Analog vs Digital: tracking vs Summing

[losangeles]

I’ve become curious as to analog tracking and summing effects after learning about the concept from a mentor producer’s setup. The threads concerning analog summing I’m finding all happen to be at least a couple years old (there is, however, an interesting comparison done by bhphoto out there).

My main questions are:

Are there still any benefits to analog summing that modern summing emulations can’t reproduce accurately/reliably these days?

My current setup is analog/digital hybrid, and would allow for running tracks through an analog mixer and some analog hardware processors. To be clear, I’m not recording any mics or acoustic signals, but rather referring to tracks as mostly consisting of samples or synthesized parts which I could pass through outboard hardware (in other words, I’m dealing with only line level signals, incase that changes anything since no mic preamps are used). Would, say, running my tracks individually (and sequentially) through my Allen & Heath mixer and then recording the signal back in the DAW, and subsequently mixing therein, provide the same or nearly identical artifacts as compared to if the stems were each concurrently routed to the mixer, summed in the analog domain, and returned to the host for recording?

Curious as to views and any hard data, if available. Thanks!

[BertKoor]

If your analog signal path is doing something non-linear (eg gentle distortion) then there likely will be a difference.

Whether it's worth the trouble: totally up to you

[fese]

The reason why you only find years old threads about analog summing is probably because that was a bit of a hype 10-15 years ago, which has rather worn off in the meantime.
The hard data is that running your tracks through your mixer will technically speaking degrade the fidelity of your signals as it will add noise and some level of THD. Whether that is “a good thing” is of course subjective

[Datacustic]

I have a Dbox / Lynx Aurora Setup. Analog Elysia EQ + Comp suitable for mixbus mixing. It’s 8 channels of summing. This is a basic but capable analog mixing setup.

In my experience the difference of the summing alone is very subtile and Leads to weaker workflow and recall. Today I am not summing analog. Because it’s a lot better to open a project and have it 100% in the box for workflow. I can open older projects without loss of setup. I can open a project on the couch and headphones without any loss of recall (using just a MacBook). The analog EQ/Comp I am using these days for tracking synth. And mostly not on the mixbus anymore. With the right use of plugins / knowledge it’s absolutely no problem for me to make a serious „analog“ sounding mix. As long as the recorded (hardware)synth has good quality mixing fully digital is no problem.

In my experience there is even no need for any analog tone or complicated plugins ( I tried them all including UAD, AA and whatever). These days I mostly only use cytomic the glue, fabfilter pro Q3 and Fabfilter pro L for any mixing purpose.

So what I try to say is, for mixing analog tools are not needed to get serious results. It’s really the knowledge (mostly what NOT to do) but analog tone is all in the recording synth chain. I would recommend to watch Robert babicz advice (YouTube) how to mix/master. Especially what he says about the right use of EQ. Once I realized how powerful a lowcut is, and that it’s the wrong use of EQ that destroy my mixes Things got a lot more easy, faster and better for me. Also the biggest tip I can share is, if mixing an element, don’t use EQ at all, instead pull the fader DOWN (in many cases). Maybe only just a gentle lowcut.