Audient Sumo Summing Amp with 002 Rack?

[Ken P]

don't know how new this unit is, but i just saw an ad for this in a trade mag and it peeled my wig back! i imediately hit the web to check it out and found the home site for it HERE which included a link to the pdf manual. i have been pondering a unit like this and was just curious how many LE users out there use a summing bus or even an external console rather than mixing down inside PT. i get good results with my mixes now, but i am always looking for ways to make them better, just like the rest of us

the thing i don't quite get is the unit is 16 in's as 8 stereo pairs, and the first 4 channels are mono. in theory, if i had a 16x8 bus mixer connected to my 002 like a tape machine, i would bus some things to the bus groups as stereo pairs and some channels would go straight to the 2 bus master... in essence should i approach this sumo unit the same way? the 1-4 mono inputs throw me off on this unit. basically i just wanted to throw this 2-bus summing amp concept out for discussion with LE systems. any thoughts?

[Tibbon]

Seems like overkill for a Digi002R. I'd figure that not all HD systems really NEED such a system. The convertors/clock on the 002r just aren't up to snuff really.

[dubhausdisco1]

hey, ken.

I had the opportunity to use one of the dangerous 2bus summers, and I really loved it. The thing to remember about the summers is that you have to have excellent converters to and fro (i think thats what the post above was trying to say.), as any da to ad conversion will degrade your sound. We were using 2 of the rme fireface units into various outboard gear, and thru the 2bus. I will say that in my opinion, the music WE were pushing thru it sounded bigger, badder.. etc.
The big "unseen" problem with 2bussing is that unless you are recording BACK into Protools( which would mean same sample/bitrate...not a good idea), you need a nice meter after the summing unit. Those units can take WAY more signal than us digital folks are used to!

As with just about any other piece of gear, its a trade off... I'd say if you have outboard gear you'd like to incorporate, than by all means YES. If you want your mixes to just sound "better", I would start with clocking/converters as the previous post mentions..
Hope this helped!

dubhausdisco
002 6.9
P4 2.4 1 Gb

[dubhausdisco1]

Ken,
I forgot about the mono thing... On the dangerous 2bus, it has mono switches for every stereo pair. All that's for is busses which have no spatial(stereo) information.(kick drums, bass, anything you want mono and up the middle.)

Hope that helps!
Disco

[Ken P]

thanks, appreciate the input... of course this is all up for debate, i am just kinda thinking out loud about different options. what about if i were to have an apogee rosetta 800, out from pt to something like the sumo and then digitally back into PT via s/pdif since this particular unit has that option, all at 24 bit? just curious... my initial thought would be to bypass the built-in converters, but then in this case i would have 8 ch's on the sumo sitting unused. but, i am also brainstorming this config so that if i had this setup and upgrated to HD later, i'd have converters and a 2-bus amp ahead of time. i know it might be overkill and there are other avenues.