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

[kassonica]

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."

CLASSIC POST

[mhschmieder]

Oh, I misinterpreted: I thought what was being said was the the Trim plug-in causes the pan laws to be applied in a way that evaluates what is going on with all of the tracks, and not just the track it is inserted on. That's why I thought project size would matter.

If it is just applied to the interaction of volume and pan on a track-by-track basis, then it seems foolproof. And the same could be said for the regular pan knob in the main Mixer channel strips. But I may have also misinterpreted what was being said about these being unreliable or inconsistent. I'll shut up now.

[pcm]

Same guy Kubi (Stephen in LA)?

Same guy indeed...

Thanks Davey for a word of sanity here, and a brief reminder for everyone how to check a suspicion, and to *maybe* do so before making grandiose claims all over the net...? Isn't there a CD by 3D audio comparing a mix using the same raw audio tracks at the same levels and pan settings, using different DAWs and no plugs? Now that's a more meaningful way of checking things in a controlled experiment.
whatever...

-----------------------------------------------------

Yes there is. I have it, and I took the test. They compared 31 different systems; all Mac and PC DAWs, various digital boards, as well as SSL, Neve analog, and the Manley and Dangerous summing boxes. They were all pretty close. No one was told which was which for quite a while. Then the shockers came. First off, the analog mixes were LAST on everybody's list. No surprise to me, btw. Go to the forum, search for DAW SUM, and you'll find it.

There was another thread on the DUC, where a highly technical guy proved that the bus only takes a hit when levels exceed -12dB on the various channels. I don't remember the details, but it involved using a tone generator, and visually observing distortion on an aux as you increased levels on the channels. It 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.

It's long been felt that very simple mixes (few tracks) sound fine in the box, but dense mixes don't. This is why. I mainly track in Pro Tools HD, where there is a peak hold with a readout in decibels, very handy! I NEVER track hotter than -10dB, and often not above 15dB. Remember, digital zero (depending on calibration) is 14-18 ABOVE 0dB on analog systems. If you track hotter than that, then you are pushing your analog front end hotter than it was ever design to go. Then the audio slams the plugins, which often add more level. Then the mix bus gets slammed. If you record at more reasonable levels, the mix bus issue goes away. Then it just comes down to skill, just like it always has

I hope I have shed some light on this.

BTW, you might ask, how do I get my mixes loud then? With a peak limiter on the master. Make up your gain there, and NOT prior. (Unless you are submitting your mix to a mastering engineer, then don't do even THAT.)

Keep in mind that GS (and the web in general) is filled with have-knowledgeable people, who repeat whatever they think the current party line is. Take it ALL with a grain of salt.

I believe the DP bus is more or less fine. Other factors in mixing (and tracking) count infinitely more.

[kassonica]

Excellent post PCM

Kinda beat me to it

But it is easy to blame ones tools and not oneself.

Low levels recorded -15dB and on the channels and buss's when mixing is key to good sounding mixes ITB.

[gearboy]

I heart Gearslutz.

Back to making music in DP.

Jeff

[kwiz]

I heart Gearslutz.

Back to making music in DP.

Jeff

Yeah that one cat over there needs a nap.

[Kubi]

For those who want to actually investigate summing issues with a bit more, uh, seriousness? here's a 700MB download music summed in various analog and digital mixing environments, where you can hear what actually happens from DAW to DAW... Costs $12.50; it's a little dated, but the technology in that regard really hasn't changed much...

[Resonant Alien]

Of course, we all know clients are much more vulnerable here, often accepting pseudo adjustments gleefully.

Hahaha... reminds me of the famous deal where you pretend to change something and say to the client "What about now?"

"Oh yeah... that's MUCH better!" says the client!...[snip]...
Which brings us back to faking out the client with the phantom "knob twist" or fake DAW adjustment...

This: http://www.funklogic.com/images/makepalbigger.jpg is really good to have around for those kind of clients....it's just a rack filler panel with some knobs stuck on it, but it looks pretty convincing for those less-gear-informed....I really like the "SOLOS" knob!!

[Don T]

Hello,
Having trouble with stereo tracks is a whole other matter. Room sound is a dynamic environment. ITB, it's plugins and FX in general (ITB or OTB) are static. Having notes move from left to right is a room sound issue, sound propogation from the source, standing waves etc. One of the lessons I have my students do is to record someone speaking in a live environment. Then they record the same person dry in the studio. They route reverb, delay and try to recreate that same environment in the mix. They can only get so close because the original dynamic environment changes with every subtle nuance of delivery and physical movement. A few words are spot on and the next few are quite different. The interaction of the original stereo field and the added FX, along with artifacts from other tracks, IS the art of mixing. Phase coherant micing techniques plus critical programming of FX and phase accurate monitoring are based in the physics of sound. Engineers spend years learning the rooms they work in so they can create predictable repeatable results. It is the holy grail of engineering.

