DP summing bus (thread on Gearslutz about how bad it is)

monkey man · Post by **monkey man** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 6:54 am

stiefelmusik wrote:I'm not even going to bother checking out that thread at Gearslutz. It's like every time I go there I walk away with the feeling all of my gear sucks, too! It's absurd, really.

Me neither. I can do without the hype and angst.

stiefelmusik wrote:No, these days, with so much information available on the internet, a Personal Information Filter (PIF) is essential.

Agreed, stiefelmusik.

My 8bit BS Detector MkIII•„• (the latest model, but any Monkey Systems•„• approved unit will do), has proved invaluable in this role.

stiefelmusik wrote:For me, how advice and information is given plays a large role in how it is taken. The kind of dogma I see over at GS really puts me off -- even when some of the advice and info is good. Nothing erodes trust more than dogma.

Yup. Dogma, hype, one-upmanship and hyperbole reign supreme.

stiefelmusik wrote:Useful, informative, insightful, confident -- but NOT dogmatic. Hey, this is Unicornation, and he's NOT even saying DP IS THE BEST when we all know he COULD! Now, this tells me this is someone I can trust.

Kubi, our plan is working - we've got one.
Only 34348 Unicorns to go before... world domination.
OK, would you settle for site domination?
How about we dominate a slice of bread by smothering it with hydrogenated peanut butter?

OK, let's just take DP by the horns and wrestle it into submission.

stiefelmusik wrote:(Thanks for some great tips, Kubi!)

Yes, thank you Kubi!

stiefelmusik wrote:And then there's the quote from Bob Katz. Even if I had doubts (which I don't) that mixes ITB with DP don't sound as good as with some other DAWs, such a quote from a master in the field would render all further discussion on the subject MOOT.

Agreed! If the number he makes is anything to go by, he doesn't take endorsements lightly either.

stiefelmusik · Post by **stiefelmusik** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 7:58 am

monkey man wrote: Kubi, our plan is working - we've got one.
Only 34348 Unicorns to go before... world domination.
OK, would you settle for site domination?
How about we dominate a slice of bread by smothering it with hydrogenated peanut butter?

Monkey Man, you crack me up! Yes... you've got me. Am awaiting further instructions.

But seriously, if you're ever in the mood to make yourself feel totally inadequate, just spend an afternoon over at Gearslutz. Let's see, from my sig I'm using an iMac. What, an iMac? Real professionals don't use iMacs, dude. You need a Mac Pro. But wait -- I have a dual G5 Power Mac! Oh... man, PPC blows. The G5 was a total failure. Even Apple acknowledges that. Yes... but my UAD-1 cards help take a lot of load off the CPU. UAD?! Seriously underpowered, dude. Dated technology at this point, and a complete waste of money. You need Duende, man. Duende rocks. Okay, okay... but I still like the UAD plugs... especially together with Digital Performer. Digital Performer?! Digital Performer sucks, man. Logic is WAY better -- especially for VI's and MIDI. And for mixing... well, everyone knows Pro Tools is the industry standard. Pro Tools? Oh, I've got Pro Tools LE! LE ?! Oh no, no... not LE! LE is for DWEEBS, man. You need REAL Pro Tools. What's that you've got -- a Digi 002 -- rack?! Totally blows, man. Useless piece of crap. The preamps on that thing are worthless. Ah--- but I don't use them so much now. I've got a MOTU 8pre which has better sounding preamps, so I mostly just use that. An 8pre?! What's that? You need Avalon, dude. Any preamp under a $1000 is a complete waste of money. Yeah... I guess so. But I don't do a lot of mic'd recording. I mostly just record my keyboards direct, using a Mackie mixer for monitoring. A Mackie?! Ditch the Mackie, dude. Nobody uses mixers anymore anyway. And besides, Mackie sucks. Yeah, well... sometimes I'm just triggering VI's with my M-Audio Axiom, so an outboard mixer is not so important. M-Audio?! Oh, I HATE M-Audio. M-Audio is the WORST. And those Axioms really bite. I would never buy any M-Audio gear.

