StudioLive vs. Behringer vs. ITB Synth Tracking and Mixing Battle Royale!

[Derp]

Let me preface this by saying that this is NOT in any way a scientific test!

I recently picked up a Behringer MX3282A for a friend of mine whose mixer spontaneously combusted on him and it's been having to live in my studio until he comes down here from the middle-of-nowhere to pick it up. I've recently been on the fence about jumping ship on my PreSonus StudioLives to go back to analog mixing OTB or at least going back to ITB and getting a summing mixer to slap on the back end of my DAW. So I figured that since I've got this Behry on my hands anyway, why not put together a throwaway track and mix it on the SL's, the MX3282A, and ITB in turn to see how it turns out?

Synth duties are as such:
Sequencing - Akai MPC1000
Drums - Drumstation w/Kick sent to its own channel for separate processing
Percussion Loops - Akai MPC (one output sent through Ensoniq DP/4)
Bass - Dot Com Modular
Acidish Lead - TBX-303 (ran though a DOD TEC4X)
Distorted Lead - Spectral Audio Syntrack (sent through DP/4)
Trance Lead - Akai AX80 (sent through DP/4)

The idea with the first line of tests was to put them all on equal ground, so for the first part, we're just using gain faders and EQ's.

Test 1 is a mixdown from the StudioLives as the synths were being recorded (essentially a live mix.) EQ's and reverbs come from the StudioLives themselves.

Test 2 is a mixdown from the StudioLives where the tracks were sent back to the SL's for mixing, but with none of the settings changed from Test 1. This essentially makes for a test of the DA conversion on the SL's as there are questions about the quality of the DA converters on the SL's.

Test 3 is the Behringer Mixdown. The EQ's are from the MX3282A and the aux send reverb is a Peavey AddVerb II. The master outs were recorded to the computron from a stereo channel on the SL's.

Test 4 is where the individual tracks had been recorded in from the inputs of the SL's and then mixed ITB in Reaper. Channel EQ's were handled by SmartElectronix's Nyquist EQ and the send/return reverb is DaSample's GlaceVerb.

After this came the fun part where I went back and abused the functions unique to the SL's and ITB.

So for Test 5, I went up to the SL's and entered A, B, A, C, A, B, B, Scorpion screamed "GET OVER HERE!" and as the tracks got fed from the DAW back to the SL's, the channel compressors were engaged, the master bus compressor was engaged, and the master bus EQ was engaged.

At this point, I'd like to stop and apologize for the mixing being kinda crappy on Test 5. Like I said at the beginning, this is NOT a scientific test at all!

Finally, Test 6 is where I got on Reaper, entered Down, Up, Left, Left, A, Right, Down, and Dan Forden popped up out of nowhere to yell "Toasty!!!" Here, Nyquist was in play, Blockfish was used for compression on a few channels, ReaComp (Reaper's compressor) was put on the bassline for some of that awesome SIDECHAIN!!!, and GMulti was put on the master bus for multiband compression.

And in the post after this, I'll have some snippets of the tracks in 16-bit 44.1khz .wav files if you'd prefer to put the files under extra scrutiny without dealing with mp3 compression.

So what does everybody here think? DISCUSS!!!

[Derp]

Everybody do the .WAV!

[omegaomega]

I like n#1 the most! Very clear sound, full and pleasant!
Then I like n#3, it sounds more analog and warm but a quite muddy. I like the reverb of n#3 though, a lot! Much better than n#1's reverb. It gives a nice club vibe to the track.

The worst sounding I think is the Reaper mix. By far!

Listening on AKG ear plugs on my laptop's soundcard, so maybe I'm wrong, but I think n#1 with the reverb from the intro of n#3 would sound the best overall.

Interesting test!

[Derp]

Nobody else? I thought for sure that this would be a more active topic than this.

@omegaomega, couldn't agree more on the muddiness of Test 3. Those Behringer EQ's kinda sorta maybe suck! XD

[grumphh]

Problem is to me that you apparently do separate mixdowns so that in the end your settings influence the result more than the audio path.

E.g. in 1 vs 3 the "donk" bass is quite different in volume so that i hear differences in your fader movements rather than the hardware differences.

Or at least that is how it appears to me.

[omegaomega]

Originally Posted by Derp

@omegaomega, couldn't agree more on the muddiness of Test 3. Those Behringer EQ's kinda sorta maybe suck! XD

I think it is the overall signal path that stinks with most behringer mixers. Not necessarily just the eqs.
I have a friend who always buys the latest behringer mixer and I recognized instantly the unmissable sonic signature of the beast. His latest buy was the 2442FX and it sounded very similar to this. No definition and body.
But good for the money of course.

The effects were not bad though, in general the Virtualizer fx engine can somehow work on synths.
After he bought an A&H ZED mixer (I think the 22-FX) he was shocked at the difference!

The only behringer mixer that I really liked was the DDX3216, it was in a different league and you could really make it work.

I'm very surprised by how good the StudioLive sounds by the way in your song! And how bad the Reaper mix sounds for that matter!
Studio Live must be a really great piece of gear!
The mix sounds alive polished and professional yet not sterile; very balanced and probably the preamps of this mixer rock, or what?!