Just realized I haven't touched my summing mixer in 2 years!

I’ve been experimenting with 2 bus plugins. I wanted to try that Millennia NSEQ-2 in the signal path to the 2 bus along with a Shadow Hills mastering comp. I went to fire up my Dangerous 2 bus for the first time in about 2 years, and I realized I’d have to reconfigure the routing in the PT i/o because I no longer use a patchbay, then I got lazy and said nevermind lol. I’ll try it tomorrow. Its been so long since I’ve used that summing mixer. Wow.

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I was thinking about starting a thread asking how much of your gear do you actually use after you buy and test it. So much money…

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That would be a fascinating read. A kinda A/B of cash down the drain? Are you up for that Jonathon?

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you could store them with the Hairballs.
2yrs can fly by especially with gear you dont need. Id say start selling everything you dont use and go buy U87 and U67, those will go up in value.

My good friend is a GAS specialist (+20 guitars, + 15 basses, keyboards, interfaces, headphones). I challenged him to keep only what he uses, and to sell the rest. 2 years later, we’ve made a gentleman’s agreement to stick to that principle. We now operate on the 1 in, 1 out rule. If you buy something that does the job of something you already own, you have to give / sell the older item.

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There should be a special IRD Badge for that! :grin:

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You’ll find this interesting. I sold all the hairball stuff to a guy I know from the Produce Like A Pro forum. He’s already started building them. He’s a drummer…can’t wait to see what it sounds like when he finishes. He knows what he’s doing with the circuits. I was gonna ask him for the raw file and a print of some of his drum tracks and see what it sounds like A/B against the UAD plugins lol. I’ll tag you when I post it :smiley:

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dang you always have a few things going on… the UAD plugs had a lot of time put in them comparing to the old school versions, a good read on the UA site. what you going to buy with the $$$$? that U87 you were talking about maybe…

Do you mean the money I sold the Hairball parts for??? $90? I think I filled up my gas tank and bought some groceries. I dunno.

dont feel bad, I dont even know what a summing mixer is

Its the 1 unit purple thing in the picture of my rack.

Its a mixer with no faders or knobs. You take your stems (all vocals, all guitars, bass, all drums, all orchestra etc…) and send the pairs into each channel. It warms it up, thickens, fattens, and adds punch to the finished mix.

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I bet it had the opposite effect on your wallet though, huh? :thinking: Don’t those things run a couple grand at least? For a mix sweetener? So does it really do all that stuff they claim it does, or is that just the marketing hype? May I ask what it didn’t do that led you to neglect/abandon it (subconsciously) for other gear? I think they call it “Dangerous”, because it’s dangerous to the expense account of gearheads and GASaholics. :hushed:

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A client bought it and donated it to me. Sort of. I think they completely forgot I have it.

It does in my opinion.

I started bouncing and summing in the box. I’ve also been recording significantly less music (more SFX and dialogue now) than I was four or five years ago. I really liked it for music, but the convenience of the Waves and NLS unit really took over after a while. The Dangerous didn’t do shit on a dude behind a podium or someone talking into a lav mic on a stage. It was worthless for broadcast. And it didn’t help with VO one bit either.

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Right. Good thing you got it for free. :slightly_smiling_face:

Someone gave you a $1500 piece?
Those MOTU’s were free too if I recall. 3qty 828’s in the rack…pretty good stuff from what Ive read.

Dangerous LT
"The Dangerous 2-Bus LT 16x2 summing device restores the passion to a lifeless mix."- Ad
"analog “glue” that really makes everything in your mix fit properly together."- human
"Are your Pro Tools or Logic mixes missing that “big label” sound? If so, you NEED Dangerous summing!"- Sweetwater

So you really can fix it in the mix !!! :smirk:

Well…they sort of bought it, left it with me, then forgot about it.

Only one of those. I bought the other 2.

Ha!

I’m it could possibly be doing is accumulating tiny bits of saturation. If I listen to it really close against the Waves or UAD summing plugs, I can hear a slight minisucle difference in the flavor. I doubt I could consistently pick it out of a mix vs 2 other summing plugins though.

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interesting…always enjoy the truth.
i noticed that drum room video has really been on my mind, mainly the fact the ISA428 and simple mics and a laptop was used…so simple with great recordings made in great rooms and some not so great rooms but they all sounded great…i like that term “flavors”…same with the rooms.

those MOTU are 24 channels? thats a lot of channels, the SUmming Amp only does 16, so did you buy the summing amp back when you planned on the 16ch MOTU being your setup?

youve gone through a lot of gear heading towards the StarTrek console…dont you have small rooms too for recording? maybe the whole rack can be sold…you could buy 500 SM7 and 200 RE20’s for voice.
Fill up the console inputs.

I believe there are instances that the room made a huge difference. Both in terms of workflow, ergonomics, AND SOUND. There are a lot of people on here that seem to disagree though. And I’m ok with that.

Yeah I did. I used to use it back 5 years ago when all I had was a pair of Presonus Firestudios, and a pair of Motus. In the picture of the rig now, the summing amp is actually hooked up to second HD i/o (in the picture). The motu’s aren’t wired into the Dangerous at all. If you’re curious about what I’m actually doing with it, here, I’ll re-load the picture with labels.

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1st hd i/o -> inputs 16 analog, output to CraneSong.
2nd hd i/o -> inputs not doing anything, output to summing (not using inputs at the moment)
3rd hd i/o -> inputs not doing anything, outputs digitally to Behringer monitoring system
4th hd i/o -> not doing anything

hd MADI (above the CraneSong) - 128 digital inputs in (from console), 128 digital outputs (to protools)

…then if you look below the CraneSong in the picture, see those two silver things? Those are MADI converters. Each has 64 channels…I have 6 of them…its what allows 384 channels to pass in and out of the board.

Edit: I would never use that many channels. Its basically the config the board came with when i got it. But I did put the time into learning how the stuff hooks up and how it works, incase I ever go back into doing films and need to work on huge projects