Anyone summing to mix?

[beautypill]

The virtue of the Dangerous D-Box is not in "harmonic distortion" or any other mythological internet mojo.

The entire Dangerous line is all about as elegant, robust, high-headroom, super-linear, high-fidelity, zero distortion audio. Chris Muth really made it "mastering grade." There is no distortion here, quite the opposite.

I use mine with a Prism Orpheus and it's incredible. It's not about extra distortion or any romanticized analog magic. It's just beautiful, crystalline full resolution sound. Mind you, I LOVE distortion. My home studio outboard rack is: a Distressor, a UBK Fatso, a Shadow Hills Vandergraph, a Standard Audio Level-Or, and an API lunchbox of EQ's. I like stuff that distorts in cool ways. But the D-Box is not one of them. It NEVER distorts.

It's hard for people who have acclimated to ITB mixing to imagine that there is greater clarity available outside of that world. But there is. With smart gain-staging, a D-Box (or any similar high quality console), and some well-chosen analog outboard that suits your aesthetic, you are cooking with gas, as my grandmother used to say.

I'm no analog snob. I'm not anti-digital. I love DP. I'm constantly astonished by the increasing grace and sophistication of the plug-in world. If I am away from the studio, I mix ITB on my macbook & headphones. I have achieved great results this way. Mostly a good mix is about good gainstaging and tone and you can achieve this in many different circumstances and with many different techniques. But there is no question that my home studio affords distinct sonic advantages.

Seriously, try a D-Box sometime. The workflow, the sound... it's incredible!

- c

[kwiz]

I don't mix OTB, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt, but here's my thoughts on gain staging.

First off, track at -18 to -12dBV. You are still using 22 of the 24 bits - a 132dB range - and leaving plenty of headroom for the analog input on your A to D and the channel, aux, and summing processing for your mixes. This has been a big part of what has made ITB mixing sound flat and losing the transients you are talking about. There's headroom to spare in digital recordings, but many are locked into the "more is better" mentality. Not so.

Second, before you start your mix, set your master or auxes to "0." Here's why: If you pull them down at the start of the mix you will tend to drive your channel faders harder thus creating more opportunity for signal processing distortion. DP uses all floating point summing and processing, so clipping is not a problem except on output, but plug-ins are a different issue. Depending on their internal processing resolution, they can easily crush your sound and kill your transients. This is why 64bit plugs sound so much better - more open and with more depth.

If you keep your record levels in the range I mentioned, your channel faders low, and your fader at "0," you will not push your mixes and still maintain a -10 to -6dBV output perfect for mastering. In working with a summer, your stems would output even lower because you have much less routed to each stem than you would to a stereo mix, but still a great output level for your summing box.

Bottomline: If you're having to trim your stems, or master fader for that matter, your gainstage is out of wack. The simple solution is to turn up your monitors so you mix lighter and don't compensate at the channel fader.

I agree. People slam the hell out of the buss on a DAW so the imaging gets smeared and too congested. Mixing is an art and nothing is going to (just because you use it) sound better unless the person running it is just really reckless with their gain staging. Analog is way more forgiving IMO so yes, don't slam the buss...
In theory, I'm @ 24 bit 48K... it should be awesome... na, just because I'm using that capability, I still have to be there with my techniques and skills as an engineer so it's a combination of things not just one. Like I said, I used summing and it's a cool added luxury but it didn't (IMO) add anything to my mixes that wasn't already there... but everyone is different.

Splinter and newrigel, I agree as well and I'm very careful when it comes to gain staging.
None of my channel faders even make it to 0db on 95% of my projects. Newrigel, brought up a great point, proper monitoring levels is important. With that said, when my stem aux's are set to -4, I seem to have all the headroom I need to achieve the sound that I want when mixing OTB. Any additional gain staging that I need for my 2 track comes from the FATSO jr. that is strapped to my 2 track bus on the console which is fed into the hardware version of a L2 limiter. I'm not a the louder is better type of guy so I totally get where you're coming from. I'm old school and love dynamics. Trimming the stems works for me but to each his own.

