Internal Vs External Mixdowns

[Blank]

Silly Hollow...stupidity is for stupid ppl!! Let me take that away so you can think fully again!! LMAO!!!



peace
Blank

BTW that was TRIX cereal!!

[jasedee]

Back in the day.....When they were using only analogue tape, you would lose some of the top end due to saturation, and the limits of the tape.

When digital first came on the scene, for once, people were hearing all that clarity in the peaks, and it was glorious. But what they werent listening for was digitals shortfalls...the other end! the quieter sounds were less focused, and blurry

And this is the area which contains all the texture, body, and "personality" of a sound...

Of course there are pro studios recording to digital....no-one is stupid enough to say otherwise, but they are also going through really high quality analogue preamps, neve EQ's, vintage outboard etc....

Even alot of people will track to tape, bounce into HD for editing/processing, then back into a really nice desk (Mmmm...Neve!) for mixdown. Even electronica based stuff (Prodigy) will bring it into a Pro studio for mixdown on an old Neve or SSL console....

Blank, I think unless you have experienced recording to Tape, using high quality preamps/EQ/outboard, you will never truly understand where we are coming from, or the importance that gear does have on great sound.

And yeah, opinions are just that, and we are all entitled to them. Im not saying you are wrong at all.....and Im definately not saying I am right.

There is a reason why a Manley Massive Passive costs US$10k, and why a parametric EQ plug in costs a few hundred.....

[ten]

Been thinking about this myself recently and have been considering getting a apogee rosseta 800 96k with the big ben clock.

Never done this before so dont know much about it but have been reading up a little.

I produce dance music using mainly softsynths and my only hardware will be the virus TI when it comes. I have 2 powercores and 2 uads which I use for effects, mastering all in cubase sx3 and currently at 24/44 (hoping to goto either 24/88 or 24/96 in the next few months when I can afford a new daw)

My soundcard is an RME 9632 and I was thinking of coming out of this with lightpipe into the roesseta being converted and back into my daw via lightpipe again to be recorded....and everything being clocked by the bigben.

I think the RME can handle 4 stereo outs over the adat and the same back in, so im just wondering if this is the best way to set it all up?

I guess this would give me 4 buss' in cubase that I could route different elements of the song to for summing in the DA.

Is it best to send groups to the different buss's? Like percussion, strings/pads, leads, bass etc?

Is it best to do no mastering on those buss's until they are routed back into the sequencer?

If anyone has any info on how best to have it setup and arranged it would be appreciated greatly

ten

[jasedee]

With the Apogee, if you were recording any analogue inputs, you would go into the apogee, and then via Lightpipe into the RME (A/D)

So, when recording your Ti, you could come out of the analogue outs, into the Apogee....but then this would make the whole USB thing a bit pointless?

As for mixdown....the best thing I could see would be to come from the RME lightpipe, into the apogee, then out into a mixer, then back into the apogee in stereo

Is that what you already said???? Im getting a bit lost....

[Blank]

Thats a very horrible assumption jasedee...how do you know what i have recorded with and what i have not recorded with? Is it because if i had i would completely agree with you? Seems a bit arrogent to think that!!So i hope thats not the reason!

Im going to leave you to your opinion because you are obviously overlly biased...you explaination of texture is still undefined...in this instanst you say texture is personality..if you were to say in the beginning that analogue give the sound personality...i would have said "what is personality"...we can flip flop words all day long it is still undefined...why i say this is because every word you have used is included in both digital and analogue recording...everything you have told me thus far has only strengthened my original opinion that it is preference!!

peace
Blank

[grs]

Settle down folks.
I prefer to analog sum, I couldn't get enough level in dance music production with digital summing. I'd have to continually turn everything else down to get the head room for the kick and bass. Therefore putting most of the other tracks in lower bit land.
I did some tests, bought a decent pre-amp made a summing buss, now I can crank the power right up to top of each DA sub group and MY mixes sound much better now in solid copper wire - unbalanced into my discrete solid state pre-amp. I tried balanced, transformer coupled inputs, tube, behringer (ARGH!) and various cables to come up with MY preference for MY mixing style and MY quality outcome expectations.

