Analogue Vs Digital Summing
Saw this in the NI forum and wondered if anyone has any input:
http://www.native-instruments.com/forum/showthread.php?t=73201
Its a discussion about how internal mode mixing has less impact than external mixing due to the sound being compressed.
Anybody noticed this?
hey
The problem is not “compression” its the wrong name for it as compression in an audio sense means a specific thing, but there is a difference in the “summing” i.e. how the tracks are combined when signals meet.
In an analogue world, everything is voltages traveling down wires, and where the wires meet the voltages combine together according to the laws of physics and you get a final combined signal.
In the digital world, everything is 1’s and 0’s and maths, and computer programs and algorithms have to be written to add the two streams of numbers together in a way that would simulate this analogue combining. Depending on how good these are will depend on the final quality of the outputted signal.
This has always been the main problem of digital mixing, even in the large format mixing desk world where even tiny small problems, when added together over 30 or 40 channels, become a much bigger problem.
k
There is a sort of slight “smart-mixing effect” that happens when your mixing on analogue equipment, if your playing 2 tones at the same frequency in the analogue world the stronger signal in that frequency range will somewhat overpower the weaker signal playing in the same frequency - works in a similar sort of way that smart-mixing works except not as effective. ie- just because you have a analogue mixer does not mean in the slightest that smart-mixing becomes null and void. In the digital world the signals are simply added together (depending on the summing engine) - that coupled with the way analogue distorts when your doing bad mixing and overloading the mixer is what makes analogue mixing ideal for some people.
You actually get a sort of compression effect happening when you overload an analogue mixer (gains are too high) which should never happen - same thing with digital, it justs sounds 10x worse when you hit that digital ceiling. As you mix more and more in the digital domain you lose the bad habits of overloading the mixer which you shouldn’t be doing in the first place.
There is nothing about digital summing which makes the sound more “compressed” as what numerous people are saying in that thread - you actually get the more compressed mix using analogue gear and not digital.
Personally i love my digital mixing, if i sum my audio in the digital world this allows me to do all sorts of very cool stuff with my master ouput like applying effects and mastering plugins. I personally think that the benefits of digital summing outweigh the advantages of analogue summing - in an ideal world we could pass in and out of the analogue world to get the best of both worlds but then this would dramatically increase your latency to an unplayable level.
Edit: I renamed this thread so the title is more descriptive
Thanks guys, to be honest I knew compression was the wrong term but was the first word I saw in that post. Cheers for correcting anyways.
At what point do you think a noticeable difference from external/internal mixer would be made apparent? Only in a big club with a flash sound system or in all scenarios including djing in your bedroom with say a nuo4 mixer?
The pros and cons of digital/analogue, happy days 
I bet if you did “turd tests” with those people most of them wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a digital and an analogue summed signal to be perfectly honest with you - the difference is pretty small.
You can tell the dude who is using digital because he will be the one doing all sorts of cool fx on his master bus while those mixing externally are stuck with the crappy overused fx on the mixer that arnt sample locked to the mix 
lol
The only time there is an obvious difference is when the people analogue summing are overloading the mixer causing audible analogue distortion, or when the guy digital summing is overloading his master output which causes nasty digital distortion. As long as your paying close attention to the gain structure in your digital mix you would be fine.
There is no real advantage to summing inside of Traktor though vs a external mixer - the advantages of a digital summing only really come to the table when your doing stuff like porting your audio into Ableton to apply extra processing. If you don’t think your output has enough warmth when your mixing digitally it isnt that hard to put some processing on the master bus to add this - digitally you have an unprecidented control over the way that your master output is going to sound with enough digital know how.
What sound is going to sound “better” on any system is very highly subjective when you start wading deep into the digital domain. But there is no doubt in my mind though when i say that digital summing is going to allow you to get more creative with your master audio signal than you can do in the analogue domain.
Great information there BentoSan, really appreciate it 
Id even considered using something like a bbe sonic maximizer hardware box to get that digital warmth. Like you say theres always a way with digital.