[bOing]

One thing does bother me - but it may just be a coincidence.

I have some old Nuendo mixes and although my mixing skills weren't as developed at the time, the actual sound of the tracks seemed larger, fuller, and clearer to me than when I'm using DP.

No idea, really. Just one of those strange things...you know, like Chupacabras.

Sorry Digidesign , you left one customer more here in Brazil..

A little OT but: Hey Andremattos, I was at the Ariau Tower in 1993. How close are you to Manaus?

[Shooshie]

Shooshie: one would need carefully to repeat the experiment several times before one could say with confidence there really was an audible difference between properly set up professional DAWs. Even then, I would find it hard to accept unless one could isolate what was causing the difference. I'm not saying there can't be any audible differences, just that to demonstrate something that subtle, one has to be extra, extra meticulous. And as you say, what you found was subtle. So extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Obviously, I'm not talking about "tells" like a mangy panning implementation, but the underlying audio engine.

BTW, The Amazing Randi, a magician, Macarthur Fellow and professional debunker of extraordinary claims, is offering 1 million dollars to anyone who can tell the difference between a reasonably-priced speaker cable and the super expensive kind in a properly set up double blind test. I read an article in stereophile - not sympathetic to Randi, incidentally - that, among other things drove home exactly how difficult it is to set up an experimental protocol for something so seemingly straightforward.

A similarly complex experiment would surely be necessary for a viable DAW shootout.

I have read all about that challenge of Randi's. I've been hoping that at the least it might bring some sanity back to the outrageous claims made for audiophile equipment. The trouble with those claims is that they call into question the REAL advances that some equipment makes. Excellent audio equipment does indeed make an amazing difference, but not cables that sell for $1000/foot, or those passive "bricks" that sit on top of an amplifier and miraculously transform the sound, and that sort of thing.

The differences between the DAWs in the shootout in which I was involved were indeed slight, and we made no attempt to trace them to the precise source. It could have been his D/A convertors, or his clock or... any number of things. And our preference for DP doesn't mean that it's response graph was a flat-line; it may have been very favorably curved for our ears.

Speaking of ears, Kubi, I think mine are OK. I had them tested a year ago, and they were better than average for my age, though obviously at half-a-century they've got some wear on them. Now, my listening space does indeed have amazing leaps at various frequencies. I've run sine-wave tests in here, and let's just say that it would be a waste of time to try to tune this room or toon this rume. But I have my ways of compensating and checking up on my mixes. Still, I prefer using Trim, and always have. It gives me extra control over things, and of course I'm very careful about comb filtering when I can spot it.

I've no doubt that some people innocently report big differences between their DAWs, because they're unaware of the inequalities of the setups and settings. I hear the same thing about MIDI -- some people will rant about how DP will not do all these things in MIDI that they "must have," and then after they make a big stink about it, I point out how it's done in DP. Must be embarrassing. They typically disappear afterward.

And James, The Big Red Knob ought to be standard on mixing boards. Connected to nothing. Just turn it to dial in the right amount of that je ne sais quois... Nails it every time.

Ok... back to fooling myself into believing that DP is the perfect DAW for me. Hey, I don't care what people think. DP works for me. When they hear my stuff they don't seem to ask what platform it was done on. They usually just say "wow, nice." That works for me!

Shooshie

[Shooshie]

BTW, DP's pan pots do not cause random level or pan jumps... If yours (or Shooshie's) do, well, I strongly suggest to back up your hard drive, start shopping for a new audio interface, or something - you have bigger problems.

Well, I was just saying that panning is not simple in DP. It may not be in any DAW -- but my experience is largely with DP. I use Trim to help accomplish what I want. The problems I described where sounds that are panned just off center will sometimes reverse their position (I'm talking just a few degrees off-center), are almost certainly a combination of things, including room acoustics, individual pitches as they react to those room acoustics, my own hearing (possibly), and who knows what other factors. I didn't mean to imply that they were a DP problem.

I think that people expect to hear radical changes when they turn the pan-knob in stereo tracks. It's just not that way -- thus what I said: panning is not simple!

Shooshie

[stiefelmusik]

Yet another GREAT thread at Unicornation! The amount of information and inspiration I get from this place never ceases to amaze me.

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.

No, these days, with so much information available on the internet, a Personal Information Filter (PIF) is essential. There are sites I trust implicitly (like THIS one) and there are others that no grain of salt could suffice to make it palatable (like GS).

