im making house music.. recording some rock bands etc.. i have a RME FF400.. sound is good. open, detailed, clean, transparent .. But somewhat really cold, cold.. nothing round, nothing smooth and silky in my mixes event tho im a try hard newbie; i feel that i may never be able to get that sound out of my box.. using a good eq plug in gives me the idea of silkiness i could reach but its still not really there..it just get just opens up before getting harsh. its just an illusion sometimes

so im about to break my savings to buy a summing box even tho i never had any experience with them.. my only analog experience is when i route my good but flat sounding big brand soft synths through my forcusrite trackmaster preamp.. i get some level in, then the sound gets fatter and rounder and warmer(ish) and still was punchy for me.. i guess this is information of virtual sound is actually turning into electricity gives the sound more body and presence. i do this often now, not with all my sounds but quiet few.

i would like a simple summing amp, tube tech ssa-2a maybe? has anyone used this?

but isnt this is a whole new territory of audiophile-ism ?

then need a decent a/d converter to maintain that thing you achieved with your summing box.. another £2k ?

im a sucker for electronic music, but i love the way the Black Keys album sounds, or even the Amy Winehouse tunes, sounds fat and warm..
space and depth.. just more body to everything..

are summing boxes are the good way to blag that analog thing?

I've heard some electronic music producers swear by their summing mixers (one of my favourite artists uses a Dangerous 2-Bus and there's no denying that it sounds very, very good) but others say you can get the same 'flavour' by running a stereo mix through a choice piece of analogue gear, thus making it nothing to do with the summing process. Having never had the fortune to use a summing mixer I can't really comment any further!

I'd rather spend the money on room treatment, mics, and some PSP and Tritone plugins.

As for summing, borrow some analogue mixers and use the line-ins, and record out of the L&R inserts (if you want to bypass the last and often noisy output amp in older mixers)

Do a mix 'in the box' from 4 stereo groups mixed to L&R, called "in the box"
And a mix into 4 pairs of inputs on the mixer (no EQ, obviously) and record from the left and right outs or left and right inserts, call the mixes "soundcraft" or "allen & heath" or "Neve" (!) ... whatever the mixer is.

Normalise the resulting audiofiles. See what difference there are, by blind testing them with friends.

As for esoterica, I like the sound of transformers and valves ... transformers are an integral part of all good old high voltage valve circuits, which many people tend to forget!

The difference of another converter won't be much more than a gnat's todger; rather use 2 inputs on your FF400, using the same clock in the same box is probably a good idea.

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PA stuff on FB

yes, piece of analogue has been all good from what i heard.. only last week my mate brought his Allen Heath xone 92 dj mixer to swap with my pioneer djm600 club mixer, the difference in sound was amazing, more headroom, more body more definition to the records we played. deccent signal channel this is all about i guess, and it doesnt come cheap.

yes sure.. we all like the sound of transformers and valves.. thats why the market is crammed with hardware and software valve colourers, but the real thing is the real thing. i think using a cheap mixer wont do any good in terms of hi fidelity, it will add undesired noise (thinking if i'd use my £140 yamaha mg12/4 mixer) i think quality of the components increase the sophistication of the sound. i tried psp warmers.. nice at first sight but a bit of a one trick pony, often make it sound too fat or something that it takes the space around sounds. it has to be used with care or i didnt use it enough maybe. tho i must say im not here for just a bit of dirt or distortion..its more like spatial depth and more resolution on highs and lows im after.
i have a great acoustic treatment at my studio, genelecs, ns10, avantones..it all sounds great, but little cold and rigid sometimes.. or its just me not getting the best out yet.. but i know the virtual world is virtual, sound becomes real once its out of the box, wrong?

A Neve 8816 summing mixer costs around £2200. For that price or less on eBay right now you can buy yourself and 10:2 from Studer, an Allen and Heath GS3000 32:2 and a GL2400 32:2, an SSL XDesk and a Soundcraft Ghost 24. All of the second-hand consoles are probably overpriced bearing in mind the state of the used console market.

Alterantively you could save even more of a packet and solder yourself up a summing matrix from a patchbay and use the twin channel pre as your line gain.

I'm not against summing mixers, I just don't see the point of buying one right now when you could get a second-hand full service mixer for much less or buy an X-Desk brand new and have more facilities.

