor, OR you'll need to make the conversion many many many times. I've certainly never noticed any problem... And I'll either mix back into Protools LE or out to a sound devices digital recorder.
I mean it's going to end up as an mp3 sooner or later right?
And I'm not advocating that everyone ought to mixdown out of the box or that there's an absolute NEED for it... but there is a HUGE difference. no question.
Me... i've ran stemmed mixes through ramsa, soundcraft, audioarts, neotek and amek desks. My current setup is with an amek bc2 which is pretty plain and clean. but even so, It still puts out a much wider stereo image, with lots more muscle than in the box mixes. And each of those desks sound wildly different from each other.
I use plugins for most all of my signal processing as i don't have a lot of outboard gear... and i'm no analog purist... but it's hard to beat even the simple parametric eq's on the amek desk. Plus you can slam the crap out of the 2 bus which is really nice.
As far as converter hash goes.. i think you've got to either have super crappy converters for the extra trip out and in to be a factor, OR you'll need to make the conversion many many many times. I've certainly never noticed any problem... And I'll either mix back into Protools LE or out to a sound devices digital recorder.
I mean it's going to end up as an mp3 sooner or later right?
And I'm not advocating that everyone ought to mixdown out of the box or that there's an absolute NEED for it... but there is a HUGE difference. no question.
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