As far as ITB mixing goes, yes I've done some great mixes and have heard great mixes that were ITB. OTB mixing just gives me more flexibility when using outboard gear which in turn seems to add that certain umph and depth that I listen for.

[waxman]

Thanks again for the input... I am a confirmed OTB advocate. I can hear the difference. I spoke with Bob from Dangerous Music at Namm. He was very detailed in how to use the DBox. He also showed me how the 2bus LT interfaces with the dBox for 24 channels of summing. That is a monitor manager and 24 channels of summing for $2.5k... and of course some kind of good i/o... the Apogee is $3.5k for 16 channels...

What was far and away the best was the SSL Matrix.
http://www.solid-state-logic.com/music/matrix/index.asp

It works fine with DP7. The concept and how the Matrix works is awesome. You can basically stop being so tied to a DAW. It has quick keys with presets, a matrix of 16 for your favorite hardware outboard gear. I worked for a while with both the the AWS 900 se which has a price tag of $80k and the Matrix which is $24k. The Matrix is far and away a better console and the functionality is far superior. You can load it with any 8 channels of Xrack, and have 8 left over for say 4 API and 4 Neve. Any outboard to any channel anytime. The Matrix is a serious answer to the step from a DAW controller to an actual console. I love SSL. Eight channels of Rack is about $8k. This is something that is flexible and will adapt.

[KEVORKIAN]

I'm currently summing stems into the MIO mixer in my ULN-8.

I began doing this with my 2882 a year ago and I honesty wasn't tuned into the whole ITB vs. OTB debate at the time. I was just going by the Metric Halo marketing which suggested that summing was possible so I tried it. The difference to me was immediately noticeable and I won't go back any time soon.

My solution is similar to what Kwiz is currently doing (summing to a digital mixer) and I'd be curious to know if summing to an analog destination like the DBox would make any difference but I'm not sure I'd switch as I like the ability to recall the settings in the summing mixer. Plus with console connect I am able to save and recall the MIO Mixer settings according to my DP project.

I've gotten careful with my gain staging and I'm sending pretty conservative levels into the MIO Mixer (peaks around -3 or -4). What is nice is that the MIO mixer allows you to apply "character" settings to the channel that impart some subtle characteristics from various types of mic pres and saturation to the signal, however the difference in sound and stereo field from mixing like this is apparent even with no coloration.

[mindhed0]

Kevorkian,

I just upgraded to a 2882 (from an Ultralite) and have been experimenting with summing my first mix with it. Sonically I'm pleased with the results. However, DP 5.13 has begun crashing constantly (not every project, but this particular project file) -- a problem I never had while using the Ultralite. I tried "trashing the preferences" in DP, as I've read to do in this forum, but that only helped for a short while. I was wondering if you had run into any such issue when you were using the 2882. All my software/firmware/drivers are up to date. I'm using the Console Connect plug-in on a "dummy" master fader track in a V-rack, as the MH website recommends to do. What method(s) worked for you?

Thanks in advance,

D

[KEVORKIAN]

Kevorkian,

I just upgraded to a 2882 (from an Ultralite) and have been experimenting with summing my first mix with it. Sonically I'm pleased with the results. However, DP 5.13 has begun crashing constantly -- a problem I never had while using the Ultralite. I tried "trashing the preferences" in DP, as I've read to do in this forum, but that only helped for a short while. I was wondering if you had run into any such issue when you were using the 2882. All my software/firmware/drivers are up to date. I'm using the Console Connect plug-in on a "dummy" master fader track in a V-rack, as the MH website recommends to do. What method(s) worked for you?

Thanks in advance,

D

Interesting. I use a dummy Master Fader as well but I believe you can use it on any instrument track so maybe give that a go.

I have not seen any crashes with Console Connect however I started using it under DP 6 and never went back to DP 5 to see if there were any issues.

It's working here for me in DP 7.02, but on the MIO support email list I recall some members reporting instability with console connect and Logic 8 so maybe this is some kind of issue.

In any case get in touch with MH support and they will get to the bottom of this. They are excellent about that.