Analog summing emulation idea

[Kiwiburger]

I just had a worrying experience that has caused me to think up a theory why analog summing might be working it's magic (and how to emulate it). It seems this is a highly debated subject, and so far most people agree it's the noise and distortion of conversion and analog gear that explains the difference. This - I think - is a major new piece to the puzzle ...

I have a small studio rig in my home, away from my main studio, for messing with Cubase SX and experimenting with new toys and plugins. I use a Korg Z1, a Pentium IV with an Audiophile 2496, into a Mackie mixer and use Sennhieser HD280 headphones. Very useful, and I get to hear stuff I might miss with my monitors in the bigger room.

I was evaluating a reverb with a sampled hand clap, and I decided to try extreme left and right hand panning. I noticed that the exact same sample appeared to sound different from left to right. One side sounded faintly louder and brighter, but noticable. I was worried that maybe my hearing had changed a little.

Well - it turned out that my Mackie mixer (or possibly the Audiophile card) colors the sound slightly differently left and right. If I swap the cables around, I hear the difference in the other ear. (Phew).

Now this lead me to thinking. Analog gear depends very much on resistors and capacitors for level and eq and impedance matching, etc. We all know that components come in different quality levels, and different tolerances. Cheaper stuff will use low tolerance components. Higher end stuff might use 1% tolerance components or better. But still - tolerance is tolerance, and even 1% can have a significant effect that will be noticable.

The thing about DSP summing, mixing, eq'ing is that it is deadly accurate. Mathematically precise. Sample accurate. Boring even.

I've just realised that the best built analog summing device is going to nowhere near as accurate - even with 1% tolerance parts. That means that - like my Mackie mixer - left and right channels are going to sound slightly different. The pan will not be exactly zero at the centre detent. Even the eq 'sound' - even if no eq is activated - is going to be slightly different on each channel - within component tolerances.

Also - because it takes time for current to flow through longer circuits than throught shorter circuits, there will be subtle phase differences. Very subtle - I think the panning and eq effects will be more noticable - simply because of parts tolerances being fairly wide and fairly random.

As well as the noise and distortion - I think this explains the perception of better stereo imaging and more interesting mix sound.

With DAWs, there is a tendency to work to numbers. All the tracks we want centred, we probably set to exact centre. And with DSP, exact centre is exact centre. And the signal is perfectly equal each side. No wonder it's a little boring - and psycoacoustically, this has to sound a bit wrong. No mix of real musicians could ever be exactly all in the same spot.

I think, mix them up a bit.

Maybe somebody could make an Analogiser plugin. It could simply apply a random offset to panning and a random subtle eq change between each side. Maybe the odd phase shift by a sample. Maybe the plugin could be programmed so that these subtle changes are randomised - maybe using the plugin selection time to seed the randomiser. That way, you could insert the plugins on every track, and they would all be slightly different. Maybe choose a tolerance range. Or emulate various mixers - from SSL to Behringer perhaps for a wide range of extremes. A hint of saturation and even extremely low level white noise - also randomised, within user parameters.

Might work ...

I hereby submit this idea into the public domain - so any dsp developer can use this idea, for free or commercial use.

[Ziggy!!]

Originally Posted by Kiwiburger

This - I think - is a major new piece to the puzzle ...

New? Maybe if it were 2002.


How about an alternate view. Analog audio is perfect. It is accurate and musicial and an inspiration to work with.

Digital, while mathematically perfect in application it is not perfect in reality. Lets face it, analog audio electronics has atleast half a century headstart on digital audio electronics and application. That is a lot of catching up to do. While digital may crunch numbers perfectly, what happens if those numbers aren't accurate to begin with?

Im sure someone out there is thinking "but hey, my digital gear sounds great!"... I don't disagree so does mine! But so did my Digidesign 888 when I first got it in 1998. It sounded great until I got the latest and greatest that sounds better... Digital captures a process which is constant and continuous in time by means of periodic events. Over 100dB of dynamic range that are recorded to 24 different steps. All of which is going to affect any mathematics involved during mixing like level changes... eqing, compressing, panning, etc, etc.

