I have been reading up on the Dangerous Music D-Box http://dangerousmusic.com/product/d-box/
for use in combo with my UA Apollo.  The reviews of the two together are impressive.  
 
Any users with this and SPLAT?  As usual, the amount of info of directly using a product with Sonar is limited.
 
Thanks

To my mind, there is little benefit to a summing mixer for simple summing.  I may be wrong, but we started hearing about "analog summing" in the bad old days of 24 and 32-bit mixing, esp. in Protools.  That is where a lot of complaints came about hearing a difference between digital summing and analog.  Cake was first to a 64 bit engine (I believe) and I find it is extremely difficult to hear any difference between such high quality mixing and good old fashioned analog mixing.
 
Now, if you've got an expensive board that has a lot of circuitry built-into each channel that is a different animal.  And various mixing engineers I know do use a summer, but usually have it wired up with their analog outboard for another round of compression/EQ, rather than depending upon software equivalents.  That, of course, you can hear.  But just summing out?  For the price of the Dangerous Music you could get a WARM 1176 and WA-L2 for those two classic sounds.  Of course, then you'd want the DM summer, too, for using them when mixing down!  It never ends.

AT music is an endless pit that I gladly throw money down.  I can have serious questions about spending money on almost everything - except my music gear and stereo stuff.  We all have our addictions.  In this case, drugs might be cheaper (Just kidding).  
 

Hi. I have a friend of mine that has / had a DMDB for years.
He stopped using it a year or so ago, when he changed to a UAD system. He's using plugins to simulate his DMDB now, and says he doesn't miss it. He's got separation and depth in another way now 
He upgraded to a full Amphion one 18, with an Amp 500 and a Trinnov room correction system before deciding not to have much use for it anymore. 
As you say, it's an endless pit 
Just depends where you want to spend it  

One of the advantages of something like the D-Box is the quality of the digital-to-analog conversion, which is a weak link in many studios.

I was external summing for years with this setup with Sonar... SSL AlphaLink to send 16 tracks to a Neve 8816 Summing Mixer, then the Neve 2 track mix out to a Mytek converter, which I also used as a master word clock generator. I would Monitor through the Neve as well. This setup sounded great! The biggest advantages were you could push the Neve and get a nice soft compression from driving the transformer to get a little more apparent loudness out of the same peak levels, and the width control on the Neve worked really well for spreading things out. I had previously summed through a Mackie 8 Bus Mixer, and man, it was a complete night and day difference between the Neve and the Mackie... makes sense ;-)

The problem was I bought this stuff used, and used it a lot, and everything was getting to the point of needing servicing. Also you need to constantly run test tones to calibrate your levels, as the Neve would change a bit over time as it warmed up. So I started experimenting with plugins. I'm always trying new combos, but I am able to get 95% of the way there just staying "in the box". I sold everything and simplified. Now I can spend more time making music and less time calibrating and maintaining various pieces of gear. I spent the money on the front end... better mics and preamps and instruments. Good sounds and performances on the way in sound better than summing overly processed garbage on the way out ;-)

Mark.

Zargg
Hi. I have a friend of mine that has / had a DMDB for years.
He stopped using it a year or so ago, when he changed to a UAD system. He's using plugins to simulate his DMDB now, and says he doesn't miss it. He's got separation and depth in another way now 
He upgraded to a full Amphion one 18, with an Amp 500 and a Trinnov room correction system before deciding not to have much use for it anymore. 
As you say, it's an endless pit 
Just depends where you want to spend it  

The reviews of the Amphions are sweet.  Tell your friend I will give him $500/pair with the amp, as is and I will cover shipping.  They have to work though.  
 
BTW- where are you in Norway?  I have been to Oslo, Stavanger, Kristiansand, Bergen and a handful of small towns.  Beautiful country.  Sure are a lot of blonde girls.  How do you guys stand it?

Hey Space_Cowboy,
 
As I work for Dangerous Music, I can shed some light for you. Cool name by the way. Yes you can certainly use analog summing with Sonar, as ryecatchermark already stated. Why use analog summing? I'll let .
 
Don't forget though, that the D-Box is three products combined into one. It's a step into analog summing, a transparent monitor controller, and a mastering grade D/A converter. Personally I've been doing analog summing for over five years now (before working for Dangerous) and I won't go back. I think the biggest mistake some people make when trying out analog summing is just throwing a completed mix through whichever brand summing amp that they are testing. The best results come from starting a mix from scratch through the unit because it's a different way to mix.
 
Give Dangerous a call if you want to talk specifically about the D-Box. Tel: 845.202.5100
Feel free to ask for me as well, my name is Chris.

There was an experiment recently here on the forum with Starise. He was sending out individual tracks to a nice analog mixer.  And also summing internally in a DAW.  He was setting up the same mix on both systems.  Not at first but once we got the mix refined the mixes were identical.  We were comparing the stereo mixes and to be honest there was such little difference it was not even worth talking about.  I was hearing the two versions here and we did quite a few tests and there was NO big thing in terms of how better one was over the other.  We were not using the Dangerous though but the mixer he was using was pretty decent.
 
Often these summing boxes will either have transformers in the output stage or a valve makeup gain stage. (Which often includes transformers too) Any differences you hear are more than likely associated with these.  e.g. the Neve summing box has got output transformers in it so yes it will sound a little different.   When the summing is purely resistive followed by a quality active makeup gain stage that is transformerless the differences are actually even harder to spot.  (in a controlled A/B blind test many would not have a hope!)
 
There are other ways to get transformer and valve effects without using a summing box. e.g. plugins- console emulation etc..
 
There are cheaper ways to getting quality D to A conversion as well.

Thanks for stopping by, Chris.  Always nice to have other industry people put in their two cents worth.  Esp. when they help put out nice hardware and leave a number.
 
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