Analogue mixers

[steevio]

Hey guys,

I am just curious to know why the overdrive capabilities of a mixer are so important to you?
Of course I understand that every mixer has its own character when overdriven, but to someone such as me who is inexperienced with mixers,
buying a mixer solely for its character in overdrive mode can appear extreme.

Does it not make sense to buy a good over drive effect, or even design your own somehow and use it on a mixer send?
This would for sure make the whole concept more controllable, instead of hunting for that sweet spot.
Surely it would be better to use something that is designed to give you that sound.

Ok, I am a bit naive on the subject, but when I think of it, Í think of the guitar guys in the 50's and 60's overdring their amps purposely
to get that distorted sound.
These days guitarists don't buy an amps with overdriving it in mind. They buy instead the effect made to do that, as they don't want to destroy their precious new amps.
Shouldn't the same apply to us?

i think youre getting the wrong idea bro.

overdriving is and always has been a legitimate and favourite technique of production, it doesnt do any damage to your gear as long as you dont overdo it.

the sweet spot is just the point in the channel gain where there's just enough thickening and mild distortion to make the sounds bigger. it takes two seconds to find it, its one of the things which make analogue mixing so desirable, you cant get the same effect digitally.

why would you want to buy an overdrive effect for every channel you use it on when you can do it in two seconds on your mixer.

i think you're wrong about guitarists too. guitarists crave overdrive from their tube amps, if you watch any band these days every single guitarist has an old tube amp or modern equivalent, its been that way since the 1950's, theres no substitute, believe me i'm a guitarist.

edit ; if i'm wrong about that, then its probably because i'm looking for it, i dont know what goes on at underground level because i'm not involved, maybe its just indie posers who use those tube amps now ???

[tsankip]

Seeing as you can't overdrive the channels by sending audio from ableton, i had to load this kick in my MachineDrum and play it from there, so as to drive the input gain of the channel.

This sucks. Looks like some old desk is the way forward then. Probably a bit cheaper too

[Barfunkel]

Seeing as you can't overdrive the channels by sending audio from ableton, i had to load this kick in my MachineDrum and play it from there, so as to drive the input gain of the channel.

This sucks. Looks like some old desk is the way forward then. Probably a bit cheaper too

16 channels of quality conversion don't come cheap though. You can get a decent analogue desk for a 1000-ish euros, but then when you add something like 2 RME Fireface 800's, it's suddenly more expensive than the A&H. The converters on the A&H probably aren't quite as good as the RME, but pretty good anyway.

The Zed R16 is amazing value for money I think, even though it's not perfect by any means.

[eggnchips]

Hey guys,

I am just curious to know why the overdrive capabilities of a mixer are so important to you?
Of course I understand that every mixer has its own character when overdriven, but to someone such as me who is inexperienced with mixers,
buying a mixer solely for its character in overdrive mode can appear extreme.

Does it not make sense to buy a good over drive effect, or even design your own somehow and use it on a mixer send?
This would for sure make the whole concept more controllable, instead of hunting for that sweet spot.
Surely it would be better to use something that is designed to give you that sound.

Ok, I am a bit naive on the subject, but when I think of it, Í think of the guitar guys in the 50's and 60's overdring their amps purposely
to get that distorted sound.
These days guitarists don't buy an amps with overdriving it in mind. They buy instead the effect made to do that, as they don't want to destroy their precious new amps.
Shouldn't the same apply to us?

i think youre getting the wrong idea bro.

overdriving is and always has been a legitimate and favourite technique of production, it doesnt do any damage to your gear as long as you dont overdo it.

the sweet spot is just the point in the channel gain where there's just enough thickening and mild distortion to make the sounds bigger. it takes two seconds to find it, its one of the things which make analogue mixing so desirable, you cant get the same effect digitally.

why would you want to buy an overdrive effect for every channel you use it on when you can do it in two seconds on your mixer.

i think you're wrong about guitarists too. guitarists crave overdrive from their tube amps, if you watch any band these days every single guitarist has an old tube amp or modern equivalent, its been that way since the 1950's, theres no substitute, believe me i'm a guitarist.

edit ; if i'm wrong about that, then its probably because i'm looking for it, i dont know what goes on at underground level because i'm not involved, maybe its just indie posers who use those tube amps now ???

Thanks for the info. Like I said, I am new to this outboard game.

[steevio]

Thanks for the info. Like I said, I am new to this outboard game.

it won't take you long to get the hang of it mate

[s.k.]

damn surely getting rectified for this... whatever

i think that analogue overdriving is the biggest myth. excuse me guys but all the waveforms you posted do not differ much from pure clipping, just to various degrees. ableton's saturator has more clipping-sweetspots for sure, or at least the same ammount (theres my crucifixion rite here i know), and yes i have used an analogue mixer before be it not my own.

i see it as when some producers say they use best of both worlds they mean it like that - hardware boxes and ITB mixing. i suspect the very respected here brunelli works kinda that way too - lots of boxes into a nice soundcard, but dont know for sure - he might as well have a desk for production, i personally doubt it though.

but hey this is only my perception from only my experience so i will stand corrected if i have to.

[steevio]

damn surely getting rectified for this... whatever

i think that analogue overdriving is the biggest myth. excuse me guys but all the waveforms you posted do not differ much from pure clipping, just to various degrees. ableton's saturator has more clipping-sweetspots for sure, or at least the same ammount (theres my crucifixion rite here i know), and yes i have used an analogue mixer before be it not my own.

i see it as when some producers say they use best of both worlds they mean it like that - hardware boxes and ITB mixing. i suspect the very respected here brunelli works kinda that way too - lots of boxes into a nice soundcard, but dont know for sure - he might as well have a desk for production, i personally doubt it though.

but hey this is only my perception from only my experience so i will stand corrected if i have to.

mate you can have your opinion, no reason to flame you. but it wouldnt make any difference to me, i wouldnt dream of using a software saturator.
please dont read too much into some quickly thrown together samples of a kickdrum, the kick is notioriously hard to fatten up just right.
you need to compare like for like to make any realistic assesment of the two techniques.

but please dont say analogue overdriving is a myth, if so, then tens of thousands of engineers and musicians have been deluding themselves for the last 60 years, and hundreds of designers have been wasting their time specifically designing circuits to accomodate the technique.

[Barfunkel]

Even if plugins sounded the same I would still use the gain knob of my mixer (or more like, would use it if I didn't have a crappy Mackie VLZ series mixer). Why? It's so simple to use! The knob's there, always there ready to be turned for each channel. Setting up a plugin, soundcard routing, worrying about latency and all that is just too much work, compared to just turning a dedicated knob.