Sure it may be the best digital sound we have ever acheived but it won't be the best and it is far from perfect. I refuse to believe that analog's tone is accredited to its indescrepancies, but rather years of reseach and design.

Digital needs to (and will) improve at being digital...

[Kiwiburger]

But that's just it ... digital keeps getting better, which is great for some things. But it also seems that the better it gets, the more boring it all is, and we are looking for ways to mess it up. Hence the current interest in analog summing.

The 'new' part for me is this (and i've never read anyone put it this way before) ...

Analog is more messed up than we think. 1% tolerance in components means a lot more variation than we really think about. Centre pan is not 100% accurate for any of your pan pots. The sound between left and right channels is never 100% exactly the same.

I have never seen a plugin that sets about to introduce a random 1% or 2% or 4% 'tolerance' into DSP signal flow. Sure, we see a lot of saturation effects, and even noise effects to achieve analog sound. I've yet to see panning or left/right tonality messed up on purpose.

It's something we could do consciously - with effort. Because analog boards are just so random that it's done for you. And I really think this does explain the greater sense of depth and space.

Maybe everyone has thought about it this way before. If so - were are the plugins?

[celticrogues]

Although I seem to have read about this idea somewhere before, I still think it is a great one. My question for you though: Why do you need a plug in to make it work for you? (It seems a bit ironic to me to rely on a digital algorithm to make your other digital algorithms less precise) When I first heard this idea, I experimented with it a bit by hand - not panning everything to mathematically perfect positions, etc, and I think it really helped my mixes a lot. I have since obtained a control surface to mix on, and this has helped even more. It allows me to stop mixing by the numbers and just use my ears - when I look up at the monitor stuff isn't mathematically perfect, but my mixes sound lively and good. I have even experimented with turning off my monitor and just mixing on the control surface.I guess my point is just that you can do this by hand right now and it will improve your sound - no need to wait for a plug to do it for you.
Cheers,
-Mike

[Ziggy!!]

Originally Posted by Kiwiburger

Maybe everyone has thought about it this way before. If so - were are the plugins?

They realised that there is a heck of a lot more to analog sound than just component tolerances... For example, the reason why most people use analog summing is for greater depth and clarity, not to overcome "boring digital"... "Boring digital" provoked a whole horde of analog distortion plugins and an obsession for valve gear. If you want something to overcome "boring digital" there is a list of plugins longer than my arm...

The greater depth and clarity of analog is from design application, not component tolerences. If it were because of component tolerences your mackie desk would be the greatest desk on the planet. If I walked into a studio and the SSL experienced that same behaviour that your mackie did I would consider it broken.

Analog doesn't sound better because of "randomness" or because it is "messed up". It sounds better because it is continuous... How many different degrees of panning exist in a Daw? 100 each side of centre... How many exist on an analog desk? Quite possibly an infinate amount. It is continously variable via the pan knob. Same with the volume fader, or eq gain or frequency or Q controls. It is not randomness that digital is lacking it is continuity. A continuity which is removed from the first stage of analog to digital conversion. While on paper or even in application this lack of continuity might not be unbearable it is still a long way off analog.

If you are going to make to make this plug in you better add a "hand matched" option. Even though most resistors are manufactured with 1%, 2%, 5% tolerances, most manufacturers hand-match critical components to within .001 or .0001. Im not sure a DAW could even handle that kind of "randomness" since most of them handle dynamic range in 0.1dB steps I believe.

[Kiwiburger]

Thanks Mike - good idea about using a control surface and ignoring the numbers.

Ziggy - from what I hear from Bob katz and others, they can't really tell if a mix has been summed digital or analog. It's largely a crock - and any differences are caused elsewhere.

