# In the Box or Summing



## sourcefor (May 17, 2015)

Do most people like Brian Tyler, etc. mix in the box or use a console/summing system to mix their music..Just curious?


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## sourcefor (May 24, 2015)

I know sometimes they record on a large format console just wondering if they mix on the same console or in the box ....


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## Stiltzkin (May 24, 2015)

https://youtu.be/2wsO3k8_9Ac?t=519

(8:39) interview with alan meyerson on external summing, pretty recent too.


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## Dryden.Chambers (May 24, 2015)

Been very happy with my Burl Vancouver. YMMV.


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## jamwerks (May 24, 2015)

@Stiltzkin Unfortunately, he says nothings of sonic benefits (or not), only discussing headroom issues.

Personally, every time I listen to a summing test, I always like the externally summed version. But I've never had the chance to listen to an orchestral example. If anybody knows of one, I'd appreciate a link to the files.


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## jamwerks (May 24, 2015)

Dryden.Chambers @ Sun May 24 said:


> Been very happy with my Burl Vancouver. YMMV.


Can you give the détails of your setup, and talk about the sonics?!


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## givemenoughrope (May 24, 2015)

I thought HZ and company were mixing through a Euphonix..? Which is analog summing, (but just summing down to stems) correct? I'm not familiar with them.

I wonder if people have done tests that include stems being printed through analog gear as well. Just taking soft synths out of the box can make a big difference either with compressors, reverbs or reamping. Anyone do that?


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## Stiltzkin (May 24, 2015)

jamwerks @ Sun May 24 said:


> @Stiltzkin Unfortunately, he says nothings of sonic benefits (or not), only discussing headroom issues..



OP just asked if they did, and since the video does say that he had up until that point been summing externally, I figured it answered his question to a fair degree


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## sourcefor (May 25, 2015)

Yes good video ..one of my idols...


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## Dryden.Chambers (May 26, 2015)

I believed using my ears that summing was a "minimal" improvement, perhaps even placebo slightly. But there is at least a extra level of separation, 3 Dimensionality, glue, fullness. psycho acoustic, hi fi, etc when I use the Burl on mixes.

I use a quite minimal setup. 6 Channels of Neve Portico, Universal Audio Apollo Quad, 3 patch bays, and the Burl.



jamwerks @ Sun May 24 said:


> Dryden.Chambers @ Sun May 24 said:
> 
> 
> > Been very happy with my Burl Vancouver. YMMV.
> ...


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## jamwerks (May 26, 2015)

So you're summing 3 stereo stems then? If so, that might not be enough to get the full benefits if going out to analoge to sum, especially since you have that nice Burl box that can handle 32 channels. Have you ever tried more channels?

All the shoot-out that I've heard have used real instruments. I wonder it the benfits are as noticiable when dealing when samples?


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## Den (May 26, 2015)

The difference is that analogue sine wave is infinite perfect (current) while digital is connected with sample rate and word bits.


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## Dryden.Chambers (May 26, 2015)

to my ears it helps with both.

I use 4 stereo stems from the UA. 
The Neves are for recording.

I want to keep my setup as minimal as possible. 



jamwerks @ Tue May 26 said:


> So you're summing 3 stereo stems then? If so, that might not be enough to get the full benefits if going out to analoge to sum, especially since you have that nice Burl box that can handle 32 channels. Have you ever tried more channels?
> 
> All the shoot-out that I've heard have used real instruments. I wonder it the benfits are as noticiable when dealing when samples?


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## chimuelo (May 26, 2015)

What I noticed over time was Native sounds better when you stay in the Box, but route in external hardware.
This was learned back when built in FX were in every ROMpler. 
Simply disabled all FX, used a PCM70 and SPX-90 routed into a Yamaha DMP7 mixer.
Ever since then I always get an out of the box sound by using hardware FX routed into the PC.

Recently used Satin 1.2 to saturate various sub-groups/stems and get a sound very similar to an SSL 4000G+ I am quite familiar with.

Nothing makes fake instruments sound better to me than some distortion like those old 70s LPs.


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## Nick Batzdorf (May 26, 2015)

> difference is that analogue sine wave is infinite perfect (current) while digital is connected with sample rate and word bits



No no no no no. I'm going to have to report that post to the Audio Nerd Police.

It ain't that way.

All the information to reproduce the waveform "perfectly" up to 1/2 the sampling frequency is there (ignoring disclaimers that are irrelevant to this subject). Sound is all sine waves.

Picture a speaker cone vibrating. It can only travel back and forth; it doesn't jump in steps like that, it's either moving one direction or the other.


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## dgburns (May 26, 2015)

Den @ Tue May 26 said:


> The difference is that analogue sine wave is infinite perfect (current) while digital is connected with sample rate and word bits.