Reg

yes but i dont really want a big mixing desk at my studio just to have bunch of transformers, the good ones dont come cheap too.

i thought summing amps were the way to sum it up what we crave for to get things in analog domain in its best way. xdesk could be good but im not needing faders and routing options

Well...That 'roundness' tends to come from Class A mic amps with transformers. The classica example being the 70's Neve designs. The transients get slightly rounded and depending on how hard you hit the mic amp you get a more 'harmonic' content. The summing amps in those desks then add more of the same. The result is basically cumulative distortion which works in a nice way to provide a greater sense of life and depth in the sound. So if you run your mixes through that sort of gear you will pick up a certain amount of that charachter. But it's important to note that it relies on well recorded material, carefully chosen levels both at the pre and at the converter and an understanding of the source and the room...because you dont hear all that 'good stuff' when you're being distracted by a nasty room sound or a clipping converter etc. It's a major tennet of recording wisdom that's not often discussed...We hear great stuff much more clearly when it's not being trampled on by something else!

So what about digital sounding 'bad'. Well you'll hear a million opinions. Broadly speaking digital SHOULD do nothing to the sound either in the tracking or summing. It should remain transparent and neutral. If you're looking for colour then it can sound lifeless and cold. If you misunderstand the gain structure in digital it can sound a lot worse than that. Some claim that the summing is somehow 'broken' and causes the mixes to collapse.

So what should you do?

Well, assuming that everything else is 'right' I would buy a Roll Music Folcrom (a passive summing network which allows you to sum 16 channels and use any dual mic amp of your choice for makeup gain, effectively creating a mixer with that mic amp as the summing amp). I'd then get a Brent Averill 1073 MP (An exact Neve clone 1500 quid) and you'd end up with a dual mic amp for tracking and the mix bus. Total cost 2k. But that's just me. There are endless ways to approach the issue.

This does rely on you having some high quality DA conversion and a spare converter pair to return the mix to your DAW.

As with all these things....The difference in the sound should be subtle. If it's glaringly obvious something is awry. UNTIL...you get towards the end of your mix, at the point when tiny changes seem to make a big difference. And then it is night and day.

If you go to www.vintageking.com you'll be able to download before and after files of summing busses. You can hear the effect for yourself.

RE Mixers:

Mixers are great but they require maintenance and they're a nightmare to recall. The magic of a summing unit is that you retain total and instant recall. (use a test tone from the DAW to line up the master gain to unity)

Jack

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www.jackruston.com

+ experience.... unfortunately!

I've heard mixes from those of many moons experience sound more "analogue" ITB than many newbie works on oodles of gear. It's a combo tab of experience and gear.... once you understand exactly what your various bits of outboard are doing to a mix you can go someway towards getting a lot of it ITB.

However - it is a limited tale - ultimately the outboard route does yield results that ITB cannot. Mind you, the opposite is also true!

As for Black Keys and Amy Winehouse : I recall that much of "Back to Black" was ITB in Protools {but not entirely - I think there is an SOS interview about that album}. The Black Keys are a predominantly analogue affair. The point being - both have been recorded and mixed very differently from each other yet both produce a sound you like..

Conclusion ? - experiment !!

The OP really should have a good read of this.

Jack - did you have a Spider for a while? (seem to remember it coming up) Did you ever use that as a summing box or was it on other duties?

I have a Spider.

It's amazing and I have used it for summing. Like all cranesong gear it has a beautiful sound. Gently coloured and open. Thick and warm if you use the fat buttons and tape algorithms. The converters are awesome as are the mic amps. I am using it with a folcrom for more channels. So I run 16 into the folcrom and use a spider pair for gain and conversion back to pro tools. I used to use it as an eight ch summing mixer. Very cool. The quirk of it is that the line amps are +6 minimum gain. So you need to send your stems out with that in mind. I found it was no problem in practice.

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www.jackruston.com

Ok Jack you do deserve your name, that was a great advise! it was what i needed. i really appreciate your expertise knowledge here.


your suggestion of buying the Roll Music Folcrom accompanied with some 1073 clones is a great idea, though i would love to hear how it sounded like, after reading your comments. i visited the Vintage King to hear some summing mixers demos.. Shadow Hills was my choice from the brief listening test with my newbie ears.. i wasnt brave enough to check the price on that though..

wouldnt it be straight forward getting a dedicated summing device rather than patching Folcrom to 1073 or other pre amps?

analogue summing is great i think after listening to the tests on the vintage king website. bare protools outputs into summing boxes made a big difference to the sound in my opinion. then again these were the bare protool comparing with a plug-in'ish inserts, i wonder how would it sound if u just inserted valve warmers, phoenix plugins to the protools outputs, i wonder would it come close to the sound of the summing boxes? maybe not,hey?

Well the Shadow Hills stuff is definitely in the 'more obvious' camp. For me there was one transformer setting (iron perhaps?) that seemed right while the other two were perhaps doing a bit too much for my taste. But then for the stuff you're doing that might be amazing. Those SH Equinox boxes are about 3k or thereabouts. It's a lot of money. You're buying a passive summing network (which is cheap), a pair of extremely fine mic amps with lots of options with those transformers etc, a monitor controller and a very nice box. So you have to ask yourself if you need the monitor controller and the very nice box. They do add to the cost.