I doubt that it matters how many pan positions there are - 100 each side is plenty. If you have 24 tracks, you only need 24 pan positions for them to be all different. It was the common practice of having many tracks pefectly centred that I think is very bad. And I like the idea of a control surface - the cheap pots and resistors in those would definatlely randomise things.

24 bits has 16million odd numbers. I know only about 20 bits are actually used for audio - but basically dynamic range is not an issue with digital. It was more of an issue with analog.

I agree that too much randomness can be bad. An SSL will be better than a Mackie - sure. But it will still be far more random than dsp maths.

The silly thing is that even when the best analog gear is used, the end product is reduced to 24 or 16 bits - and yet the perceived 'analogness' remains. The problem is not in the resolution. And since digital can record and playback analog sound, it is theoretically possible to emulate it to the point that nobody can tell.

It's an interesting idea that i'll use from now on. (I'm not claiming it's original - just that i'd never thought of it before I had that experience with my dodgy Mackie).

[wwittman]

Interestingly all of my favourite records have things left, right or dead centre.
Not "panned" to a thousand different places.

I rarely ever engage the pan pots... only switch things to L, R or C.

And while Bob Katz may "not be able to tell" listening to a mix whether it was done this way or that, that has nothing to do with being given two mixes and simply thinking "this one sounds BETTER than that one"

what Bob, said is that he hears some lousy analogue mixes and some good digital ones.

that doesn't mean that given the SAME mix done both ways he might not have a preference.

And in any event, it doesn't dismiss MY preferences.

The best digital available today sounds not nearly as good as the best analogue.
And it's NOT true that digital can reproduce that sound.

There is a clear moment in mastering when we are playing back thge analogue 2 track into the desk.. and there is that button that you can press.
This way and you hear the analogue through all the eq and whatever, and THIS way and you hear the same thing but through the A-D and D-A back.
and it's ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS a disappointment.

in NO way does the 16 bit 44.1 digital version sound anywhere NEAR as good as the analogue original.
But it's a compromise we HAVE to make to sell CD's.

so your premise that digital can reprodice that sound after analogue has "added" whatever it adds, is, in my strongly held view, wrong.

digital LOSES a good deal of the sound you start with.

leaving analogue out of the picture entirely... if you start by listening to the whole band balanced on the console playing LIVE before it hits any recorder, and then switch to listening to it through ProTools or whatever... that TOO is a disappointment.

there TOO, analogue tape sounds MORE like the live music being put into it.

You can't add analogue sound to digital anymore than you can add the resolution of an oil painting to a reproduced newspaper photo. there are only so many dots.

but hey.. you can believe what you want.

[Ziggy!!]

Originally Posted by wwittman

so your premise that digital can reprodice that sound after analogue has "added" whatever it adds, is, in my strongly held view, wrong.

Yes! Thats what I was getting at...

You can't add analogue sound to digital anymore than you can add the resolution of an oil painting to a reproduced newspaper photo. there are only so many dots.

I like that.

Interestingly all of my favourite records have things left, right or dead centre.
Not "panned" to a thousand different places.

I agree entirely, It was just an example of how the lack of digital resolution (when compared to analog) is present in all parts of digital. All of it starting at the initial conversion.

but basically dynamic range is not an issue with digital. It was more of an issue with analog.

Analog probably retains more detail and precision in 10dB's than what digital does in its entire 144.50dB theoretical dynamic range.

The problem is not in the resolution. And since digital can record and playback analog sound, it is theoretically possible to emulate it to the point that nobody can tell.

They already are trying to emulate it... thats what the filters are for in converters. Otherwise we'd be left with the jagged jigsaw of straight lines that is digital audio.

[Kiwiburger]

Thanks William - I appreciate your comments. I love your work on Relish especially - that was an album I had to buy for it's sound, and it's a bit of a reference for me.

