Dangerous 2bus analog summing

[Bryan Cook]

does anyone have experience with the dangerous music 2bus analog summing device? 16 xlr ins, 2 xlr outputs, thats basically it. anyone A/B'd internal summing to it? i've heard a lot of great things about it...

[LurkerAtTheThreshold]

http://www.3daudioinc.com/cgi-bin/ul...ubb=forum&f=19

[tenkproductions]

Yes Yes and Yes
I purchased one and have been using one for about a week or so now and used one several months ago.I did a lot of a b comparsions.The units do sound great it was like opening up the front door to my house and going inside of my mixes Whow this is inside of here!I have a HD2 with a 96IO and a 888 clocked off of a Apogee PSX100se going into the 2 bus LT. Yes you can get great results from just protools and I have, but when you use the Dangerous 2 bus it's like sitting behind a hi end console.

That's the truth I purchased one with my own money no one is paying me to say this!

Phil Plaskon
[img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]
www.tenkproductions.com

[tal herzberg]

Bryan,

the only issue I have with this box is the fact that you have to work with stereo pairs all the time in order to pan tracks. The sound of the box is very good.

I'm going to look into the new API line that just came out (same concept, but with individual pans and a cool seperate summing module), I have a feeling it's more suitable for the kind of jobs we're doing.

[Jules]

I have model number 001

!!

I like it, on the D2B you can push a mono button and dont need to come out of a pair, als that is stereo DIRECT OUTPUT pairs, quite different from say an Aux,

Do a search here on the DUC - you will fing a LOT of information.

[Jules]

Fing?

Find perhaps?

Must get those teeth fixed!

[img]images/icons/shocked.gif[/img]

[Mt.Everest]

Hey Bryan,

I was invloved in the multitrack drum sample CD called Reel Drums. ( Wave Distribution distributes that as well as Dangerious 2 Bus) After all 16-18 drum tracks were done we did some listening (non scientific) tests with the PT mixer summing and the 2bus for summing the drums into a stereo master, and the 2 Bus was killer.. Just like other posters have said, it was like a door had been opened into the mix--smooth, clear, wide and just juicy. It was great..

More importantly [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img] , is this the Byran Cook from the 'ol days back in Boston at that Bezerklee school? [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]
If so, this is Victor (worked on Jesse's stuff with ya at the end)... drop me a line if ya get a chance-- we can catch up on where what who etc...
it would be nice to hear from ya!
hope all is well
take care
--victor
[email protected]

[[email protected]]

I've been happy using the DBLT for about a month now... I spent some time early on testing between in the box vs. stems into the DBLT. The DBLT mix usually sounds better quicker, although in one case I went back to the in the box and spent about an hour tweaking and got very close... still different, but not that one was much better, more like difference in tone colors and space.

Overall, I think I can settle on mix much quicker with the PT stems... Things seem to sit better in the mix. Better separation left to right, and front to back space, and a touch more organic (more analog sounding)...

[bruceup]

I think I'm the only person on the planet to have gotten a 2-Bus LT and not fallen in love with it. I have a PT HD-3 system with a 192 i/o, and don't find much of a difference at all. Perhaps it's because I don't record a lot of acoustic instruments, instead working mostly from soft-synths and samplers with small amounts of acoustic instruments/vocals thrown in(I'm also still a 44.1khz guy). I'm also routing the 2-mix out of the 2-Bus back into my 192 i/o, perhaps that has something to do with it, as most people who have posted their 2-Bus praises seem to rout their 2-mix outs into a MasterLink or other outboard mastering unit.

I swear, I've got ears(and 20+ successful years in the biz to prove it), but I'm just not hearing the difference everybody's talking about. If I'm doing something wrong, please let me know before the 2-Bus ends up on Ebay.

[fab]

Hi guys,

Just chiming in.

I've been doing a lot of A-Bing between my 2-BUS and the in the box mixes and I find that I agree with most of you, it makes a big difference.
To me it makes more than just a sound difference. It's also a big convenience gain. I get to where I want to be faster, I have to noodle around less.

I was finding myself having lots of problems making songs grow bigger and bigger towards the end of the track, with ProTools just not letting me push further than I already was. Taking the whole mix down, to allow for more headroom, never quite worked for me and was a pain in the ass anyway. When I just reassigned the mix into stems through the 2BUS, I found that the ceiling I was banging on was removed. I also found that I had to adjust the balance quite a bit to get back to where I was. I mostly found myself working on the most dynamic instruments and finding them more present than they were before. The bass sat better in the mix too. But the most important thing was that I didn;t have to worry about gain staging as much. It felt looser because I had plenty headroom to work with. It just feels better.

I do think I understand Bruce when he says he doesn't hear a difference on his mostly synth based tracks. I find that, sonically, the 2Bus is truly shining on complex material and it is most striking on acoustic instrument with serious transient info and ambient room information. Most electronic generated sounds only have a fraction of the dynamic range of well recorded acoustic instruments. Although they pack a lot of punch, the actual transients are nowhere near as dramatic as say, an acoustic snare drum played by a good drummer. In that respect, the 2Bus has helped me mix the acoustic & electronic worlds more easily. I think that's what people mean when they say 'it sat better in the mix'. It's that 'not compressed but still keeps its place sound'.
I also find that since I have the 2Bus I compress a lot less. For example when tracking live drums on an existing preprogramed track, I always find that it a pain to get the live drums as loud as the programed track for monitoring. Now I just hit the +6db button on the drum stem on the 2bus and I can monitor the session easy without having to compress or tweak the beatbox's levels. Nice and I keep my options open for the mix.

I also find that when I work on mostly electronic tracks, the 2bus helps to really push it in the bass department. It feels like I have more room to abuse the mix.
I also find myself liking the convenience of patching in analog outboard directly on the stems or the full mix before going back-in saving a lot of A/D/A.
Now I just leave my Fatso and 737s patched across the output of the 2Bus before going back to ProTools. It very convenient to quickly shape the mix and beef it up.

It's not a night and day/oh my god what did you just change/gonna save your live/ box. At least not for me. For me it's been a real step... back... in the right direction))
Back to when it was ok to get a suntan from the meters, and when you could patch anything into anything easily, without a sound quality hit. It does a lot more for me than I thought it would originally.

It's also made my mixing sessions more fun, because of the load of the gain stage shoulders, and that stepped attenuator is really practical when things really get out of hand
Although it's its primary claim to fame, don't think of it as a sound improving box solely, it's got a lot more tricks up its sleeve.

Ciao,

Fab