A nice affordable analog mixer for outboard summing?

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countrylac

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For most of my recording experience I have been mixing inside the box. I have moved to firewire recording for convience, but I have an older Pentinum 3 computer which I have installed my delta 1010 in. This computer doesn't have the cpu that I need to fully run all the effects and processes that I need. I'm looking for an analog board that's under $1000 dollars that I can use to sum and eq 8 tracks from the delta 1010. I don't care about the quality of the preamps because I don't plan to use them(if it doesn't even have preamps that would be fine). I'm just concern about the quality of the eq and the overall sound of the board. Any suggestions?
 
if EQ is your concern, and price too........look into a Soundtracs 'Topaz" series(thier anologs are discontinued, but you can find them on Ebay), or a Soundcrafts anolog mixers. both are known for having great EQs, and thier over all sound is fantastic. you can score some of these for under $500, and are usually 12 channel boards with at least 6-8 mic pres.
 
There certainly is a lot to be said for analog summing. There is also a lot to be said for full recallability though and fewer cheap AD and DA stages.
 
Thanks for the comments. Well I have a laptop and another desktop that I use for recording with a mackie onyx and m-audio firewire interface. So I decided that I would place the delta 1010 into an older desktop and try my hand at some analaog summing and mixing (I figured why not). If anyone is wondering I'll probably mix down to a dat machine or CD recorder. Well the delta a/d/ d/a convertors are pretty decent so I may record the mixdown back into the computer.
Xstatic or anyone, how are the soundcraft 200 series? I've looking at some on ebay for a while now.
 
Well, I usually carry the Onyx with me when I record live stuff. I'm in school right now and I have my laptop and a desktop setup in my house that I share with a roomate(we rent it). I have a small studio back home, which is about an hour or more away. In the small studio is where I have the older pc and the delta 1010. So I'm looking to have a place where I can focus on just doing some analog mixing and summing. The other reason I don't want mix through the onyx is because I don't like the eq a whole lot. I must admit that the eq is better that the one on my vlz pro and the mid sweep is a nice addtion, but it still seems a little more surgical than musical IMHO. Also the firewire card in the onyx only feeds a 2 channel mix from the computer, so I would have to route all the outputs from the delta 1010 to the inputs on the onyx. I don't know about you but I don't want to have to keep doing this everytime I go back home. I'd like a dedicated setup for this.
 
The Soundcraft 200's are decent consoles. Built like tanks with a good warm sound. The do get a little noisy (hiss when you crank em), but the EQ's are very smooth. They have a nice rich bottom end when you hit the preamps, but the pre's don't really extend the highs like a lot of nicer preamps do. This however could be a good thing for tracking through with all the new breeds of cheap mics on the market.

Please don't take this wrong, but 1010 converters are not really what I would be wanting to use for 2 extra steps of conversion.
 
I know that 1010 convertors aren't ideal for want I'm wanting to do, but I think they are decent enough to give me some sense of whether or not I'm doing any justice with analog summing. When I get the hang of it, then I'll upgrade my a/d d/a convertors. Maybe something by apogee.
 
You're kidding yourself if you think that running your digital signal back through D/A conversion, through some "affordable" analog device, then back through A/D conversion, is going to be an improvement from mixing in the box. The people who are doing it on a professional level are using SSL desks, etc. that would cost you or me a year's salary. Like I said, buy an up-to-date computer and forget about this summing nonsense.
 
Ok, I'm not doing this to get better quality than mixing in the box. I already have a 3.0ghz Pentium 4 with Samplitude Professional. I can mix inside the box fine and I do this for the majority of my recordings. I'm just looking to try something a little different that won't cost an arm and a leg. Maybe I'll try and get a 2track analog recorder to do away with one stage of conversion.
 
Soundcraft Delta, A&H MixWizard, Ramsa, all will get you in ball park. For 2 channels of good conversion a Fostex,Panasonic,or a Tascam DAT mastering machine will work. Alesis AI converters are getting cheap these days.....

One good thing these three boards will get you is very decent preamps....especially the Ramsa.
 
countrylac said:
I don't know about you but I don't want to have to keep doing this everytime I go back home. I'd like a dedicated setup for this.
Click to expand...

[shameless plug]Well in that case if you stroll down to the Free Ads section, I've got something for sale that might interest you :o [/shameless plug]
 
...analog summing is currently gaining alot of attention...the reason being, you can restore "analog tonality" to the digital domain...even though it's probably out of your price range, Rascal Audio has designed a pretty cost effective summing system which utilizes "Neve" style transformer in/out format to add vintage "tone" to your mix...half the price of many other systems out there...check it out:

http://rascalaudio.com
http://www.rascalaudio.com/ToneBussPreliminarySheet.pdf

read about it here:
http://www.gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php?t=68609
 
I use a Speck X.Sum for summing. Sounds great, but is a bit beyond your price range and doesn't have eq.

I personally like digital eq for a lot of things. Sometimes you do just need an analog eq, but I find digital eq often quite useful. Certainly it sounds better to me than digital compression (which I rarely use).

So another approach might be to get yourself some high quality eq plugins, and then find an analog summing board without eq. There are a lot more of those to choose from. By the time you add eq to a summing board you've basically turned it into a mixer, and that really is a little different than a summing board.
 
Thanks again for the advice and comments. SonicAlbert,when you say try digital eq are you talking about hardware or plugins?

As far as eq plugins right now I have T-Racks and last week my cousin bought me the Waves Renaissance Maxx Bundle (he's a rapper and I've produced songs for him in the past, so its a gift for him too) as an early B-Day and Graduation present for my second degree. I guess I need more time to experiment with RenEq and see how I like the sound.

The thing is that I wasn't looking for better quality I was just looking to try something different and use an older computer that I didn't plan on using anymore. Well when I'm in my small studio at home, I usually record Gospel groups and blues bands and stuff like that. They don't complain about the quality of the recordings, but they really like sound of some of older recordings of some regional artists. I've been in some the small studios in which these albums were recording and the setup isn't that great. The only thing they all really have in common is that its all usually mix through an analog board (most from an ADAT, some from a 4 track). So I'm not really worried about down grading the quality a degree or two. I guess I'm just looking for that sound.
 
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If you are trying to get some analog flavor into the final result, forget about summing mixes and such and just export your stereo mix and run it through a Manley Vari-Mu Compressor and a Manley Massive Passive EQ, then back into the box. It'll sound awesome and only set you back about $8,000 or so.

Or you can find someone to do this for you, they're called mastering services.
 
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