I could go on... and on... but for those of you who've suffered with me so far, I'll spare you further agony!

Suffice it to say, the only gear I possess that I can proudly display around Gearslutz are a few of my classic analog keyboards and drum machines that are protected by the Gods of the Cult of Analog . Otherwise, according to Gearslutz, I might as well just put a torch to my project studio.

[Edited: Added italics for legibility

]

wheever · Post by **wheever** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 8:10 am

pcm wrote: was very convincing, and confirmed my fear that "packing the meter" was a bad technique.

Being an old analog guy (I'm 53, life-long career engineer) this all makes sense to me. Tracks that are recorded hot may sound fine if you rout them to direct outs, but absolutely slam the mix bus if they go to a master fader. Especially if there are 30 or 40 of them.

This is one of the best pieces of advice for getting great mixes ITB. I made this discovery myself a few months ago when I pulled up the meter bridge and found out that many of my busses were slamming red. I pulled everything down and brought up the gain on the 2-buss and suddenly things sound awesome.

Without the meter bridge it's impossible to see what's happening with your busses. So I think that having the meter bridge up while mixing should go onto the tips and tricks thread. (Actually, everything PCM said should go onto the tips and tricks thread.)

Excellent post, pcm!

kwiz · Post by **kwiz** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 8:11 am

stiefelmusik wrote:
monkey man wrote: Kubi, our plan is working - we've got one.
Only 34348 Unicorns to go before... world domination.
OK, would you settle for site domination?
How about we dominate a slice of bread by smothering it with hydrogenated peanut butter?
Monkey Man, you crack me up! Yes... you've got me. Am awaiting further instructions.

But seriously, if you're ever in the mood to make yourself feel totally inadequate, just spend an afternoon over at Gearslutz. Let's see, from my sig I'm using an iMac. What, an iMac? Real professionals don't use iMacs, dude. You need a Mac Pro. But wait -- I have a dual G5 Power Mac! Oh... man, PPC blows. The G5 was a total failure. Even Apple acknowledges that. Yes... but my UAD-1 cards help take a lot of load off the CPU. UAD?! Seriously underpowered, dude. Dated technology at this point, and a complete waste of money. You need Duende, man. Duende rocks. Okay, okay... but I still like the UAD plugs... especially together with Digital Performer. Digital Performer?! Digital Performer sucks, man. Logic is WAY better -- especially for VI's and MIDI. And for mixing... well, everyone knows Pro Tools is the industry standard. Pro Tools? Oh, I've got Pro Tools LE! LE ?! Oh no, no... not LE! LE is for DWEEBS, man. You need REAL Pro Tools. What's that you've got -- a Digi 002 -- rack?! Totally blows, man. Useless piece of crap. The preamps on that thing are worthless. Ah--- but I don't use them so much now. I've got a MOTU 8pre which has better sounding preamps, so I mostly just use that. An 8pre?! What's that? You need Avalon, dude. Any preamp under a $1000 is a complete waste of money. Yeah... I guess so. But I don't do a lot of mic'd recording. I mostly just record my keyboards direct, using a Mackie mixer for monitoring. A Mackie?! Everybody knows , Mackie sucks. Yeah, well... sometimes I'm just triggering VI's with my M-Audio Axiom, so an outboard mixer is not so important. M-Audio?! Oh, I HATE M-Audio. M-Audio is the WORST. And those Axioms really bite. I would never buy any M-Audio gear.

I could go on... and on... but for those of you who've suffered with me so far, I'll spare you further agony!

Suffice it to say, the only gear I possess that I can proudly display around Gearslutz are a few of my classic analog keyboards and drum machines that are protected by the Gods of the Cult of Analog . Otherwise, according to Gearslutz, I might as well just put a torch to my project studio.

Before you burn the joint down can I have some of your useless gear?

