Skip to main content

An earlier user wrote this down in one of my post.

You may want to look at the way you are summing your mix as well. Looks like you do it inside the Daw.

Take a look at the API or Dangerous Music Summing BUS RAck Stuff. That can really open up the mix and make it sound bigger and more natural.

Hopw do I go in achieving this ? How can i mux my songs outside my DAW ? Im using Cubase on a PC. Any help greatly appreciated!

Topic Tags

Comments

anonymous Mon, 09/13/2004 - 19:31

Get an analog mix bus (either dedicated summer or a mixer)

Convert all of your digital tracks to analog, and sum them in the analog domain.

Some say this gives a better mix. I think the most important element of mixing "outside the box" is analog/hardware processing of tracks and effects, i.e. compression, reverb which are far superior to most plugin effects. I think differences in summing are subtle and not to be fretted over until the rest of your chain is pretty strong.

zemlin Mon, 09/13/2004 - 19:36

I'm having a real tough time swallowing that summing business. In a DAW, 1+1 will always equal 2. Maybe if you're working with outdated 16 bit equipment and crappy software analog summing might cover up some digital artifacts, but with today's 24bit and higher systems and -100db noise floors, how is something like that Dangerous Audio box going to make 1+1 equal a "better" 2 than a DAW is going to figure up?

That's not to say there aren't some benefits to taking a mix into analog equipment, but the benefits (IMHO) are due to the character of the analog equipment, not due to "higher quality" or "more accurate" summing. Summing in a DAW doesn't take anything away from the mix, it just doesn't add the distortion and compression analog gear might add.
In the spirit of "it is better to remain silent and considered an idiot than to open your mouth and remove all doubt", I might have been better off keeping quiet.

pmolsonmus Tue, 09/14/2004 - 05:37

A mix bus is where 2 or more signals are mixed/blended/combined together. In the analog world its usually on the right side of any mixer as you face it. It can be called a summing bus, sub group or even master fader/volume control or a dedicated unit as mentioned earlier.

Depending on quality of said unit it would still be in your best interest to learn more about recording techniques before you spent money foolishly. Buy a book or do more research. This is an fundamental aspect of recording.

Phil

________
RO Vocal Booth Moderator

anonymous Tue, 09/14/2004 - 14:26

zemlin wrote: I'm having a real tough time swallowing that summing business. In a DAW, 1+1 will always equal 2. Maybe if you're working with outdated 16 bit equipment and crappy software analog summing might cover up some digital artifacts, but with today's 24bit and higher systems and -100db noise floors, how is something like that Dangerous Audio box going to make 1+1 equal a "better" 2 than a DAW is going to figure up?

That's not to say there aren't some benefits to taking a mix into analog equipment, but the benefits (IMHO) are due to the character of the analog equipment, not due to "higher quality" or "more accurate" summing. Summing in a DAW doesn't take anything away from the mix, it just doesn't add the distortion and compression analog gear might add.
In the spirit of "it is better to remain silent and considered an idiot than to open your mouth and remove all doubt", I might have been better off keeping quiet.

These summing buses were developed for Pro Tools more than any other DAW. Pro Tools is notorious for having a bad internal summing bus. Have you ever listened to a side by side comparison of a Pro Tools internally summed session and the same session run out to an external bus and heard the difference? Because I have and it is certainly noticeable. The reasons have been somewhat illusory. Some contribute it to the fact that there is no auto-latency makeup in Pro Tools (until now, 6.4 has it). Everytime you put a plugin on a track it causes a little latency (just a few ms), which causes phasing problems. The new Pro Tools does have auto-latency makeup and I haven't heard it, but I have been told by some that it has made a difference. Most other DAWs already employ auto-latency makeup and I'm not sure you really need an external bus for these. It was essentially a Pro Tools problem that some gear manufacturers tried to solve, but then, of course, they saw the possibility to make more $ by marketing it to other DAW owners too.

doulos21 Wed, 09/15/2004 - 05:20

jdlee23

the problem here is not in the summing but in the bounce to disk
pro tools mixes have a real issue with pumping volume into them you make the mix hot in pro tools it shrinks your stereo image and actully kills your high and low end the busing system is fine the latency is true but there are easy ways around it one is to put a plug in on every channel a simple one like a phase switch or 1 band eq dont use it but having a plugin on every channel will make the latency equal which means the mix will come out in perfect timming one of the greatest problems in pro tools mixing is overloading the internal buses when you bounce to disk. The easiest way around that is to give the mix headroom which you should already be doing for the ME -3db tops and your pro tools mixes will sound fine. If you still find things not upto snuff instead of summing off a 2-bus record your mix to a seperate stand alone cd burner this through a digital out ive noticed helped me get a wider more detailed mix out of pro tools then the bounce to disk feature hope this helps some.

anonymous Wed, 09/15/2004 - 12:41

doulos21 wrote: jdlee23

the problem here is not in the summing but in the bounce to disk
pro tools mixes have a real issue with pumping volume into them you make the mix hot in pro tools it shrinks your stereo image and actully kills your high and low end the busing system is fine the latency is true but there are easy ways around it one is to put a plug in on every channel a simple one like a phase switch or 1 band eq dont use it but having a plugin on every channel will make the latency equal which means the mix will come out in perfect timming one of the greatest problems in pro tools mixing is overloading the internal buses when you bounce to disk. The easiest way around that is to give the mix headroom which you should already be doing for the ME -3db tops and your pro tools mixes will sound fine. If you still find things not upto snuff instead of summing off a 2-bus record your mix to a seperate stand alone cd burner this through a digital out ive noticed helped me get a wider more detailed mix out of pro tools then the bounce to disk feature hope this helps some.

Thanks for the points, but I don't have any problems. I was just trying to explain where these outside summing buses come from to the guy who first started this thread.

HMNP Thu, 09/16/2004 - 07:51

Thanks for the points, but I don't have any problems. I was just trying to explain where these outside summing buses come from to the guy who first started this thread

Thanks guys!! Really appreciate it! As soon as we get thru this Hurricane Jeanne thing and I get power back up Ill try your suggestions