I've been working on a neve styled sum bus. ![Smile :) :)](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
I recently retired my trusty Soundcraft Spirit Auto desk - a fantastic desk which has always come thru for me and previous owner who actually had a profitable small studio with it.
Literally 10yrs of service every day 12hrs a day. Not one thing wrong. No noise, crackles or anything. I had a little PSU fuglies a few years back which took 30mins to repair.
Anyway - I know this desk and how it sounds, which is pretty good.
And quiet. 72 inputs active and around -74dBu noise floor I measured.
So I retired it, for reason that it's too big, uses a bunch of joos, and with all the DIY I have now, as well as DAW automation and what not, it doesn't get much used except as a fancy summing box![Smile :) :)](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
While I was building my (first) sum bus, I setup a patch bay with multing of all my instrument and diy inputs to the Motu converters of my DAW and to some connectors for the sum bus(es!) to come.
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So I've been using the Motu hardware mixer for 'instrument/DIY monitor mixing' and headphone mixes. It works, but not so convenient. For someone used to buttons and faders, not much fun.
That aside, the sound quality is pretty good. Very good in fact.
I do believe I have more clarity in my inputs, I assume because I have removed oodles of Soundcraft circuitry (nice and utilitarian as it is!)
There's not *that* much in it, and I could be biased - the ear hears what the heart wants, after all.
Main problem is the latency (48KHz, 256 sample buffer - not sure what the ms figure is for hardware monitoring thru cuemix)
Even with hardware monitoring, to my guitar sensitive ears
it sounds like a cheap and nasty noise gate - a kind of a digital quack on the attack of plucked notes.
My lounge room Yamaha 03D digital desk doesn't really suffer from this - the latency on those is quite low. And the gates are fantastic too.
The 1176 fast settings certainly don't do the 'latency quack' - they piss blue rings around the motu hardware monitoring in terms of picking up the transient.
Funnily enough, I'm collaborating with a girl singer/guitarist with a lot of natural talent but no experience of the recording process (till now!). She complained alot regarding headphone mix delay of my music room Motu hardware.
Hence my 'please be hurrying to be finish please'.
-------
Anyway, I am finishing up this unit - a neve styled sum bus for use in summing my instruments/diy on a mult with the same going to daw inputs.
It will be the main summing bus for now, feeding a finalizer and speakers with a digital feed back to the daw for the master mix recording. The expansion stereo input is for monitoring the daw 'in the box' mix.
Will also feed the headphone mix so no delay on the instruments and diy. 'No way' to Motu hardware monitoring!
I've started *another* sum bus which will be the 'one bus to rule them all'.
This guy will feed into it, along with 24 daw outputs and a control room mic! And leave behind mixing 'itb'.
Will be very cool - a Lawo dv975/4 with a pair of transformer driving pico compressors built in![Smile :) :)](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
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So this neve styled instrument monitoring sum bus has :
12 inputs with Left/Off and Right/Off switches, 4 stereo inputs with no switches and 1 stereo expansion input with On/Off switches. All on 1/4" balanced sockets.
So thats 17 inputs to each L, R bus worst case. The inputs without on/off switches have switched shorting of + and - wires when nothing is connected.
2 outputs with Level attenuators, 12 pos grayhill switches and xlr balanced sockets.
External PSU 24Vdc at 200ma or so.
It is balanced bus with 4K7 resistors.
Uses Haufe 1:2 summing transformer (500R : 2K) so far.
Neve style BA283 line amps (no first stage) for gain make up feeding gapped Carnhill traffos.
Parts has been maybe 450us or so. Maybe a little less.
----------
Not finished yet - just completed wiring and testing the passive sum bus, but I thought I would write up what I am finding.
Here's a progress pic of the insides.
I recently retired my trusty Soundcraft Spirit Auto desk - a fantastic desk which has always come thru for me and previous owner who actually had a profitable small studio with it.
Literally 10yrs of service every day 12hrs a day. Not one thing wrong. No noise, crackles or anything. I had a little PSU fuglies a few years back which took 30mins to repair.
Anyway - I know this desk and how it sounds, which is pretty good.
And quiet. 72 inputs active and around -74dBu noise floor I measured.
So I retired it, for reason that it's too big, uses a bunch of joos, and with all the DIY I have now, as well as DAW automation and what not, it doesn't get much used except as a fancy summing box
While I was building my (first) sum bus, I setup a patch bay with multing of all my instrument and diy inputs to the Motu converters of my DAW and to some connectors for the sum bus(es!) to come.
--------
So I've been using the Motu hardware mixer for 'instrument/DIY monitor mixing' and headphone mixes. It works, but not so convenient. For someone used to buttons and faders, not much fun.
That aside, the sound quality is pretty good. Very good in fact.
I do believe I have more clarity in my inputs, I assume because I have removed oodles of Soundcraft circuitry (nice and utilitarian as it is!)
There's not *that* much in it, and I could be biased - the ear hears what the heart wants, after all.
Main problem is the latency (48KHz, 256 sample buffer - not sure what the ms figure is for hardware monitoring thru cuemix)
Even with hardware monitoring, to my guitar sensitive ears
My lounge room Yamaha 03D digital desk doesn't really suffer from this - the latency on those is quite low. And the gates are fantastic too.
The 1176 fast settings certainly don't do the 'latency quack' - they piss blue rings around the motu hardware monitoring in terms of picking up the transient.
Funnily enough, I'm collaborating with a girl singer/guitarist with a lot of natural talent but no experience of the recording process (till now!). She complained alot regarding headphone mix delay of my music room Motu hardware.
Hence my 'please be hurrying to be finish please'.
-------
Anyway, I am finishing up this unit - a neve styled sum bus for use in summing my instruments/diy on a mult with the same going to daw inputs.
It will be the main summing bus for now, feeding a finalizer and speakers with a digital feed back to the daw for the master mix recording. The expansion stereo input is for monitoring the daw 'in the box' mix.
Will also feed the headphone mix so no delay on the instruments and diy. 'No way' to Motu hardware monitoring!
I've started *another* sum bus which will be the 'one bus to rule them all'.
This guy will feed into it, along with 24 daw outputs and a control room mic! And leave behind mixing 'itb'.
Will be very cool - a Lawo dv975/4 with a pair of transformer driving pico compressors built in
------------
So this neve styled instrument monitoring sum bus has :
12 inputs with Left/Off and Right/Off switches, 4 stereo inputs with no switches and 1 stereo expansion input with On/Off switches. All on 1/4" balanced sockets.
So thats 17 inputs to each L, R bus worst case. The inputs without on/off switches have switched shorting of + and - wires when nothing is connected.
2 outputs with Level attenuators, 12 pos grayhill switches and xlr balanced sockets.
External PSU 24Vdc at 200ma or so.
It is balanced bus with 4K7 resistors.
Uses Haufe 1:2 summing transformer (500R : 2K) so far.
Neve style BA283 line amps (no first stage) for gain make up feeding gapped Carnhill traffos.
Parts has been maybe 450us or so. Maybe a little less.
----------
Not finished yet - just completed wiring and testing the passive sum bus, but I thought I would write up what I am finding.
Here's a progress pic of the insides.