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I recently read this thread this guy is explaining how he uses his daw as a console and his analog mixer for summing:

title: ANALOGUE CONSOLE w/ DAW SUMMING vs DAW CONSOLE w/ ANALOGUE SUMMING

https://www.gearslu… /140430-analog-console-w-daw-summing-vs-daw-console-w-analog-summing.html

It is the exact method that a lot of pros are doing now and I have always mixed in the box and don't know about hardware and wiring a whole lot so I am a bit of a noob on that, but I still wanted to give this mixing method a shot.

On the 2nd page a user asked...

"Can i use my Allen and Heath analog classic mixer GS3 as summing mixer ? so i summing 16 line from rosetta 800 and 003 to the mixer.. and send back as stereo to rosetta as like summing mixer are?"

but no one answered him. I have the same cheap mixer as him and was wondering if I can turn my daw into my console and sum with this mixer or any other cheap Mackie or analog mixer). Can someone explain to me or draw a diagram on the wiring and what would I need to connect where; so I know how I would be able to do this?

Comments

Boswell Sun, 08/26/2018 - 00:44

Welcome to RO!

We've had many threads here in these forums about what could loosely be called hybrid mixing.

A few points about the GS thread you linked to:

1) It has the GS vibe and treatment, both of the topic and the attitude between contributors. Although not as extreme as some threads over there, it seems that you cannot contribute anything regarded as meaningful unless your personal level control is turned up to 11.

2) The elephant in the room in their thread is PT, in versions that were the rage at the time of the posts, i.e. 10 years ago or more. It's little wonder that they are all desperately fighting for better-sounding mixes.

3) One of the innovations that we introduced here in RO discussions is what I called the "two-box method", where the mix capture device is digitally-decoupled from the source device (i.e. does not share the same sampling clock). It's not easy to read right through the GS threads, but I don't believe this concept was mentioned there either explicitly or implicitly. The conceptual model I propounded here many years ago was an analogy of the old "direct-to-disc" recording, where an analogue mix was done on-the-fly and sent to a disc cutter as a stereo pair. The up-to-date equivalent model of that would be having a magic stereo microphone with pre-amp that feeds a two-track digital capture device. All your tracking, effects and mixing can be a combination of analogue and digital processes, but the result is a two-track analogue mix to be captured by a quality ADC in a stereo recorder of some sort (usually a second DAW). If nothing else, this model helps concentrate the mind of the mix engineer on what is important at each stage of the process.

Your question about using a Rosetta 800 to feed an analogue mixer with the tracks and stems from a session is right along this path. Where you may want to think in a little more detail is what you do with the analogue two-track mix. Even capturing it on something like a DAT recorder may give better results than sending it back to the computer that is generating the mix source tracks.

There is no right and wrong in the method. It's all about the sound of the result.