There's no real problem with the folcrom and the pres...it's literally dsubs into the folcrom (x2) and left and right XLR outs to your mic amps. I suppose there's a slightly increased risk of problems arising from the greater number of physical connectors but in practice I wouldn't be too concerned. The great advantage is that you can change the sound of your mix just by using different preamps without having to change the whole rig.

In relation to software: Well the Phoenix thing sounds great. As do the tape algorithms on the Cranesong gear, as does, I'm sure, the new heat thing in PT HD. They're all designed by Dave Hill. Who's a genius. BUt they're PT HD only, and from what I understand it'd be hard to re-code them for native. The chips in the HEDD and the Spider are the same as those on the HD cards which is why Phoenix and Heat are HD only. I dont know if you have an HD rig?

In native land there are lots of cool things which do this sort of stuff. THere are others with more experience than me, but I'd recommend the Sound Toys stuff without hesitation.

In my opinion, none of it is as cool as real transformers and real tubes. But that's just my opinion and the internet is chock full of people making sweeping statements as if they're gospel truth. We all do it...I know I do! But this is where you have to decide for yourself. The demos are there to be downloaded. The main thing is to know what you're after. It's easy to be impressed by shiny new toys but you need to get past the initial WOW phase and find out whether that tool really works for you long term.

J

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www.jackruston.com

HEAT is the only DAW element I've heard which tops Cranesong Pheonix.

I agree. Nothing will sound like the real tubes, transformers, the energy passing through..

About hearing the Summing demos, for the Shadow Hills, Iron setting was the only one sounded exceptional as an all rounder,but sounded really nice. the rest was making things too thick and blunt for me. (So the Iron setting was to model the old Neve preamps..)
I also liked the Dangerous bus when it wasnt driven, also the Manley was in a class of its own. I would like to compare it to Tube Tech summing mixer also, but they didnt have it on demo.

Im far away from protools set ups. for electronic music ableton and logic does me fine. but its still ITB.. there is a reason for this hype for the Summing mixers i guess, and it is not a myth or a gear fetish. its the sound.

All good, sound advice, but as a first step, I'd strongly suggest you also compare ITB summing with analogue summing AND with ITB summing but the stereo buss run through a nice stereo outboard with transformers AND running stems through several such channels before summing ITB again. EG try the Portico 5042 or Sound Skulptor STS for the stereo buss or four a couple of stems.

There is a difference, but it's less than you'd think and who knows which result you'd prefer: summing ITB should technically be perfect, so it stands to reason that taste comes in to play when you're deliberately adding imperfections. In other words, there's no 'best' way to do this. And if you track through the right stuff in the first place, the summing seems to me to be less and less important.

Yes, tracking well — and mixing well will beat hands down any final polish summing in the analogue domain may give.

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PA stuff on FB

+1 with the above two replies.

I don’t recall a time when I thought my audio sounded ‘cold’ because it’s been digitised. If it’s ‘cold’ it’s because that’s the sound I recorded.

External hardware is the flowers waiting on the seat of the new car. Everything else has to be right before you reach that point.

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An Eagle for an Emperor, A Kestrel for a Knave.

Quote okan1151:

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Im far away from protools set ups. for electronic music ableton and logic does me fine. but its still ITB.. there is a reason for this hype for the Summing mixers i guess, and it is not a myth or a gear fetish. its the sound.

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Actually that's only a half truth. It is somewhat hype. I have an API summing system - I also have a big ass Neve console. Using both of those does improve upon the ITB mixing - but not for the reasons you might think. They're generally doing what Tchad Blake etc do ITB - by knowing exactly what goes on with external gear. The API, for example, is useful to me because it lets me have groups of bundles tracks into various EQs an then bring it back together without another conversion before mix print.

So - with a bit of patience yes - there is a short cut to a smoother sound by using a bit of outboard - but summing isn't really it. I'd run with a nice EQ on the back end - the shootout you mentioned online is very very flawed {look at the Neve one for a good example of how not to sell gear to someone!! It's clipped and distorted.... something the Neve doesn't do!}. Of course Vintage King are going to sell you a summing unit.

Secondly - I'd make sure you had some world class converters before running with ANYTHING to do with summing {as I say - with the caveat that he summing isn't the thing that's going to smooth things out - it's the transformers etc }....

So - be careful you're not convincing yourself you want something because of a shoot out or something that GS types have told you. Demo a unit BUT also demo an EQ and see if you can't get equally nice results that way. I've got a lot of high end outboard gear and monitoring in a pretty good environment with £20k of monitoring to do it on - summing is WAAAY down the list in affecting sound quality. In other words - it's not the summing that's attractive but the sonic qualities of the Shadow Hills box..... Don't spend more money that you need {unless cash is growing on a tree!}....

