Wondering what people are doing who don't do pure ITB mixing. From running out to rack gear to the 2 bus to summing rigs to full mixer rigs of whatever size.

I'm going to be looking for a digital interface soon and want to get an idea of what workflows are working for people, and what hardware is getting them there. I'm really curious to hear about using outboard as inserts and auxes during mixing and how that's happening, as most of my outboard is well suited to that sort of application. (I already have a pretty serious console with good routing and master section, though I should probably rechip and recap it.)

Bear

Bear (Happy Birthday, by the way!!!)

I've been hitting all over the map lately. I have used (just in the past 60 days) a total ITB, internal summed out to a damn good Ramsa 16 channel board, complete 24 track mixed thru the Soundtracs console, and everything in between...

The better I get at ITB, the better the ITB mixes sound...but for tracking more than 3-4 instruments at once, nothing beats a console...I am seriously considering re-thinking the entire ordeal so the board is more of a tracking tool instead of a mixing tool...will wait to see what Samp 10 does at AES before committing one way or the other.

(Thanks, WL!)

The board as a tracking device is kind of a reemerging idea right now. The new crop of pro-level analog mixers are getting the pro forums talking [API 1608 ] and getting people to think about the mixer as a tracking solution. However, most of the smaller studios down to moderately-equipped home guys seem to be into getting a variety of outboard pres together. Little stock is placed in board pres as anything but a stopgap. So my board as a tracking solution doesn't immediately come to me. My board pres are pretty dang good, but not the first thing in my mind. My thought was more about the pre straight-to-medium sort of thing.

(A simplifying preamp trend is probably good to avoid excess gear lust. You can make great tracks with one solid flavor of pre, and two is fantastic. The Noah's Ark studio (a pair of everything) takes time away from engineering with too damn many choices.)

I've been analog so long and I've got such a collection of cool and quirky devices I like to use that I just don't see myself being happy with a full ITB. Then again, I just discovered the archives of Tchad Blake guest-moderating at GS (I was studying damned hard this spring) and apparently he took to ITB. That's part of why I'm interested in adjustments to that world.

I think the roughest part of pure ITB for me would have to be properly adjusting to digital gain staging.

Bear

I have been for years and still am up in the air which way I want to go...I love the Soundtracs board and its pres...I also have, use, and endorse ADesigns...Also have and use OSA, API, and others, as well as 2 different flavors of Ramsa (which are IMO as good if not better than Yammie PM1000, most Soundcraft, dare I say anything below the Trident A Range?)

This is where I get log-jammed...sometimes I think I (and we as an industry) tend to get so wrapped around the brand name axle that we forget the idea of making the most with what we got...option anxiety (well discussed for some time) is still the number one vibe killer at my studio...

Part of me says dump all this crap and do 100% ITB...then I compare, and this nagging voice says otherwise.

As to a pure ITB approach, one of the recent Pro Audio Review articles on OTB mixing was talking about getting the right brain in on that last 5% of the mix, and I kind of get that. It pulls me away from something like the Folcrom as a final OTB solution because while it addresses a big technical reason to go OTB, I think I'd really want a bit of performance in the final pass--tweak levels, adjust an aux send, that sort of thing, and do it spontaneously. Hell, recall of a mainly mixed track lets you do a bunch of passes at the final mix and comp mix performances. And personally I like the notion that comparing mixes gets away from looking at relative levels and how fades have been drawn and instead the focus goes to just listening.

This sort of reasoning makes me think that as good of an idea as the Folcrom box is on a technical level, that work flow would leave me unsatisfied. But then again I'm not aware of great satisfaction with mix controllers that don't cost as much as a professional console.

Bear

just a FWIW (never much)...I had a pair of Folcrums in here for a while last year...and hated them. No soul, no chutzpa, nothing...mixing ITB actually sounded better regardless of what make up device I used...

That said, there are some killer units out there...I've heard in person the API summing monster rack, as well as some other units...they all range from OK to killer, but each (IMO again) are lacking in a specific area or two...

If you have a decent enough board as it is, you could accomplish the summing approach by setting a static setup and running all automations from DAW, and still have any external 2 buss goodies...

At times I wish I had never made the comparisons to old school stuff vs digital - choices were much simpler then

There we go--the Folcroms being worse isn't something I hear much about. I remember the PAR summing article had a bit about the author going for a Folcrom and Millenia Media setup and not using it in over a year. Indifference I get, especially if the change doesn't seem worth the trouble and cost. Worse is a bit surprising. I could see that two conversions might be a degradation that the summing system doesn't make up for, but I don't think your converters are anything to suspect too much.