Jim · Post by **Jim** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 8:34 am

James Steele wrote: Years ago I worked in house at a production company and sometimes would do some video editing. One of our clients would send in an underling to approve the piece we were editing. I soon realized that if this underling COULDN'T find something wrong, he couldn't justify his job to his boss, so it didn't matter how perfect a piece was, he'd want to change something. So we started intentionally putting in one real clinker edit so that he could catch it and then call his boss from the edit suite... "Yeah, it was almost perfect... I had to have them make a small change, and now it's great."

This is known in the industry as "destructive criticism." When some "team member" can't make a constructive addition, they make a destructive subtraction.

It's the "too many notes" principal from Amadeus.

My colleagues and I, when working with known Destructive Creatives (and they are legion in ad agencies and other byzantine hierarchies), often employ the "Dead Dog Maneuver." This term comes from the inclusion on a video set of something so obviously out of place (like a dead dog) that even the most dense of Destructive Creatives will make their destructive subtraction, and feel that they have "saved the show," and can report back to their betters that they earned their paycheck that day.

The main downside to this method is that it may result in inflating the already over-sized ego of the Destructive Creative in play.

However, it can well be a successful way of getting your work completed unassailed by some corporate buffoon.

===

Here's a recent example of when I should have added a dead dog, but didn't:

I did a video edit that was supposed to be funny. I added some non-scripted CG text to what was an infomercial spoof. When the production team watched it, one gag I added got the biggest laugh of the entire program. But, the writer in charge, who wrote the less funny bits, insisted that my crowd-pleasing gag be removed from the cut (He said he "didn't get it."). Sheer ego. But, whatever. I get paid either way. But, that kind of stupidity is frustrating. And all too commonplace in corporate environs.

.

David Helpling · Post by **David Helpling** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 8:45 am

I LOVE DP and use it at least 8 hours a day for Film, TV etc. The summing in DP is the worst I have heard - I am using an SPL MixDream XP for any and all summing (even mixing to mono audio tracks together). The difference is huge and blatantly obvious...no esoteric stuff going on. Any decent analog mixer will create stunning depth, sound stage and stereo image in comparison to DP. Pro Tools is MUCH better in this area but I can't stand the Digidesign interface and the whole TDM stuff...be proud of DP as it is the most perfect artistic music and sound creation tool (just don't mix with it).

marcuswitt · Post by **marcuswitt** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 9:12 am

from my point of view, talking about itoppics like floating point processing vs. fixed point processing is like talking about banana vs. coconut. while many stupid brains are thinking about how to use the last upper bit the best way, other are making hits by using a technology which should be placed inside a trashcan insead of being mounted into a modern studio rack. it‘s quite simple: 90% of a record‘s quality do happen infront of a microphone. content counts, the rest is waste of time.

the most interesting experience i had was when i visited a so called high fidelity trade fair in munich. there were some guys (so called "experts") talking about wavelet transfer functions to optimize their loudspeakers‘ sound. to demonstrate their results they used a Sure SM58.......

sure... HIGH FIDELITY.... funny!

i remember when i was listening to a lecture of a guy from the SAE institute here in munich. he was talking about the difference about fixed point summing vs. floating point summing. he used several different DAWs, such as PTHD, Samplitude, Nuendo, Pyramix and LogicPro7, to demonstrate something. his theoretical explainations were interesting somehow. what he didn‘t know was that all of his listeneers are well known and experienced recording/mixing/mastering engineers and two software developers. one of the listeners was asking him how often he was listening to music in an accoustic-optimized environment to hear the difference. what can i say... the lecturer got pale and couldn‘t finish his lecture.

as artists, as the most of us here obviously are, don‘t feel depressed by comments from guys who give technology more importance than the content, cuz the most of them are louzy musicians.

simply put: all these discussions are completely useless, cuz nobody is amazed by listening to the LAST SIGNIFICANT BIT, and nobody dances to FLOATING POINT ARCHITECTURE. just open your mind, let you creativity flow and think how a musician and a real artist should think and act like... intuitively.

may DP help us to keep on rocking...

