Have you looked at the small-format Midas Venice or (a little larger) Verona?

check out AMEK media 51 (total recall & rupert neve eq)

Neotek might be worth looking into. David

Big sound comes from big consoles. When a console is sized down, compromises have to be made. Sound quality suffers. I have not yet heard a small console that sounds as good as a good old fashoned Neve, Trident, MCI etc.

I had to cross this threshold myself and I came to the conclusion that when faced with the choice of a large, expensive, maintenance hungry, great sounding large format desk VS. a small, affordable, no maintenance, thin anemic sounding board the best solution was no console at all ... so now I mix "in the box".

It has taken me a while to get to the point where I feel things are sounding as good as they did when I had a 2" tape machine and a large format console. I had to learn to do a few things differently and make some different mic choices, all while I learned the ins and outs of how different mic pres affect a mix. In the end, things are coming along and I am getting pretty happy with the sound of mixing in DAW - land.

Kurt, in what box do you mix? I recently saw a thread that said that ITB summing across different DAW software sounded different. Specifically, that MOTU (which I use) does particularly "bad" summing. Perhaps it's time to differentiate digial summing algorithms, the same way we talk about different mic pres, compressors, etc. Just because it's digital doesn't make everything equal.

:?

I've worked on a few DDA boards and if you don't have the money for a Neve or API I think that the DDA sounds better than the boards mentioned so far. I felt that the EQ on the board was musical and had that slightly aggressive "british" vibe. I'd spend my bucs on some outbaord mic pre's.

Clueless wrote: Kurt, in what box do you mix? I recently saw a thread that said that ITB summing across different DAW software sounded different. Specifically, that MOTU (which I use) does particularly "bad" summing. Perhaps it's time to differentiate digial summing algorithms, the same way we talk about different mic pres, compressors, etc. Just because it's digital doesn't make everything equal.

Clueless,
I am using Cubase 5.1 , an older program, at 24 bits .. with a dual 1800 Anthlon and 1 gig of ram ... I don't hear any summing problems. I love my system and all the power that it has.. It does anything I throw at it..

There are a few high-quality compact mixers on the market that may offer the character you're after...Aurora has one that's similar to the Neve designs (done by a former Neve engineer) and API has one that sounds like, well, an API...they're typically modular (in eight-channel increments) and rackmountable and are built with good power supplies and components and all that stuff. (There are others as well, those are just the first two that come to mind.) But they tend to be fairly minimal in terms of features...usually no EQ, maybe an aux send or two...but if you're looking for the "sound" of one of the big consoles that may be an option, combined with some nice outboard EQ's and compressors.

-Duardo