Emulating Analog Summing Box ITB
Hello,
these days i'm obsessed with this idea of approximating the sound of analog summing in the box.
First off, why bother with analog summing? Well, after long research i came to the conclusion that NO, analog summing will not make your bad tracks sound better. The only thing analog summing does is it helps you take better mixing decision and work faster.
So, how to emulate analog summing in Reaper? I have an idea but let's try first to brainstorm about the characteristics of analog summing "sound".
Things like extended width, clarity, separation, punch, fatness, smoothing, rounding.
So what does analog summing "does" technically? It subtly adds imperfections, basically. Different frequency response between left/right channels, different phase response. Also, it degrades the signal to a certain extent. And it adds subtle harmonic distortion. All this is sublty different for every channel.
So, it all comes down to: stereo image, filtering, saturation/distortion. ITB we have EQ, Waveshaping, stereo imaging plugins.
I'll try to create a 16 channels (Dangerous 2Bus+ style) summing mixer inside Reaper. Anyone interested? Suggestions about which plugins to use?
|