The point Bill has been hammering on throughout this thread is a very good one: try things for yourself and see.  So many questions get posed on audio forums that could be answered through experimentation and observation. Is 96KHz worth it? Try it and listen. What dither algorithm should I use? Try 'em all and see if you can detect a difference. Are all equalizers the same? You've probably got half a dozen of them, try them all and see if you can hear any difference. Linear phase versus minimum phase? Ditto. What's the best drum synth? Go to the Songs forum, pick out some with great-sounding drums and ask the OPs what they used. What should my final average RMS levels be? Experiment and compare your results with your favorite commercial recordings. 

Mixerman's a funny one, I think. Clearly, he's a very skilled engineer and producer. But I don't think he's particularly technical, in the real what's-actually-happening-in-the-wires sense. His arguments about gear are *all* exclusively "well, I can tell". He goes further than that, in fact, and is explicitly mocking about the idea that blind tests and even nulling demonstrate anything. To sum up: he knows what he's talking about re: mixing, but he doesn't have a clue about technology.

Indeed. The other side of this, of course, is "whatever gets you there". If you're more comfortable with this kind of gear than that kind of gear, fine. And if there's some combination of placebo effect and comfort that helps you get better mixes from a piece of gear that is demonstrably not superior to another, then great. Go for it. But that stuff will always be entirely subjective, and any argument for gear that resorts to "I can hear it with my golden ears, which are better than any objective test" is best taken with salt.

Why engineers pursue analog summing?

With the following caveaut in mind....not all summing setups are the same, there are a variety of results depending on the summing box. There used to be a hardware summing shootout up at the VintageKing site, check that out.

Summing outside the box can add width and depth which are noticeably different and some say better, like analog desks of old. This is the primary reason a lot of people go to external summing or at the very least, a hybrid summing process. Yes, there is the added factor of tube or transformer color but the whole point of summing externally is to try and capture the characteristics of an expensive analog desk, like an SSL or Neve, at a much lower price point. The "glue" factor of an SSL or the width and depth you can achieve over a digital mix can be attained quicker if you are mixing into that sound and perceived sonic space.

Digital is just a pristine uncolored world of exact precision with a lot of plus factors like automation. It often fails at producing a sound which is similar to the music we loved from the past. This is why it requires a whole different understanding and process to produce similar results as our analog past. You have to learn how to color digital and create the depth and width that is achieved quicker with a summing box or preamp of your choice.

If you get a chance to experiment with summing setups you will find that you can get similar results in the digital world, it just takes a lot more time to get your busses and plugins aligned. Me, I prefer summing in the box and running out to a pair of decent hardware EQs and preamps. There are only two situations where I think digital fails for summing and that is modern country & metal rock. The SSL mixed sound and these genres go hand in hand. I have known a lot of guys who pursue getting these sounds at a lower cost and it never quite gets there. Most any other type of music can pull it off in digital or digital with a little hardware on the two buss.

Summing outside the box can add width and depth which are noticeably different and some say better, like analog desks of old.

Awww, Phil, not YOU! Come back to the light, before it's too late, or one day you could find yourself brushing the studio walls with Coat of Silence Soundproofing Paint. 


Kidding. I have no doubt that running tracks through an analog channel might add a tasteful amount of harmonic distortion and crosstalk. "Width" and "depth", though, I'm having a harder time reconciling those words with logic.

Hi folks,
Running the risk of beating a dead horse here, but I do want to say that, at least with my SSL gear, mixes resulting from internal summing, summing to a single channel of the SSL, and sending stems to 16 channels of the SSL all produce objectively, demonstrably different results.

I'm genuinely with many of you when it comes to stuff being measureable and not believing stuff that cannot be defined, and that's why I can also say that I can show you three different resultant files (ITB, 1 channel of SSL and 16 channels of SSL) and none of them cancel on a null test. In fact, when trying a null test with any two files there are significant, non-trivial remainders. If anyone's interested I'd be happy to post them somewhere.

As for any one being better or worse, that's a different question and not one that I'm really interested in wading in to...in fact, I don't even know that I could reliably pass an A/B/X test on it for some material (though that's not nearly the infallible arbiter that some folks think it is), but it is doing something to the sound.

Interesting discussion around this, BTW. I'm (as usual) learning new stuff, so thanks.

Oh, and I gotta get some of that sound proofing paint :)

Dean