For new product, I'm warming to the Tonelux concept, which fits well with the growing 500-rack market. Assemble your mixing system to your needs in a modular fashion, adding or subtracting bits to fit. Build your system to your work flow, not your work flow to your system. Expensive, though.

I'll probably just soldier on with what I've got for a while. Allowing for upgrades to the console. (I've heard tell of hooking up 990 opamps for the summing bus--I need to figure out how to make that work, as upgrade lust tends to be cheaper than gear lust.)

Bear

Bear, forgive me if I wasn't precise...the Folcrums really didn't sound horrible, per se...they don't have any sound of their own whatsoever...to me it was like trying to drive a care with no motor...

Truth be totally known, I don't know of any dicsernable difference between running submixes to a DAW buss and a Folcrum...gimme some flavor, dadgummit~something to make the ear perk up and go WOW!

This to me was the magic of 'old school' working...bussing had to be done sometimes in advance, but wtf? No phase issues, no digital silliness, just mixing through a board, and automation usually involved a couple other people doing the Decca ...

Its all good, and in the end, we (engineers) are the only people who know or care about the methods - Joe mp3 downloader sure doesn't...I am tilting more and more to the keep it as simple as possible...IE in the frakking box.

Never thought I would say that, either

What, "frakking"? The reimagined Battlestar Gallactica has put that one into my vocabulary, too. Frakking useful word.

Bear

Frak YEAH Baby!

I work both ways…but there is always a console involved. I have a small commercial space and mostly do demos, no big budgets, projects overlap, so in the box is fast and allows total recall.
I go in to a stand-alone recorder so the option to go in or stay out is always there and the initial steps are the same. Pres > recorder > console for fold back > Samplitude/Protools. Then I let the client (budget) tell me to stay in or go out.
On my own stuff I like to use hardware, because I can! I still haven’t found a plug eq or compressor that has the hardware mojo, good hardware that is, but there are some out there that do a very respectable job.
Oh yeah...I don't think I have met the client that could tell the difference

Paul

Still using the Topaz, Paul?

Yes, the Topaz is a great cheap board. The eq is the thing on that board, I don't use the pres only because I have others but there is nothing wrong with them.

Yeah they are...vastly under rated and undervalued, these Scottish made (mine is, anyway) Soundtracs boards are...Kills me to see their flagship Solitaires and Jades going for 1/20th of their original price...Maybe someday they will become all the rage.

I have a tricked out 003 system with a Mytek 192cx external master clock, external Pansonic/Ramsa ad & da converters, and I've been mixing OTB lately via a Folcrom, then saturating the mix through my API A2D. I'm not convinced that it's necessarily better, but it does sound great, and makes you organize and think about your mixes in a new way. I've had some very pleasing results with this.

Jon

I sort of like that saturated sound as well.

I wonder if you compared certain saturation characteristics of analog gear if they would correspond to acoustic saturation phenomena--think the stuff that happens when a lot of air is being pushed by a band in a smaller venue. There's something special about those live experiences, and that might be a lot of what we are chasing in the analog domain.

Bear

What's REALLY cool about all this is the fact that a couple of layers of various REAL (but lightly done) saturation will inevitably sound, to my ears anyway, so much better than a heavy dose of one time...

Emulations are fine, and some sound pretty damn good...but nothing yet has (again to my ears) rivaled the sound of a stereo pair being converted, run thru a decent enough program dependant compressor/limiter, then hitting tape pretty hard...THEN back into DAW...

Alas, most clients are more into the "how much more is this process gonna cost?" mentality right now...

and a much bigger alas comes along when the client says "How is this gonna make the MySpace page sound better...?"

Thus the 4-track bouncing project you were mentioning elsewhere?

Bear

partly so...I'm still of the opinion that different instrument groups will have their own frequency and transient effects on the 'saturation' process...for example, pushing 10 mics of drums to a stereo pair will have very certain frequencies and transients which will have a direct impact on tape and hardware saturation (I don't know if there is actually any math to support this - just what my ears, brain, and suspicions tell me)...

Everyting else has its 'sweet spot' as well. BUT the sweet spot for A will invariably be different than the sweet spot for B, C, etc....

Its a lot more complicated, and people tend not to use the older methods (why should we - Samplitude has a 999 track limit?) and decisions made early on are decisions that cannot be reversed - so people were pretty well forced to get it right as opposed to making it right later...

I dunno....sometimes I think about this stuff too much, to the point of obsession. I really need a life