newb q! what is a summing mixer? i have an idea..

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cabbages

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one of my favorite cngineers/producers, kurt ballou was inquiring on gearslutz about the 'fat bustard' summing mixer. i have never really heard of a summing mixer. i imagine its what you run your final mix through to get a little more of... whatever you're looking for??... am i right? wrong? ??

(couldnt find a definition anywhere, cant go to wikipedia @ work)

dan
 
It's an analog mixer with few controls (sometimes none at all) that you run your DA outputs to (normally 8 or 16 channels) made to sum the signals in analog (as opposed to digital).

Some people prefer it (some people would rather do without certain limbs than sum in digital).
 
Massive Master said:
(some people would rather do without certain limbs than sum in digital).
Click to expand...
For others it depends on just which limb you're talking about ;) :D.

Yeah, what Massive said. Think of it as an analog mixer stripped to it's bare bones; no auxiliary buses, no inserts, no mic preamps, no EQ, etc., just the section that actually mixes channels together.

G.
 
There's that cheapie one... Doesn't even have level controls. Just switches.
 
Can't remember who makes it... Totally passive.

The Neve 8816 is nice though. I played around with a Spider once for summing 8 outs once... That'll spoil you forever.
 
Yummm. Now all I need is that Thermionic EarlyBird and I'll be in heaven. :D
 
Mixers usually have an analogue summing amplifier built in - that's how you end up with a stereo signal from eight or ten mono inputs. But the true "summing mixer" as a piece of gear is a bit rarefied. Here's an article in Mix Magazine that explores it a bit.
 
Waffleness said:
Rather ominous...
Click to expand...
LOL. It's probably more like one of those self-fulfilling promises. When one even half-believes the advertising rhetoric - especially when it is put so strongly and reassuringly as that - and then go out and spend $1300 on a boutique box, they are almost guaranteed to *want* to hear the difference so badly that they will be convinced that they do. It may be real - and probably is to at least some degree - or it may not, but by that point it really doesn't matter; they are happy to hear the difference, whatever the reason.

G.
 
I was a bit on the fence about it until I had the chance to sit in on the high-end of high-end tests. We did blind tests, we even did tests walking out of the room (so there wasn't the advantage of instant A-B back and forth going on).

100% of us, 100% of the time, preferred the analog sum. I thought it was going to be more subtle...
 
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