I know analog is the ultimate, but i'm low budget - and posting in the Low End Theory I would expect most low enders will be using digital out of necessity.

I appreciate your comments about the best records having hard Left, Right, Centred tracks. I've been listening to my Beatles collection using Mid/Side to see what they were doing, and I hear a lot of hard panning that certainly works well.

Back to reality - most of us low ender's are stuck with using DAWS, but we really want to sound as analog as we can get. I'm investing more in hardware now, to get as much analog vibe before the box. And reamping boxes, and probably will go to some outboard across the 2-bus - if not partial analog summing.

But I can't get around using digital, or convertors. And in the end, I will be comparing my CD's with other CD's, such as Abbey Road, or Relish. So the end result I want is digital. And I don't really care what it takes to get that end result.

I'm know there is desirable randomness in analog - even tape speed variations. Digital can emulate a lot of things, and it can do some things that analog never could. It's not practical to diss digital, because it's also not practical to use tape anymore. On a low end budget that is.

[Kiwiburger]

so your premise that digital can reprodice that sound after analogue has "added" whatever it adds, is, in my strongly held view, wrong.

Just to clarify what I mean ... many of us can put on a CD, and point out the highly desirable "analog" sound that we want. Whatever desirable things that analog gear imparts, it shines through the 16 bit 44.1kHz of a consumer CD player. It even shines through an MP3. I have no doubt it sounds better straight off the desk, before the convertors, but that isn't reality for most people.

So while you can't turn a digital painting into a Rembrant - you can turn a digital painting into a scanned Rembrant.

[max cooper]

Originally Posted by wwittman

digital LOSES a good deal of the sound you start with.

Yes. By definition.

[farjedi]

It's all very well going on about how great 2" tape is before it's turned into horrible 1's and 0's but the point of the exercise is to get your musical ideas in as many peoples ears as possible.
Kiwiburger explained himself well, I thought. Digital is capable of emulating Analog that has been converted back into digital, at least theoretically, providing someone can figure out the behaviour and create the program. Providing the human race survives the next 50 years this will happen, no doubt. By then no one will remember how analog 2" tape sounded in the control room before conversion, frankly no one will care.
On the whole panning law subject, I'm not convinced this will create an analog sound but I'll give it a try.

[max cooper]

Originally Posted by farjedi

It's all very well going on about how great 2" tape is before it's turned into horrible 1's and 0's but the point of the exercise is to get your musical ideas in as many peoples ears as possible.

I agree, and this, to me is more important than any format, technology or samplerate.

but at the same time, I think the technology is cutting out some of the "musicalness" of music.

[warhead]

It's hard to screw up a good song.

War

[Ziggy!!]

Originally Posted by farjedi

. Digital is capable of emulating Analog that has been converted back into digital, at least theoretically.

It is emulating a stereo signal, yes... but thats a far cry from the entire process of mixing. I disagree with the analogy that digital can playback an analog stereo mix and retain some of its initial character so it must be able to create that analog character.

Analog audio, whether it exists as an acoustic sound wave or voltage probably never exists as a bunch of straight lines. Yet digital still approximates this by using straight lines to map something that is continuously variable and very curvy in reality. This approximation is then "number crunched" with other lower resolution (in comparision to analog) approximations like pan and fader math not to mention compression and eq. While the numbers may be crunched perfectly from a mathematical stand point, digital audio has always been an approximation from the absolute beginning anyway... Does this approximation have an effect on the clarity and depth of the final product?

Like Kiwi said about digital; "and it can do some things that analog never could."

Digital has the potential to offer things that analog never will so why is it necessary to emulate when you can invent? Im in no way dissing digital, I use it everyday. I am dissing the idea that digital can be anything like analog, and that the reason why analog sounds good is because of randomness. That is what im dissing. Digital has the potential to be the cleanest means of record and playback we have ever had. Why ruin it with pseudo emulations of things that it will probably never equal in sonic terms? Why not make digital the best at what it does well... leave analog to do what it does best. Both are equally useful and valid tools.