Matcher · Post by **Matcher** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 9:38 am

David Helpling wrote:I LOVE DP and use it at least 8 hours a day for Film, TV etc. The summing in DP is the worst I have heard - I am using an SPL MixDream XP for any and all summing (even mixing to mono audio tracks together). The difference is huge and blatantly obvious...no esoteric stuff going on. Any decent analog mixer will create stunning depth, sound stage and stereo image in comparison to DP. Pro Tools is MUCH better in this area but I can't stand the Digidesign interface and the whole TDM stuff...be proud of DP as it is the most perfect artistic music and sound creation tool (just don't mix with it).

I for one would be very interested in hearing two mixes with DP's and OTB summing. Is there any chance you could do small samples that suit the purpose?

David Polich · Post by **David Polich** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 10:18 am

I have never bought into this summing, OTB crap. Ever. Because, there is one thing that is obvious - you have an extra pair of D-to-A conversions. It comes out of the DAW as stems, into your summing mixer, then where does it go? Oh yeah, BACK into your computer again. Because the mix has to GO somewhere back to digital, unless you've got a 2-track analog tape machine around.

As much as there are some things about Roger Nichols I don't like, I love what he said about outboard summing mixers - "people have made a lot of money convincing others to send their mixes outboard. Great idea, wish I'd thought of it".

As far as I'm concerned - GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out. How you recorded your tracks is more important. How many guys use a Pod to record guitar tracks directly into Pro Tools?

Honestly, any comparisons of DAW's has to be done with all things being equal. And even then, that would be impossible, because no two people hear things exactly alike. Someone 50 years old has more hearing loss than someone who is 22 - and conversely, some younger engineers have already blown out their hearing by listening to stuff way too loud. So who do you trust?

The debate about ITB vs OTB can rage on forever as far as I'm concerned. I'm not buying it, I'm not spending the extra thousands for a summing mixer. I'll continue to use the most important features of my studio - my ears - to improve the quality of my mixes and get better at it. People don't respond to better mixes - they respond to music. No one ever siad to themselves, "I hate this song but the mix is so great that I gotta keep lisetning to it".

Those punks over at Gearslutz - they need a real disaster to remind them of how petty their rants are - like a problem with their HMO, an IRS audit, a foreclosure - stuff like that.

kwiz · Post by **kwiz** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 11:23 am

David,

Your music reel snippets sound great!
I use a Dangerous Music 2 bus LT for summing, were your reel snippets summed through your SPL Mixdream?

mhschmieder · Post by **mhschmieder** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 11:39 am

I got a kick out of the "iPod into ProTools" statement from Dave, as it's almost dead-on for the mentality I detect at Gearslutz and when I walk into pro audio stores such as yesterday at Leo's in Oakland on the way to work, where some rap artists were finalising their new ProTools/Digi03 setup and wanted to know if it would "transform their ideas into reality"

. I had never heard such a bizarre conversation before -- they wanted to know if ProTools could work magic, and flesh out their compositional ideas on its own!

The hype around ProTools is incredible. One of my co-workers has ProTools LE in his studio just so he can tell his clients he has ProTools, and then he goes ahead and does it all in his DAW of choice (people's personal choice in such things is so immaterial to me that I don't even remember which DAW he's using

). He says he wouldn't get any clients if he couldn't advertise himself as a "ProTools Studio". And when he presents his work to others, they think he's lying when he says it WASN'T done with ProTools because how could it sound so good otherwise?

I'm not knocking ProTools -- all of the pro studio sessions that I have done as a player under someone else's direction have been ProTools studios. But as others have stated, understanding gain structure is a lot more important than which tool(s) you choose for the tracking and/or mixing.

kassonica · Post by **kassonica** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 3:37 pm

Such an idiotic debate really, GS that is, not the 'nation'

Give john Lennon any DAW and a $100 convertor and i'm sure no one would be complaining about his 'summing'.

Crap in crap out. Gold in gold out

some of the best recordings of the 20th century were one or two mics through noisy mixers and mixed on not very hi fi speakers.