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.

Now, as a comparison, take this post from Kubi:

Pan laws will not affect the width of your mix, unless you mix in one and then transfer to a DAW using another. But if you stay in one DAW from start to finish, its pan law will neither widen nor narrow your mix, no matter which one it is; it will merely cause you to use slightly different levels and panning positions as you mix. For the same reason, having various pan laws to choose from is only desirable if you transfer entire mixes back and forth between DP and other DAWs using different pan laws. Otherwise, it's really a non-feature.

There is so much misinformation and half-baked knowledge spread in this thread, it's really a problem...

The trim plug lets you pan the two sides of a stereo track independently - but that too is to be used with some caution!

If you feel your mixes aren't wide enough, there are a number of things you can do, way too much to list here, and all of them are entirely platform-independent.

But here's a couple of quick tips:

For a wide mix:
••• use many mono tracks and few stereo tracks (this one's key!)
••• pan at least one element far left and at least one other far right (could be as little as a mono delay return...) radical pan positions are your friend!
••• in Pop/Rock etc., keep a number of tracks dry or nearly dry, or if you use time-based processing (reverb, delay) use some in mono
••• generally avoid stereo enhancers, and don't try to 'make it wide in mastering' or on stems - make it wide from the get-go.
••• Waves doubler (used very judiciously on the right material, i.e. background vocals) can work miracles; you can do similar things with MOTU Delay using short delay times and a 100% mix setting. Check for mono compatibility!
••• Don't try to spread everything evenly and symmetrically. That results in what's known as "big mono". Check U2's Vertigo (and many other songs) for a gorgeously 'off-center' mix. The main guitar is far left, and stays there, largely with no pendant on the right...

Most important tip: Don't let this 'discussion' spook you and bark up the wrong tree. If your mix sounds bad/narrow/veiled/crappy/whatever, well, it's because you mixed it poorly, or your source material was crap.

You can achieve a stellar sounding mix in any of the major DAWs, including of course DP, if you know what you're doing and are working in a workable environment (decent AD, DA and monitoring) with well recorded tracks (good musicians & performances, good mics and pres, good rooms...)

And if you don't know what you're doing, well, it doesn't matter what you use - working on a Studer and a Neve console mixing the original tracks from (insert your favorite album here) won't save you...

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.

(Thanks for some great tips, Kubi!)

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.

Like some of you, I have also tricked myself into believing I heard a difference when, in fact, there was none. About an hour before a live dance/theater performance, we were getting very mediocre sound from the PA going into the house. In front of two other technicians, I started making "subtle adjustments" to a graphic EQ in the rack and then claimed "Ah! Now that sounds better! What do you think?" Then one of them points out that the device is not even patched into the board! I was so embarrassed the only thing I could do was...
LAUGH! ... !

[monkey man]

Of course, we all know clients are much more vulnerable here, often accepting pseudo adjustments gleefully.

Hahaha... reminds me of the famous deal where you pretend to change something and say to the client "What about now?"

"Oh yeah... that's MUCH better!" says the client!

Exactly the sort of scenario I was imagining, Jimbo.

But I'm one of those old fashioned types who doesn't like the word "exploit." No MTV upper management job in my future.

Me too.
Interestingly, those MTV folk couldn't run a site such as this, IMHO.

This: http://www.funklogic.com/images/makepalbigger.jpg is really good to have around for those kind of clients....it's just a rack filler panel with some knobs stuck on it, but it looks pretty convincing for those less-gear-informed....I really like the "SOLOS" knob!!

Gotta love it RA!

Thank you for the pic.

And James, The Big Red Knob ought to be standard on mixing boards. Connected to nothing. Just turn it to dial in the right amount of that je ne sais quois... Nails it every time.

+1 for the je ne sais quois knob.

Perhaps MOTU could include it as a special menu preference (easter egg?) for our mixing board.

Ok... back to fooling myself into believing that DP is the perfect DAW for me. Hey, I don't care what people think. DP works for me. When they hear my stuff they don't seem to ask what platform it was done on. They usually just say "wow, nice." That works for me!
Shooshie

You know what they say, Shoosh:
In the land of the blind, the man with one eye is king.

Now, all we need to do is find someone with an eye.

[bOing]

And James, The Big Red Knob ought to be standard on mixing boards. Connected to nothing. Just turn it to dial in the right amount of that je ne sais quois... Nails it every time.

That's so funny because there were many times where I was riding the controls of some reverb plugin saying "yeah, this is good - no, that's a little too much!" only to realize it was in standby mode.

As a general rule, it seems that we see what we want to see, think what we want to think, and hear what we want to hear.