I think at some point that becomes academic.I used to be a bible thumping OTB guy.Not so much anymore.But it is fun to drive a console every once in a while.It's just such a PITA for anything other then stereo work though.

I feel the console plugs have really come a long way,and hardware chains going into the daw are still a must.But it seems for me at least,once in the daw,better to stay and finish there.

IMHO anyway


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## Marius Masalar (May 26, 2015)

What Nick said. A good video about this:

https://youtu.be/cIQ9IXSUzuM

And two good articles on the subject for reference:

http://www.sonicscoop.com/2013/08/29/wh ... HHGve.dpbs
http://www.trustmeimascientist.com/2013/02/04/the-science-of-sample-rates-when-higher-is-better-and-when-it-isnt/ (http://www.trustmeimascientist.com/2013 ... n-it-isnt/)


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## sourcefor (May 26, 2015)

Yes I go back and forth alot..In the box in your face and summing softens the mix a bit sometimes too much..but I love the nice warm low end of the summing setup and the way the Neve 542's soften the top a bit..


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## Stiltzkin (May 26, 2015)

Marius Masalar @ Tue May 26 said:


> What Nick said. A good video about this:
> 
> https://youtu.be/cIQ9IXSUzuM
> 
> ...



Great video and articles - explains it perfectly


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## sourcefor (May 26, 2015)

but with scene changes and recalls having to reprint the mix everytime can be combersome


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## sourcefor (May 27, 2015)

how do you do it mr. Clouser?


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## Den (May 28, 2015)

Marius Masalar @ Tue May 26 said:


> What Nick said. A good video about this:
> 
> https://youtu.be/cIQ9IXSUzuM
> 
> ...



Thanks for sharing those links.
It seems that some hardware producers using disinformations for marketing products.

Like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-WaPG0BSrE


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## Den (May 28, 2015)

In my experience I using Slate VCC for colour, and gain staging.
So I have great results with it. The most important in this case is to remove DC offset from all channels.


It sounds like this: Few examples with VCC 1.5 in Logic 9.

https://soundcloud.com/velahavle/velahavle-closer-1


https://soundcloud.com/velahavle/velahavle-as-we-fade


https://soundcloud.com/velahavle/apart


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## sourcefor (May 28, 2015)

Come on Charlie How you do it?


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## Marius Masalar (May 28, 2015)

Den @ Thu May 28 said:


> Thanks for sharing those links.
> It seems that some hardware producers using disinformations for marketing products.
> 
> Like this:
> ...


Sadly that doesn't surprise me at all.

Out of curiosity (regarding your VCC post since I use it too) are you finding that you need to remove DC offset a lot? I can hardly recall the last time I had an issue with DC offset that wasn't in the context of repairing a wonky audio file.

Just wondering if you could expand a bit on that in case I'm misunderstanding or ignoring a problem in my own mixes.


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## charlieclouser (May 28, 2015)

sourcefor @ Wed May 27 said:


> how do you do it mr. Clouser?



I vastly prefer clean ITB summing. Back in the days when I mixed big, heavy industrial rock tracks on the SSL 4k I really disliked how the busses loaded up and "bent" under heavy loads - and I'm one of the few who has always disliked the "magic" of the SSL bus comp. Not my taste. I'd get a bunch of drums and bass sounding okay and then unmute the guitars and all of a sudden the drums sounded different as the 4k mix busses bent under the strain. I guess that's part of what people liked about the 4k but I was not one of them.

All of my remixes from the old days were mixed on either the original Mackie 8-bus (my favorite console ever, don't hate) or SSL 4k but with NO bus compression at all. None. Plenty of individual channel compression, but no bus comps. I didn't even own one. I did a couple (Rob Zombie "ReLoad" I think) on the Yamaha 02r rig I had for like a minute and that sucked big time. All of my scoring stuff has been summed inside Logic, but as anywhere from three to six stems which are output separately to ProTools for delivery to the dub stage. 

For any score-only releases those stems are summed inside Logic. Most of my stuff in the past decade has hit the TC MasterX5 plugin pretty hard as a bus compressor - because of it's 5-band design it can hit the sub bass hard without causing pumping in the mid-bass. I hate that pumping sound. I'm after the auto-makeup-gain - that's why I liked Mx5. 

Now I'm switching over to L3-LL or Ozone - both multi-band - and still shooting those out to pick a winner. L3-LL Multi is surprisingly good to my taste - hits those subs hard and doesn't pump the mid-bass. If I was just delivering stereo mixes instead of stems I might investigate a console like a Toft, API, or whatever but as far as a rack mount summing box like Dangerous or the SSL Sigma I have no interest at all.

