The results are in..

In order of preference :

1. Neve 8816
2. Dangerous D-Box
3. Audient Sumo
4. Phoenix Nicerizer

The Neve's got it won on features and sound for me.
In terms of sound, it gives the low end a slight, smooth lift to my ears. It also rolls off the high end just slightly in a pretty pleasant way. It's kind of an overall rounding/warming sound I suppose.
Monitor control of two seperate pairs of speakers, talkback, heaphones etc.
With all that and the fact that it's got real knobs for volume and pan on each of the 16 channels (plus solo and mute) it does just about the best job of convincing me that I still have room for a real analog desk.
Unfortunately, because all its useful i/o is on D-sub, that means I'll probably have to put together a mini patchbay to interface my outboard with the 8816 - which is kinda one of the more compelling side effects of getting out of the box, however temporarily.
The 'width' control is like nicotine - just a little bit couldn't hurt, right?
Stuff like that always gives me the creeps.. "it sounds better - there must be something wrong", is all I can think. It's fun though.
Did I mention that this has the loudest headphone amp I've ever heard?
It does.
And the recall is a big plus.
I did try beating the shit out of the output stage (of course I did) by hitting it with a load of level on every channel. That sounded a bit more.. something. It definitely rounded off the transients a bit. Add in your favourite audio review adjective here. It sounded like that.
Although a little too much.
The long and short is that you can take it from clean to spongy depending on your input levels.

The D-Box I like a lot, mostly because it's got pretty much all the features of the 8816, apart from the fact that it only sums 8 channels and doesn't have the volume/pan knobs. It really does squeeze a lot in for your €1300ish. Sound wise, it's pretty clean and gives you back what you put in to it apart from the added depth and width the summing brings. The monitoring section is cool (nice knobs) and the headphone outputs sound good.
Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get hold of an AES to optical/spdif cable, so I can't tell you how the D/A sounds, but every report I've heard says that it stands up pretty well.

The Sumo is similar to the D-Box in terms of price, and pretty close in terms of sound, too. It had a very slight lift in the high end that some folks might enjoy, but I felt it kinda fell in between two stools a bit. It's not quite clean enough to give you back what you put in, but what little 'colour' it does add wasn't my cup of tea.
Still, it's got plenty of features, although I couldn't see myself using the bus compressor/limiter all that often.
The knobs are kinda mangy too. Am I shallow?

The Nicerizer, funnily enough, does sound pretty nice.
It's got a more overtly coloured sound, I found it lent a kind of tasty midrange crunchiness to some mixes I ran through it, particluarly a drum machine+synth heavy mix. Nice sounding unit, but I discounted it pretty early, because of its lack of monitoring facilities.
It does have a monitoring output, but it's just a straight +4 out, with no level control.
Not terribly useful.
So you'd be using up a stereo pair on your interface for monitoring (and since I'd be sticking to 8/10 channel summing for a while, this is kind of a dealbreaker for me).
Mind you, the unit I had on demo is for sale at a nice price, and it does sound pretty cool.

So yeah, now I've got to figure out where all this fits into my Gear Roadmap™.
And probably find a bunch of cash under a rock to buy the 8816.
Gah.

Titles are boring

Sooo, I picked up my demo unit Dangerous D-box and Phoenix Audio Nicerizer from Darren in Studio Solutions on Friday. Is there anything better than new toys? I think not.
First impressions are positive, but also somewhat confusing.
I'm sticking to running 8 outputs for the moment, partly because I haven't been able to borrow another interface to run from my adat outs. In comparing the D-Box, Nicer and ITB mixes, I'm preferring the summed mixes every time. In comparing the D-box and Nicer, I'm hearing different results depending on the mixes I run through them, and it's not just related to the level I put into each box. On some mixes, the Nicer is adding some low end and smoothing out the highs a little, while also lending some saturated crunch to the midrange. This is a nice enough sound, but I'd be a little concerned that I wouldn't want it for every mix. Mind you, on some mixes there is little or no difference between the two.
Now, when monitoring through the D-box (that is, monitoring the analog summed signal before it goes back into the box) I'm hearing a lot more low level detail like reverb tails. At least, it's most obvious in that I'm hearing how things like reverb tails are going on for too long at some points in a song, or just are too long or the wrong sound in general. This is GOOD.
Only thing is, I'm not sure if it's the D-Box or summing in general that's getting me there - I think it may be because I'm using my RME ADI-2 to convert the summing box output to digital and running it back in to my interface. But I'm also clocking from the RME.
And I'm thinking it's the clocking that is improving the level of detail I'm hearing.

VERY interesting.
I will investigate further.
I'm also hoping to get my hands on one or two other demo units in the next few days, I'll report back with more observations, and maybe even some files.

In other news, Padraig's freshly analog summed mixes have been ftp'd to Golden, and Rifle Fire Rifle were over again last night. I've given them a few versions of Doppler with some arrangement edits they requested, so once they decide which they prefer, we'll have that baby wrapped up.

Peace.

Tweaks 'n Geeks.

Had another short session with Padraig to finish up his album. The only problem now is stopping myself from making little tweaks as I'm bouncing the songs down.
I did catch some ess-y vocals that I'd missed previously though, and I got a chance to fool around with using the URS CS Pro's de-esser preset (which is easily recreated with Dynamics III or similar - it's pretty much a compressor with a sidechain HPF set somewhere upwards of 4.5khz).
It does a pretty fine job of taming the esses without sucking the bright outta the vocal too much.
That and the uncontrollable urge to add a feedbacking delay outro spacenoise thing to the final song on the album aside, I battled the tweak-lust as manfully as I could.
The record is off to mastering with Golden in the next few weeks, hopefully.

Did attended mixing of the first Rifle Fire Rifle tune last night - I'd gotten the mix into pretty good shape, so it was mostly a case of tweaking a few bits here and there into place. We'll reconvene to finish it up in the next few days. The guys seem excited to be getting a first 'finished product', which is always a nice feeling.

The three Stoat tunes are ready for mix, so as soon as I can make the time, I'll be getting stuck into them too.
It looks like the long-awaited summing mixer shootout will be starting this weekend - a full report will follow!