Dangerous 2-bus!

[Peterjk]

Has anybody done a serious A-B test on a mix with this "thingie"...

Please post any results.

[andrew haller]

Yes..Most people agree its an improvement. Do a search

[Stukface]

Im trying to find out if i need an external summing device also. I found this, hope it helps.

http://www.studioreviews.com/summing-box-shootout.htm

[BigBadBill]

we recently switched to analog summing in our PT HD rig. we use a folcrom passive summing mixer, and use a pair of neve 1272's or milennia hv-3 for makeup gain, and to us it made a HUGE difference.

wether or not it is worth the money (and extra effort) for you depends on a few things IMHO. i would say that if your mixing chops are good, and you're already able to use your protools rig to its maximum when it comes to mixing ITB - then analog summing gives you that extra 5% that is often so hard to get in a mix. if your mixing skills are not quite there yet, analog summing won't make much of a difference, and you're better off spending your time and money honing working on your chops for now.

but that's my opinion only - you really need to try it out for yourself to see wether the difference is "just what's been missing" or wether it doesn't justify the cost for you. and ultimately, in blind tests many folks pick ITB mixes over OTB mixes so it's also a matter of taste, and what kind of music you do. i'd say for rock type music you'd probably gain more with OTB summing than say R&B, but again, YMMV.

for me, i've been recording on analog consoles for close to 20 years. 18 months ago my studio sold our console and went ITB with a PT HDaccel3 rig and a C24. we've been struggling with the mixes ever since, getting them repeatedly up to the point where we felt "pretty darn good, but that extra little something is missing". hard to explain.

so we tried the dangerous 2-bus, stemmed our latest ITB mix out thru it, and voila - there it was! the sound got wider, deeper (as in more 3D), it felt like the bass got a lot more solid, and it was like you could "feel" the added headroom. a/b with the ITB mix the ITB felt a lot narrower and just not as good. the dangerous mix just had that mojo. it made it feel like "a record", and i instantly felt like i was mixing on an analog console again.

to us who had been mixing this track for a day+, the difference was enormous. for some kid listening to it on his ipod, it was probably marginal at best, if he could hear it at all. but as long as you want to make your mixes sound the best they can, it's worth a shot.

try to borrow a summing box from your local dealer and see/hear if you like it. i've tried the dangerous 2-bus and the folcrom, and they're both pretty darn good.

best of luck to you!

[JimmyM]

A summingbox sounds really interesting.Any one an example how to hook up a Dangerous 2-bus to a PT HD2 with an 96i interface?Or do i need more ins and outs?

[BigBadBill]

A summingbox sounds really interesting.Any one an example how to hook up a Dangerous 2-bus to a PT HD2 with an 96i interface?Or do i need more ins and outs?

if i remember correctly the 96i interface only has 2 analog outputs, which means you can't use a summing mixer, sorry

the way you would hook up a summing unit with your PT rig is to create 8 subgroups in PT, and send everything to them instead of to OUT 1-2, i.e. you would have a stereo submix for drums, one for gtrs/bass, one for vocals, one for fx etc. Then you send these 8 stereo mixes out through 16 analog outs on your interface, and then into the summing mixer.

The summing mixer then sums it all together and gives you a stereo master out, which you then patch into your 2-track recorder of choice, DAT, back into PT, 1/2" etc to record your mix.

But you will unfortunately need an interface with more analog outputs to try it out.

BBB

[proxy]

...we use a folcrom passive summing mixer, and use a pair of neve 1272's or milennia hv-3 for makeup gain...

I was originally enthusiastic about the summing, but as I heard more peoples' A/B examples, I became more skeptical. I'm tempted to say that, for the money of more I/O + summing, people may get the same analog satisfaction by pumping a 2-channel ITB mix out through something like a Neve, API, etc. to "sweeten" (darken, color, whatever), and maybe even a great outboard compressor.

That said, I haven't tried mixing into a summing device yet, so I may eventually try and may love it. For now the post-ITB mix buss outboard back-end thing defitinely gave my digital-blues a lift.

Out of curiosity, were you running your ITB stereo out through the 1272 (line) before you went the summing-route?

- proxy

[JSR]

...been using the Dangerous 2-Bus for a couple of years now and love it; I know the designer (Chris) and agree fully with his approach in designing this box....no complaints. Anyone who gets one of these BE SURE to follow the calibration guidelines; the 2-Bus performs optimally with your A/D and D/A converters are calibrated to -14 dBFS; which is different from what the Digi interfaces come stock at (I think they ship at -16 dBFS).

[StadiumRocker]

I think the Dangerous 2-Bus is a waste of money. It sounds great. In fact, it sounds so great that it doesn't sound like anything at all. Exciting. For the same bread, you could buy a really cool compressor/limiter or mic pre with line inputs to run your signal through. And the Folcrom box is, IMHO, absurd -- in terms of the cost (must be some expensive resistors in that sucker), the circuit design (noisy, poor bandwidth), and the concept itself (why bang the signal down to mic level and then reamplify it when you could just go into the line level inputs of the mic pre/compressor/limiter of your choice and get essentially the same "color" and/or analog overdrive, but without the Folcrom's awful degradation of the signal you worked so hard to create?).

But it's a great box for people who like to guess what their mixes will sound like, as opposed to knowing how to make their mixes sound good.

[BigBadBill]

I think the Dangerous 2-Bus is a waste of money. It sounds great. In fact, it sounds so great that it doesn't sound like anything at all. Exciting. For the same bread, you could buy a really cool compressor/limiter or mic pre with line inputs to run your signal through. And the Folcrom box is, IMHO, absurd -- in terms of the cost (must be some expensive resistors in that sucker), the circuit design (noisy, poor bandwidth), and the concept itself (why bang the signal down to mic level and then reamplify it when you could just go into the line level inputs of the mic pre/compressor/limiter of your choice and get essentially the same "color" and/or analog overdrive, but without the Folcrom's awful degradation of the signal you worked so hard to create?).

But it's a great box for people who like to guess what their mixes will sound like, as opposed to knowing how to make their mixes sound good.

i don't think you've understood the concept of summing properly. the point isn't primarily to color the mix, it is the relieve the PT master bus of a piece of math and performing it in the analog domain - summing the analog outputs, because it sounds different (and many would say better) than when it is summed ITB.

the coloring that different summing units add is really secondary to the actual summing.

BBB