Pah! You're all blouses.

It comes down to experience, knowledge and a really good understanding of frequencies and the signal path they travel through.

Consoles, outboard and the like are great ways to colour a sound. Summing boxes, for me, are okay if you are after a specific sound but if you want to warm or thicken or apply colour to ITB sounds then I can think of many other ways of achieving it. A good starting point is to think of minimum phase design plugins to add colour to a sound or faux tape saturation and so on.

But there is something ot be said for summing boxes but they are only good if the entire signal path has been conditioned and prepared to reap the benefits of it. Sticking a 2 grand summing box at the end of the path doesn't mean you will have a great sound. It only start to shine if the entire path has been set up correctly and the weakest link is as good as the summing box.

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Samplecraze
Stretch That Note

jack likes the cranesong so much he's selling it on readers ad's



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http://soundcloud.com/seaapes

Quote narcoman:

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HEAT is the only DAW element I've heard which tops Cranesong Pheonix.

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That’s probably because HEAT is essentially the updated modern version of the Crane Song Phoenix plug-in


Martin

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YewTreeMagic

Just to enlarge on earlier comments, take something like the Thermionic Phoenix. It's a lovely unit. Analogue warmth by the megaton. But it's not the 'summing' part of it that does that.

Incidentally, my favourite outboard toy for gentle warmification is the Anamod ATS1. But it's very pricey: shame I can't afford one for myself, but when we had it on loan, I loved it. Currently playing with/reviewing the Sound Skulptor STS and loving it - I've AB'd it with the Portico 5042 and prefer it. So if you're handy with a soldering iron that could be a bargain If that's stretching budgets too far, try the freeware Bootsie Ferric plug-in. Not in the same league, but it certainly irons out the digital fragility.

All said very well. Experience and time will bring out better sound with me even ITB with the crappiest soundcard maybe.. I only got close to studio set up a year ago after i finished my course, so take it easy with me

I realize something good has to start from the beginning then ending could be better..yes i never used or seen one in my life but all the albums from the 70s sounds great, and for most of it i believe it was the Neve signal flow.

thinking of spending £4k for summing amps and good converter should still do good next to none. im mainly a dance music or electronic music producer. most of my sounds comes from samples, soft synths and plug in sounds manglers.. with me everything starts ITB. yes technically i can get near to my desired sound. but the sound hardly comes from external sources so im limited what my soft synths can produce, as i said i already like the results i get when i route a soft synth through my focusrite trackmaster preamp and send it back to my DAW, it does sound more bodied somewhat more defined, so i thought summing the whole track through a more sophisticated unit could do even better..


im not just talking about the coloring the sound here, the depth and warmed tone i felt with the summing mixers. if its just a stereo preamp, so that what it is.. stereo preamp, just a good one, no?

oops... I said Thermionic Phoenix, when I meant Fat Bustard & Little Bustard. Right company, wrong product.

Anyway, we're not being hard on you, but it really does pay to do some listening tests before you blow that kind of budget. Question is, if you have £4k available, what's best to spend it on. I reckon if you've not yet tried it, you could go a long way by running individual tracks through some 'warmifying' stuff, whether software or hardware. Eg, if you're generating stuff in the box, then something like a clean amp sim will add character, gently roll off the top end and make it sound that bit nicer... and cumulatively over a mix, that sort of thing tends to add up to a better result.

I really do love tape sims. There are a few in software, but none of them compares with hardware to my ears. The only ones that come close are PT only. In hardware, there's the Portico, the Sound Skulptor, the Cranesong and the Anamod. Given your budget I'd go for the Anamod over any summing... though I'd also probably question the need to spend that much. The Sound Skulptor woudl probably do exactly what you want, and with £4k I reckon you'd get a few of them - enough to run 6-8 stems through simultaneously.

There are also the A-D converters to consider — the Burl Bomber and the UA 2192 converters are deliberately 'characterful', for example.

Seriously, though. A rack of Neve-ish preamps with line inputs and just running stems through them will probably do what you want. And you get loads of mic preamps into the bargain, should you want to do any recordings.

...or you could just invest in the EMI / Abbey Road TG12413 compressor-limiter or the UAD Fairchild emulation, and run everything through that, with no gain reduction going on. I reckon you'd be surprised by the results!

Quote Wease:

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jack likes the cranesong so much he's selling it on readers ad's

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Ha! Well there's a reason for that. And it's not to do with the way it sounds. I did actually PM Reid and tell him, but I didn't want to put it in the thread because might sound like an advert...which is against the rules Wease!

J

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www.jackruston.com

Quite right mr Ruston


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http://soundcloud.com/seaapes