Adding randomness to a daw would be like trying to polishing a turd. Randomness in a high end analog console probably exists to a degree that the resolution of digital audio could never handle anyway. Well not yet...


The idea that digital is "accurate" or "perfect" or "precise" is a joke... If you think it is, you have been reading to many digidesign papers...

[Ziggy!!]

Originally Posted by max cooper

I agree, and this, to me is more important than any format, technology or samplerate.

but at the same time, I think the technology is cutting out some of the "musicalness" of music.

Absolutely... Randy Jackson was talking on letterman a few months ago about the lack of emotional perfection in music today, and how technology is putting more emphasis on audio and performance perfection instead.

[Kiwiburger]

"Digital has the potential to be the cleanest means of record and playback we have ever had." followed by "The idea that digital is "accurate" or "perfect" or "precise" is a joke... If you think it is, you have been reading to many digidesign papers..."

What happened there?

Actually - I do very much agree that Digital should be perfected as digital. Any attempts at making digital sound more analog should be kept seperate as an optional effect. But if they sound good, why shouldn't we use them?

I'm an ITB guy (for now anyway). And I often see the OTB guys stating that as soon as they run their mix through an analog summing box, the results are instant and obvious and so much better. I'm just trying to get my head around why the hell this should be.

Forget tape - these guys are using Protools or whatever. They just seem to like analog summing. WHy? We know there is more noise? Noise - meh! We know there is more distortion - ok, distortion I can dig.

But these guys say its "greater depth" and "greater stereo seperation"? What causes that? Or do you think I could sell these guys the Eiffel Tower and some snake oil to keep it from squeaking?

I had just never though much about the "spacious" effect of having dissimilar left/right signals - because analog stuff is never perfect - there are tolerances. My crappy Mackie mixer makes a mono sample sound slightly stereo - it's not just my ears, it's because of this analog characteristic.

The exact argument that analog has vasty more shades of decibels than digital is exactly my point here. A temperature change in the room will affect analog - not digital.

When your switch or pan your analog signal to Centre - there is no way it will be exactly the same either side - because of this ininitely variable analogness. (Regardless of whether you pan or switch - an analog path is a stream of electrons with brownian movement and all sorts of random fuzziness). If you have 12 tracks panned centre, none of them will be panned exactly the same, toi the nearest electron. Not possible.

With digital - the software simply copies exactly the same audio stream to both sides - there is mathematically zero difference between each side. And if you have 12 tracks panned centre, they will get the same treatment. Exactly the same.

Our ears and brains can pick up on subtle differences. I don't think that sort of difference is particularly subtle.

It's just an idea - forget it.

[Ziggy!!]

Originally Posted by Kiwiburger

"Digital has the potential to be the cleanest means of record and playback we have ever had." followed by "The idea that digital is "accurate" or "perfect" or "precise" is a joke... If you think it is, you have been reading to many digidesign papers..."

What happened there?

potential
a. possible; latent; having power to become;

ie. It is not there yet. Any allusion to digital being perfect or accurate or precise as it stands is a premature to say the least. Any notion that digital will not improve as time passes is naive.

While analog summing may have distortion and noise the biggest difference it has to digital is continuity... the ability to deal with and treat sources in a continuously variable way. Once digital audio leaves the DAW as an analog waveform (while still an approximation of the original source) it is treated in true realtime. Not 96000 times a second, but continuously. Curves are treated as curves... Add analog eq's, compressors, etc... to the summing box. They still treat sound in a continuous way. The result is not approximated, even given variations. The result will be what is actually happening. It is the sum of an event. Digital approximates the initial numbers then will sum them... a process which is can never be accurate.

Digital audio probably has more inaccurate variations and intolerances than an analog console. Inaccuracies which are applied to every single digital process. Forget to the nearest electron. 96000 samples a second won't get you anywhere near that kind of resolution.