When outboard summing first came on the scene I was at the NAMM show and Dangerous Music had one of the first summing boxes, and I would have walked right by but they snagged me and said, "Oh man, you need to check this out". I was like, "Okay, got an A/B situation going so I can hear it?". I figured that they'd have one bar of a heavy mix looping, switching between ITB and summed with each loop. That's the only way I can compare subtle things like this - with a loop. They were like, "Naw man, it's too noisy here on the floor to hear what we've got going on..." 

So I was like, "Okay, got a CD or something to demo the difference?" 

"Naw man, but check it.... way more depth and spaciousness. Way more 3d!"

I thought, wow.... snake oil to the max. Can't hear the difference on the show floor, don't have headphones, don't have a demo CD... wow.

I know that in the decade since then there have been dozens of A/B tests posted all over the net but any differences I've ever heard were either so subtle as not to be worth the hassle, or were so slammed that I'd prefer to get my slam from a slammer plugin or outboard.

Currently I only use hardware when tracking, except on rare occasions when I route signals out to EuroRack, guitar pedals, Sherman FilterBank, or my UBK Fatso (which is not subtle). I quite like the absolute control I get when staying in the box, and I like that adding tons of tracks doesn't change the sound of the first few tracks I had put up.

I often base my mix around a kick drum, which I calibrate my mix levels to, and then balance everything around that, without ever changing the level or eq of that first kick. That first kick determines my bus comp threshold and after balancing everything around that I usually don't have to touch the bus comp at all.

But the main reason I won't be summing or compressing mixes externally is because the logistics of outputting multiple stems means a ridiculous amount of hardware, cabling, I/O channels, returns, blah blah blah. Too messy when working under tight deadlines. Besides, it's only going to hit some other processing down the line on the dub stage, so... whatever. Let THEM ruin it, not me!

Keep in mind that any of those big scores being mixed on Euphonix are being summed digitally, so there's no "analog mojo" coming from a System-5 console - that sucker is a rack of computers and I/O just like any DAW. Maybe it has some cool tricks or plugins inside, but it ain't analog. 

I'm a big fan of digital - it does what I tell it to do and nothing else. No surprises, happy or otherwise. Any illusion of "glue" in anything I've done in the last 15 years comes from TC MasterX5.... or just slamming individual tracks with Logic's stock compressor, which is on every single track and instrument, and I'm hitting it HARD. No character comes from that, just level control. It's not "warm" or "sweet" it just keeps shit in check.


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## charlieclouser (May 28, 2015)

givemenoughrope @ Sun May 24 said:


> I thought HZ and company were mixing through a Euphonix..? Which is analog summing, (but just summing down to stems) correct? I'm not familiar with them.



The Euphonix that Alan Meyerson is using is a System-5, which is digital through and through. No analog mojo to be had from that thing. He is (or maybe was) using a rack of Manley Massive Passives and a rack of Bricastis and PCM-96 last time I saw his rig - don't know if that stuff is still in effect - but the console is digital as hell.

Reznor recently sold his SSL Duality and switched to an Avid S6 control surface, so I guess he's summing inside ProTools now - and he was an SSL guy for 20+ years. 

They've got his old Duality over at Westlake Pro on Lankershim if you want to buy it cheap.


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## sourcefor (May 28, 2015)

Wow Charlie Thanks for such a detailed explaination..Love your work..and I too Like the in your face quality of in the box..but always feel like the mix just needs a bit more which is why I got into summing in the first place ..do you think the converters make a difference and which do you use..Thanks again for your replies and taking the time out to post!


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## charlieclouser (May 28, 2015)

sourcefor @ Thu May 28 said:


> do you think the converters make a difference and which do you use..Thanks again for your replies and taking the time out to post!



Back in the days of the black Digidesign 442 and 888 interfaces, we would use the big purple Apogee AD-8000 because it definitely sounded better, and had the awesome "Soft Limit" function - but these days I think most converters can sound pretty good. Obviously when you get to the level of things like the Burl then you're on a higher plane of quality, but a lot of that comes from the transformer front end, etc.

My rig is all-digital. Logic's output goes over to the ProTools stem recorder via MADI these days, and for the 15 years before that it was ADAT LightPipe from Logic to ProTools, so I don't even use D/A conversion at all. My speakers are Dynaudio AIR series, which have direct AES digital inputs, so when I'm mixing the only D/A conversion is inside the speaker, and I LOVE this setup. No noise. Not one PIXEL of signal comes out of the speakers unless it's intended to - no floor noise from amplifiers or cabling - my black is digital black. 

The only A/D conversion in my rig happens on a CraneSong Spider, which is an 8-channel mic preamp and mixer thing that has digital output and the excellent CraneSong Phoenix tape simulation plugin BUILT-IN! If I'm recording synths, they go to Avalon U-5 direct boxes, then sometimes through a pair of AMS Neve 1084 eq, then into the Spider for A/D, which feeds Logic via AES or ADAT digital outputs. If I'm recording guitar, that sometimes goes by way of a Line6 Pod x3 Pro, which also has digital output, and if I send anything out from Logic for external processing it goes out of the analog outputs of the new MOTU AVB series interfaces, which I have just switched over to for my new Mac Pro cylinder rigs. The AVB series uses pretty high-spec Sabre converter chips I think, and they sound fine to me.