This is not to say go ahead and mix digitally, thats up to YOU.
Due to the lack of DAs I own I have to submix alot to each subgroup.
To answer 'what should go into each sub group?' I distribute the bass elements equally to different subgroups. ie, kik to Stereo 1-2, bass1 to Stereo 3-4, bass2 to Stereo 5-6.
Same with high sounds; hats to Stereo 1-2, percussion to Stereo 7-8 etc.
Same with soft smooth pads or reverbs etc, split them up.
So in essence your squeezing each bit of performance out of each sub group DA.
Call me parranoid, but I also like to buss alot out of Cubase to my RME Total mix which is 48BIT and not 32BIT. The Asio drivers are a fixed 32BIT output so each track goes out at closest to digital clipping to the RME digital mixer where the tracks are subgrouped and levelled to each DA subgroup out.

[grs]

Originally Posted by Blank

all this analogue crap and digital crap...the only reason analogue supposedly sounds better is because it adds noise to the mix, which inturn fools the ears enough to make is sound fuller!! Its all preference...there is no better!!

peace
Blank

the only reason you got so much crap off the rest of the posters here is that you used the term 'the only reason'.
Some of us here believe 'one other possible reason' could be summing in the real physical world is different in 'possibly many different ways'.
My Berhringer has less 'noise' than my Langevin. But it sounds shit. Digital summing has less noise than any analog mixer ever made! But It... sounds good, almost fantastic, all that silence and dither, just amazing. Could it all be good, or are there some trade offs?

It's like sitting on a leather imitation vinyl sofa, and saying 'this is a nice sofa' and just never buying another sofa. Then one day you sit in your friends real leather sofa and notice the way the leather breaths or bends or smells etc... then saying 'this is a nice sofa'. At the end of the day you could still go home get comfy back in your own sofa.

[jasedee]

Originally Posted by Blank

Im going to leave you to your opinion because you are obviously overlly biased...you explaination of texture is still undefined..

Well....I have come to the conclusions because of what I have used. I have a digital setup at home, with some good quality analogue gear, the best of both worlds really..

And then I have used some really nice gear...beautifully designed vintage analogue gear, and it sounds absolutely gorgeous. IMO, a hell of alot better than the digital gear I have used

Hit a snare....

The first sound your hear is the attack right? Which usually grabs our attention. The texture of the snare is not in the attack, but in what comes after this. This is where the body of the snare lies, and this is what digital doesnt do so well...

Digital is great at capturing the attack....not so good at capturing all the rest

And just because something is percievably "unmeasurable", doesnt mean that it is not valid, or does not affect our sense of perception. There is alot of psycho-acoustical phenomena happening, that cannot be qualified or quantified, but exists all the same, and defines what our ears perceive as "musical" or "pleasing"

I thought that summed up texture quite nicely... Didnt you????

[Drammy]

Interesting topic...

I have had this discussion before on other forums. There are many viewpoints on it...

I personally perform my mixdown by sending the audio out from my sequencer (Cubase SL2) via my RME HDSP9632 audio outs straight back into the audio ins and record the input.

I find it sounds a little bit nicer.

Try it for yourselves it makes quite a difference.


Drammy

[Blank]

Jasedee did you not read what i wrote...you sumed up the definition of texture with a word swap, that does not constitute definition! Everything you have expressed shows that this idea of texture is your personal audible preference...

Because texture of sound to me is timbre, which inturn is the quality given to a sound by its overtones: the resonance by which the ear recognizes and identifies a voiced speech sound b : the quality of tone distinctive of a particular singing voice or musical instrument (websters dictionary)

if you take this into consideration even digital mixing can contain this...because...the sound source is where you get your timbre from...the mixing desk does not produce sound on its own...unless you have a grounding problem!!

as for personality...that has more validity when talking about themes and motives...

so please define this texture, which obviously stated can not be achieved by digital mixing alone...

as for my statement above, although misunderstood...i do apologized i didnt mean it in those terms...it was more in reference to one of the only reasons...because of course they are built a bit different...

peace
Blank