Thanks middle:

Yes you got the idea indeed.  Curious how do you find the results you get and on what basis do you decide which tracks or stems get summed?



p.s. i'll check back 2mrw.  late here in ireland so gotta sleep.  thanks for replies to 1 and all ;>

Hi moffdmb sorry to go on about digital. Just love it! Anyway despite that I have two analog mixers that I have that I could run your tracks through. Very cool loop BTW. I have got an old Tasacm late 70 's 8 channel analog desk with actual inductors and capacitors in the EQ section. I could run everything through that and see what comes out. I also have a later model Yamaha 16 channel analog mixer which could do the same thing. I can only get 8 analog outs but I could arrange your tracks to go out on 4 stereo busses.

Are you keen? Is there any particular panning or EQ you want or not want applied, what are we allowed to alter etc..Can we get the best sound possible using the available analog mixer options. Had another thought too. Where I teach sound engineering we are getting a brand new SSL desk costing over $100,000. It has got all analog signal path plus digital control etc.. I could run all tracks out separately into that and see what happens. That will be about a week away. That would be a cool test. I can make part of my teaching as an experiment.

wow jeff that would be cool.

Though we want to test "apples with apples" so its best not to adjust any settings on the bundle project or analog mixers and in doing so, rull out any other factors in what just analog summing alone can add if you follow me?


But yes what ever you feel is worth testing would be a great learning tool.  I've read it so many times but theres no substitute for hearing it yourself I'm sure.  Thanks so much if you do get the time for it  ;>   ;>   ;>

moffdnb


Thanks middle:

Curious how do you find the results you get and on what basis do you decide which tracks or stems get summed?

I do it two ways now. Center vs. Side material and Music vs Vocals & FXs. When I get the other 6 channels I will run them into a Black Lion or Dangerous 2Buss, haven't decided which yet. Then I can have 4 pairs. That is the plan.
 
The results are already more width and more depth. For acoustic, r&b, bluegrass and country, it's the kind of sound I used to get with an analogue desk without the cost of the analogue desk. If I was making dance or hip hop, I would skip the summing.

middleman:

can you monitor these breakouts to your summing mixer along side your DAW playback in realtime so you can make some mix decisions also?

One other thing I'm no sure of is how would I select a stereo track in Sonar to be process by these mostly "mono" summing mixers.  I'm sure I would need to use 2 x mono of the summing mixer but how is that selected within Sonar?


Thanks for shedding light here ;>

Unless you have a lot of money, most of the hybrid systems are running stems with maybe one or two mono sources out of the DAW. I only monitor the output of the combined signals after they come out of the preamp and compressor. There are summing units which will let you monitor pre and post the summing. You could set this up easily so that a stereo pair(two mono outputs L & R) had their own separate monitoring chain.

From Sonar you just set up a stereo feed for each stem (basically mono left and mono right) into the summing hardware.

Understand the whole summing externally is limited with 8 out devices like Apollo, Lynx, RME etc. Where things get interesting, if you have the money, is at 16 out like the Lynx Aurora 16. You have stereo stems and mono outs which you can combine to the final stereo print, more options overall. The big boys will use mono outs for every channel on their mixer. I think past 16 outs however, the number of summing channels begins to have diminishing returns in a passive world. This is the reason high end desks usually have separate power sources and beefy transformers on their summing output. There are some very high summing boxes which provide this.

cheers middle ;>