But the main thing is that when I'm composing or mixing there are zero analog cables in use anywhere in the room unless I'm actually recording with a mic, tracking an analog synth, or recording guitar. Once tracking is done I mute all the analog inputs and I'm back to an all-digital signal path from Logic to ProTools and to the speakers.

I love the Dynaudio AIR series so much that I just bought two more setups - now I have two complete 5.1 sets with AIR15's all around, and I just got AIR25, AIR20, and a pair of AIRBase-24 (gigantic dual-12" subs) so I'm set for a while with those. The AIRBase-24's put out just a massive amount of bass, and a pair of AIR25s with a pair of AIRBase-24's is awesome. Ridiculous, but awesome. If I never have to use a different speaker for the rest of my life I'm happy. Digital input speakers changed my life. I love 'em.


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## sourcefor (May 28, 2015)

Man you are sooooo cool to take the time and explain in detail..I really appreciate it...


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## givemenoughrope (May 29, 2015)

charlieclouser @ Thu May 28 said:


> The Euphonix that Alan Meyerson is using is a System-5, which is digital through and through. No analog mojo to be had from that thing. He is (or maybe was) using a rack of Manley Massive Passives



Derp! I've been wrong before. I just assumed that when rctech said something about how great the Euphonix was for mixing that at least part of it was analog. 



charlieclouser @ Thu May 28 said:


> Reznor recently sold his SSL Duality and switched to an Avid S6 control surface, so I guess he's summing inside ProTools now - and he was an SSL guy for 20+ years.
> 
> They've got his old Duality over at Westlake Pro on Lankershim if you want to buy it cheap.



It's on ebay for $120k. Maybe I'll stick with ITB. 

Just curious, how often are you going out of the box for comp, eq, reverb, etc. and then printing? I'm friends with the guy who mixed the first two TR/AR scores (MP) and he only does the hybrid/printing approach and only with one of those one-knob faders. (Seems crazy to not at least have a few faders to hear how multiple tracks feel against each other but he gets the job done.)

Also, I've read some earlier posts about this...I think you said that you are composing/sequencing with the multibands on from the beginning? Or just auditioning sounds, ie. checking how they sound (if they are getting smeared or squashed) and then bypassing them and sequencing as to some eliminate latency? I tried to explain this approach to someone at UA at the last AES and they kind of gave me the run around about how much latency I'd have through their box so I never went Apollo. Seems like native plugs would have the same latency. I'm rambling...just curious about the first part. 

Your posts are always helpful. Thanks!


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## Dryden.Chambers (May 29, 2015)

Charlie, I'm hoping we see the T.C. UA partnership come to fruition this year. That should included a mastering suite of some kind.


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## charlieclouser (May 29, 2015)

I've got my bus comps on at all times - from auditioning sounds through building templates to composing and mixing - they are never bypassed. With MasterX5 there is a fixed latency of 10ms for look ahead, and maybe a little more for the round trip to and from the PCIe card. For years I've been working at 512 buffer to go easy on the CPU and whatever total latency this results in has never been a problem for me.

With Ozone the latency is a bit higher if you use the ARC modes in the Maximizer module, which I love, and that's a bit too much latency for me, so I had a shoot out one day and much to my surprise Waves L3-LL MultiMaximizer sounded very much like MasterX5. The "LL" versions of the L-series limiters are the "low latency" versions and the latency really is very very small - absolutely fine to leave on all the time for real-time play-through while composing and playing.

I rarely go out of the box for external compression or whatever - usually when I am bored and really want to totally wreck the signal.


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## givemenoughrope (May 29, 2015)

awesome. thank you!

I'm going to adapt my template to have all dynamics on from the beginning and see how it works out.


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## Nick Batzdorf (May 29, 2015)

Charlie:



> I'd get a bunch of drums and bass sounding okay and then unmute the guitars and all of a sudden the drums sounded different as the 4k mix busses bent under the strain.



What did that actually sound like? 'Cause I know you can add hiss to a dull track and all of a sudden it sounds bright.


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## gsilbers (May 29, 2015)

there is also this:

http://www.slatedigital.com/products/vcc


or just to ad "mojo" externally there will be this:

http://store.louderthanliftoff.com/prod ... o-tone-amp


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## sourcefor (Jun 1, 2015)

yeah you could also add a bit of mojo by running a few tracks out of your DAW and putting something like a Mic pre or compressor on your 2 bus..but that slate VTM and VCC are pretty great!


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