What helps makes them great recordings, CONTENT, playing, arrangements etc.

It's so overlooked by the would be's

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 4:26 pm

Geez... I guess it's sort of like driving past an accident or something and being unable not to turn and look. I went over to read that thread and geez... just makes me want to play my guitar and forget about this.

I was a bit unhappy about one poster who slammed this board a bit... eunich horn nation? Geez... perhaps he's using his DAW as a form of compensating? Dunno.

I guess the most valuable thing I'm gleaning from this is that I should consider recording my tracks not so hot. I have this bad habit from analog days of slamming tracks as hard as I can just before clipping, but I imagine with 24-bit, we have tons of dynamic range and thus detail is preserved even if we don't record so hot.

Also, using the Meter Bridge more often may be a good thing so I'm not slamming busses unkowningly.

We all hear a certain bit of audio voodoo and who knows if we can trust our ears. As an example, I've sometimes felt that if I record a double rhythm guitar track (panned left and right) it sounded *better* if I had those tracks routed directly to my main outputs instead of to a stereo buss where I could control the level of the doubled rhythm with just one fader. This of course is anectdotal too and it may very well be that it's due to me recording the guitar tracks too hot to start with and slamming the buss too much.

If someone has some simple pointers for getting better mixes in DP that we could all use that would be great. I tend to like "rules" or "guidelines"... so one that I've picked up on so far is not to track audio hotter than -10db into DP.

Shooshie · Post by **Shooshie** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 5:00 pm

Every time I've thought my mixes were sounding irritatingly dull or covered, I've found that by bringing down the levels it got better. Since we've had the Meter Bridge, I've also learned that every case of bad sound has also been accompanied by a slammed bus.

Now, I've been under the impression that slamming our busses does not matter, since Magic Dave has told us how much DP can handle at 32 bits internally, as long as it doesn't go back out to the interface while in the red. Nevertheless, I've found that by bringing my bus back into the green, the sound most definitely improves. Since DP has no other way to check the busses, I suspect that lots of people who think DP sounds bad would learn that they have a bus or plugin that's getting slammed without their knowledge. Unless you open up the Meter Bridge, you cannot tell.

To David Helpling, I like your music and your mixes. You're definitely a talented fellow, and I want to believe what you say. But I think you're simply wrong about DP sounding bad for mixing. Maybe it's trickier than other DAW's; I can't say. I do know that sometimes I have to start completely over, as I've slammed a bus, and in order to fix it, I really have to redo the entire mix. But once it's done, I think it sounds as good as anyone else's mix.

I concede that my ears are not what they once were. I still have good hearing all the way up the scale, but I have some definite dips in my sensitivity to certain frequency ranges. I can still hear it, though it just might not be as perfect as some of our younger members. I've always protected my ears and never listened to a lot of loud music. Anyway, I think I'm compensating pretty well. The bottom line is that with a certain amount of effort, DP's mixes are as good as any others. I'm pretty sure of that. Just watch those busses.

Shooshie

pcm · Post by **pcm** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 6:09 pm

wheever wrote:
pcm wrote: was very convincing, and confirmed my fear that "packing the meter" was a bad technique.

Being an old analog guy (I'm 53, life-long career engineer) this all makes sense to me. Tracks that are recorded hot may sound fine if you rout them to direct outs, but absolutely slam the mix bus if they go to a master fader. Especially if there are 30 or 40 of them.
This is one of the best pieces of advice for getting great mixes ITB. I made this discovery myself a few months ago when I pulled up the meter bridge and found out that many of my busses were slamming red. I pulled everything down and brought up the gain on the 2-buss and suddenly things sound awesome.

Without the meter bridge it's impossible to see what's happening with your busses. So I think that having the meter bridge up while mixing should go onto the tips and tricks thread. (Actually, everything PCM said should go onto the tips and tricks thread.)

Excellent post, pcm!

Gain structure is a dying art. Without proper gain structure, the sound audibly suffers.