The Pre Sonus M80 has a summing bus.. The pres sound like sh*t though. OK, not like sh*t .... they are ok for what the box costs ... as good or maybe a bit better than the pres found in most compact mixers. They do have a few more features that can be useful , like phase reverse and pads, that aren't found on your typical table top mixer ... so, if you don't own a small mixer, I could see them being useful. If you do own a small mixer like a Macke 1604, then imo, it is not a significant upgrade.

How are you a/b-ing the mix from the box vs. the mixer? What are you mixing to? Are you mixing back into the computer? If you are you might try a stand alone CDr to mix to .. I mix and monitor to a CDr through the spdif outs on my soundcard and when I switch between my analog console and the CDr I don't hear any difference ...

I think if I were looking to analog sum my DAW, I'd forget about a mixer that had pres in it. You can get all sorts of different preamp flavors in individual channels that locking yourself into 8 channels of the same flavor isn't the greatest move. I'd have a few Neve channels, some API for stuff that Neve is too hairy for, and maybe a couple of really clean channels.

For a mixer/summing bus, I'd probably go with the Manley 16x2. No fooling around there. On the cheaper side, you could do the Roll Music RMS216 and Great River MP2NV on the back side to provide gain (The RMS216 is a passive summing box, meaning you need to put a mic preamp after it to bring it up to line level). That'd have balls for days and sound damn good.

Of course, I don't sum analog. I don't see the need. Unless you spend a bit of dough, don't expect your analog summing results to be any better than what you get in the box. Actually, expect what you get from mixing ITB to kick the ass of any cheap or budget outboard summing solution.

You might check out this product form ATI:
http://www.audiotoys.com/
8MX2.HTM
They run about $3,000, but may be worth a shot.

Studio Projects has announced this, I'm not sure if it's available yet, but should be a lot cheaper.
http://www.studioprojectsusa.com/sp828.html

I've used the 8MX2, and I don't think it'd be on the radar if I were looking for a summing unit. It's more like an 8channel preamp that's very good quality (ATI=API) with a summing bus built in. It's not really a mixer, though. It's 1RU and there's a TON of stuff packed into it. It'd do the job, and I bet it'd sound great doing it, but ergonomically it'd drive me nuts.

It's a live/remote unit, IMHO.

If you are so inclined...and really don't need all the pres,

Ashley makes a really cool 8x2 line mixer with a couple of decent preamps thrown in...http://www.ashly.com/
lx-series.htm

kurt the way i abed them is i took a mix i did a rough one only 8 channels and mixed it bone dry no eq copression automation etc. and processed it in pro tools the" daw mix" and then i outputted the same mix the 8 seperate channels to my dm24 and used a group fader and brought up all the volumes evenly. It was still a tad under volume so i used the digital gain not touching a single pot and made sure all levels were perfectly matched and the volume was around the same. I used the stereo out of the board back into pro tools i mixed that as a left right 24 bit file and burnt that down to 16 bit using cool edit, then i a b ed the mixes and the tascam mix had way more bass definition. The kick about hit you in the chest vs the daw mix and the levels were the same. Everything was mixed under 3 db of volume also the stereo image was a lil wider even thoguh i matched the pan positions identical. This was not a subtile improvment, but huge to my ears i could hear the diffrence on even my crappy pc speakers and i abed the mixes in a spectrm analyser and the tolerance of the volume of the mixes was within 1 db so thats good enough of a test for what i was doing. i now am borrowing a stand alone burner to continue my summing tests.

Great. I am looking forward to the results of your test. Perhaps we can make this a sort of "project ro" where you can post the 3 files as mp3's for members to compare for themselves? Summing is an issue of interest to many of us.

One question, what computer, recording software and audio card are you using and which is providing the master word clocking for the rest of the system? Are you using the clock in the mixer when you use it vs. the internal clock from the computer or the soundcard when not using the mixer? I ask because what you discribe, sounds like a clock issue (jitter) to meeeeeeeee :D

kurt im using a digi 001 and mixing on a tascam dm24 digital mixer but now i have a sony stand alone cd burner as well im borrowing ill work on making it a summing test and post the results as soon as i can ive done the testing on both clocks the dm24 has amore stable clock then the 001. ok the summign test is done ill post the results later on tonight here is the results check the thread out
http://www.recording.org/postt20950.html

Hello
I've using the Audient ASP008, it sounds really nice and it's not so expensive !!

http://www.audient.co.uk/asp008main.html

hope it's help