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!

Finishing touches

Had a (near) final tidy-up session with Padraig on Monday.
He had a few notes, so we ran through each song making a few tweaks here and there.
Everything seems to be in pretty good shape, so now it's a case of checking out the mixes on a bunch of different speaker systems to see what they can tell me.
Listening to it in the car last night, I was struck by difference in detail between the car stereo (which isn't a bad one) and my Focals. The car stereo kinda smoothed everything out and made things that really jump out of the mix on my monitors receed back quite a bit. Thank God for the Focals - at least they tell me what's actually going on.
Aside from tweaking the vocal up a touch in one or two songs, the 'consumer' stereos are great for getting a handle on what the low end is going to sound like in the real world. Most consumer stereos have a bump in the low end in and around 100hz to add some excitement, and knowing how your bass and kick drum will be affected is really valuable.
That low end is definitely the trickiest part of a mix to really nail, so I'll always try to get plenty of different perspectives on it.

Padraig's talking about mastering with Golden, which is great, home recorded stuff always benefits most from a really good mastering job - it's also a really good incentive for me to try to get things right! A bunch of Irish bands have used Golden recently with great results - Dudley Corporation, Nina Hynes, Jimmy Cake etc.
With the dollar where it is, and the ability to ftp the files back and forth, it makes a huge amount of sense to go to the US for mastering, particularly with the ease of access you get to really experienced professionals.

Update on the analog summing/gear lust situation..
I'm starting to lean towards the RollMusic Folcrom for that analog summing situation.
It's cheaper than the Dangerous D-Box but still has plenty going for it. Golden Age have them for 578 ex vat and shipping. I'm definitely gonna have to see if I can arrange a demo. It doesn't have the monitoring control/switching or built-in conversion of the D-Box, but then again it is half the price and sums 16 instead of 8 channels. Being able to use the mic pre of your choice for make-up gain and 'colour' is definitely a nice option, although my APIs are the only dudes I think I'd trust in that scenario.

I'm also (finally) demoing the URS Saturation plugin. They finally got around to releasing the PC version (although only for vst so far - I'm using the Fxpansion VST wrapper.. recommended, by the way) and so far, it's pretty sweet. Very nice on a parallel drum bus. Pretty good for giving DI bass a little grit and roughing up vocals where necessary.
I think I'm gonna go with their rental option - it's $200 to buy, but you can rent it by the month for $100, and when you've rented the full price worth, you own the plugin. Beautiful!

Mixing Home Recordings

Now, maybe I'm a lucky guy...(The fact that I haven't caught the sickness my fair lady has been coughing around the house for the last few days may be testimony to that), but I've never had a bad experience mixing tracks that have been home recorded.
Now, you don't have to throw a stone far in your average audio forum to hit a topic bemoaning the state of the tracks that an engineer has been sent to mix, but for me, there's a lot of reasons why I find it a lot of fun.

For starters, you're coming to the songs and arrangements with totally fresh ears.
You get to make decisions that aren't informed by hearing the song a load of times as it was tracked and overdubbed.
Quite often, I'll end up fairly judiciously using the mute button - more often than I would with a song I'd tracked myself.
Partly this is because of the temptation to throw a lot of shit at the wall when you've got the time that home recording affords to try different approaches and parts. Partly it's because I think you naturally get attached to parts as you become used to hearing them. Fresh ears mean you can make quick (and usually pretty good) decisions about what's helping the song - and what isn't.
Just by taking away an instrument that's contributing to overcrowding, or even muting it in verse one so that it brings something new to verse two, you can usually improve the feel of a mix before you even get in to heavy lifting with eq and compression.

A lot of the time, you'll be dealing with one guy or gurl who's getting their first outside perspective on their work. This alone can be very valuable. Mixing is a constant battle to maintain perspective, hence the widespread practice of switching between different speakers and headphones during a mix. Our ears automatically gets used to what they're hearing - good and bad, so the best way to avoid thinking a turd is shiny is to change your listening perspective every once in a while.
It's even trickier to maintain perspective on a song you've written, rewritten and recorded yourself.

Most of all though, I enjoy the big difference you can make to the finished mix.
It's a really good feeling when you can help someone enjoy their own song more because of the bit of mix glue you've applied to it.
And that's what it's all about - making dudes happy, and hopefully helping the songs be better at the same time.

RfR gtr dubz yo

Yesterday was guitar dub day out at Rifle Fire Rifle headquarters.
It was a bit warmer than last time out, thankfully.

It was pretty much all R121 and SM58 into API in front of my Blues Junior.
We've got each section of the song pretty well covered for different tones now, the only slight concern may be tying them all together in the mix. We got a particularly nice blend between a mild big muff fuzz and a Blues Jr. cranked up distortion for the chorus.

I tried Nick's Sennheiser E902 early on, which sounded pretty nuts. It's got a really pronounced smiley curve frequency response to it, which didn't work for any of the sounds we wanted. I must try it sometime for a hilarious snare sound or something.

In other news..
When will Digi release PTLE for Leopard?
When will my SM7 arrive?
What about new TapeOp?

Hounds like Beechpark

A long day, but a good day with my band Hounds out at Beechpark yesterday.
A pretty similar setup to the Stoat one from Sunday, and we're pretty pleased with what we got done.
I've got a pretty sizeable to-do list now, though -

• Rough mixes for Hounds
• Rough mix for Stoat to overdub a vocal on
• Keep working on mixes for Padraig (the damn bass just won't sit right!)
• Get a rough drum mix out to Nick from Rifle Fire Rifle so that we can overdub to it on Sunday.

We're going to play one of the new songs from yesterday at the Hounds gig on Friday.
It's fantastically relentless.