Analog Summing

[boogle]

I have read and heard the argument that analog summing is better than digital. I have heard both and agree. I know what summing amplifiers are and understand the concept but am looking for information as to what analog summing is better. Any info would be greatly appreciated.

 

[SteveM]

Did you mean "why" analog summing is better? Anyway, I found this on it.

The 2-Bus itself began life when a friend of Muth's made the switch to digital and didn't like what he was hearing. “The issue is, when you bring your faders down to — 30 or — 40 dB in the computer, you're throwing away a whole bunch of information,” Muth says. “We built a system where you could run six or eight faders at — 6 or — 10.” Muth built the 2-Bus prototype back in the days of 16-bit digital. “As the DAW systems got better and they had higher resolution inside the box, a lot of people predicted that we wouldn't need to have these external summing boxes anymore,” he says. “Fair enough, but I thought that if the digital stuff got better, the math is going to stay the same and an analog summing bus is going to sound even better.”

But, he contends, that's not all that an analog summer can do to help the sound. Another important contention for the rivals of the digital-summing debate is that latency occurs when internal processing is introduced, resulting in phase shifting or outright mistiming of tracks. Muth is adamant that analog summing helps get rid of latency problems. “People may point to their automatic latency controls, but I've watched people mix this way, and it takes them 15 minutes to figure what latency is on which channel,” he says. “And things change again when they make changes to the processing. With a 2-Bus, I can say, ‘I have a stem mix, and I want to compress it.’ I patch in a pair of compressors, and in about 15 seconds, I have it dialed in — all without delays.”

And what is the “sound of the box” according to Morse? He believes that there are two schools of thought on the matter, at least among people who find fault with it. “Some people say there's something wrong with the algorithms; others say it's perfect in the digital domain, yet they don't like it, so they want to introduce a little ‘warmth’ or ‘euphonic distortion,’” he says. “I suspect it's the former line of reasoning: that there's something still wrong with digital summing. Now, I have heard people say that this whole business must be a lot of marketing hokum because everybody knows that it's just math and a simple addition of bits, and there's no way it can't be perfect in the digital domain, but I think people have been underestimating [certain people's] ability to screw up the math for a long time.”

 

[Herm]

I think that the two key words here are Analog and better.