I dont quite follow this. I thought that if somebody was using an external mixer they could still have the same amount of control over the internal effects with a midi controller such as the xone 1d (so the mixer doing the external-mixing and xone-1d doing the internal effects)? Am I not correct in thinking this?
yep, they still can use the internal fx. but the question is will they 
a friend of mine uses traktor pro and even though he could use the internal fx, he only uses the fx on his mixer as he didn’t get himself a midi controller yet… and it seems he’s not that fond of midi controllers… seems he just wants to keep his old habits (mixing on two decks with his mixer) as i lent him a nanopad and he didn’t use it at all (not even for cues)…
guys, sorry for hijacking this thread a little bit, but speaking of external analog boxes - is there a box that just takes a signal input and displays the frequency scale of that input? i’m a real n00b when it comes to things like that…
how would that box be called and where can i get one?
Well my nuo4 doesnt have effects so would definitively be looking to take full advantage of the internal ones. I suppose if you had paid top dollar for a mixer with effects then you would feel the need to use it.
ya i’ve noticed a difference between analog mixers and the traktor mixer… the eqing sounds more crisp on analog mixers compared to traktor 3…
i haven’t used traktorpro enough to tell if they’ve improved on the internal mixer, but the one in traktor3 leaves somethign to be desired unfortunately 
I always say that I am never going back to internal mixing with traktor at least (with ableton I mix internally, because I don´t have a huge mixer and interface). The sound you get on the external mixer is much different… no argue about that. Plus if you are playing in a big sound system the diference is even bigger. Bento´s explanation on summing will apply specially if you are not keepeing your levels… all the magic hardware in the club designed to make you sound good (limiters and compressors…etc) wont be able to do their work correctly. At least that is my experience on powerfull sound systems, I ´get the best results with a GOOD analogue mixer.
And for me it makes a difference even in my bedroom with cheap speakers, you CAN notice it. Also I just love the layout of a good mixer, you have the space for your hands and everything is where it should… I am a mixer lover
You just hit the nail on the head there! After using analogue mixers for so many years im finding these midi ones difficult to adjust too as there so damn cramped.
Not the same amount because you cannot apply effects on the master channel, your limited to applying effects per channel.
So say you wanted to use digital modeled tube distortion on your master bus(or a reberb effect, filter, whatever), then you would have to send the audio back into your pc, reprocess it, then back out of your pc which adds a considerable amount of latency.
Sorry to sound like a div BentoSan but what do you mean when you say master effects? I thought the effects worked the same for both internal and external. Each channel is routed to either FX1or2 or both.
If I send all channels to say FX1, wouldnt that be like a master effect anyway? 
Thats in Traktor, thats their way of getting around this, but its not a perfect solution, take the gater for instance. If you activate it on 2 decks the white noise generator gets twice as loud (which i find quite displeasing to the ear).
When i say master effects i mean effects that are applied after the signals are summed together. Its particularly important with the mastering plugins that the signal is summed before the effect is applied as opposed to having a mastering plugin on every single channel, which would not only use excessive amount of CPU, it wouldn’t work anywhere near as effectively as if you summed the material together first before applying the effect.
Like i was saying earlier there really isn’t an advantage to mixing internally inside Traktor (compared to a good analogue mixer, the advantages come when your using a program like Ableton to do the summing.
Im with ya now!
Should have mentioned I was referring to traktor, my fault. I now fully understand what you mean regarding effects on the master channel (in ableton). As a matter of fact thinking about it I imagine you could get better results by adding the correct dynamic-plugins to the master bus than any analogue mixer could deliver! Traktor should support VSTs for this very reason alone.
thanks for the knowledge
bento - what kind of mastering plugins do you use?
not to threadjack but what do you guys recommend for analogue mixer that works great with traktor?
Small budget and large budget options???
As soon as I get a bit more flow to play with, an analogue mixer is on my evergrowing studio shopping list.
Tube emulation, limiting and an exciter. That said I am always playing with different plugin combinations on my master bus, theres so many different kinda of sounds that are possible its hard to make up my mind what i like the most
Edit: Tape emulation also sounds quite nice !
How do you do that in traktor?
route the audio into ableton, i’m guessing…