Analog being a bunch of intolerences would be all well and good if digital was accurate, but even digital audio passes through analog stages... applied to individual variations...

The exact argument that analog has vasty more shades of decibels than digital is exactly my point here. A temperature change in the room will affect analog - not digital.

Yes this is exactly my arguement! For digital to be able to handle any effect of the temperature change in a room it must first be able to handle the vastly more shades of decibels first.

an analog path is a stream of electrons

. You hit the nail on the head. An analog path is a stream of continuous electrons... like the minute hand on an analog clock. It is smooth and continuous and probably remains so at any resolution. Passing every minute, every second, every millisecond and beyond...

Digital audio is like the second hand... It ticks... it is far from continuous and it lacks great chunks of infomation that fall between each second... instead it approximates. An approximation which is probably far less accurate than the slight variation that may occur with the minute hand.

[Kiwiburger]

Our ears have a finite number of hairs that can detect a finite number of frequencies. (Which is why performers sing off key when the monitor is too loud)

There is a poin't where digital sound is going to be better than we need.

My old cassette 4 tracks were analog - and they were shit. I put in good sound, I got white noise and dark, wobbly sound out. But it was all analog, right?

Cubase SX 32 bit float 96kHz with Lucid converters is much, much better than analog cassette. I know I could spend the money and get Prism converters, and that would be even better.

But i'm making 16 bit 44.1kHz CD's for people who will possibly create MP3's out of them ...

There is a point of diminishing returns.

And yet - there is something good about analog sound that I can hear through the digital medium ...

Analog has weaknesses
Digital has weaknesses

Our current hybrids of both are marrying the worst of each technology. They are also marrying the best of each technology.
All things considered - our ears don't seem to mind that much.

[John Suitcase]

I think you have to keep in mind that you can't hear digital sound (at least not until they can put electrodes into your brain.) All sound has to travel through some wires, some speakers, some air...

Digital resolution isn't as good as analogue, of course, but it technically can be. There is an upward limit on the resolution of analogue sound, inasmuch as it's created using electrons, and a finite number of particles.

There's good digital and bad digital, good analogue and bad analogue.

Personally, I think the analogue summing fans are just working around a headroom issue in most DAWs. Mix with more headroom, and suddenly ITB sounds damn good.

Does anyone make a Wow and Flutter plug-in?

In the end, you're moving diaphragms, both at the mic and the speaker. Digital resolution is very good, and able to move speakers very well.

Analogue does it well, too, though with more distortion and noise (much of it pleasant, of course).

But nothing I've ever heard sounds the same as being in the room with the band. Not even close.

We still have a long way to go, and I think a large part of that is mics, the stereo paradigm, handling of subsonic and supersonic frequencies, etc.

Eventually, digital will produce sound that far surpasses analogue, but it will be digital's ability to reproduce a huge frequency spectrum that will make the difference. Once we have mics and methods that exploit that ability, of course.

Fun stuff!

[farjedi]

Interesting stuff, I think.
Kiwiburger, so if a centred panpot won't necessarily play the signal at equal velocity through both speakers, is it a possibility that there could be slight shifts from one speaker to another, minute fluctuations? That could be interesting.

[sleepwalker]

Originally Posted by Kiwiburger

Our ears have a finite number of hairs that can detect a finite number of frequencies. (Which is why performers sing off key when the monitor is too loud)

Pretty sure you're off base here. Frequencies are perceived differently at different volumes, as volume rises, your ear's frequency response flattens out a bit. If your monitor or headphone mix is too loud, the lower frequencies(<500Hz), and to a lesser extent, higher frequencies(>6kHz) will be relatively louder now.

If they're singing flat, you can lower the bass and they might pull up a little bit. That said, this equal loudness curve isn't the real problem with off pitch singing with headphones or monitors. It's just not natural. That's why a lot of people take one ear off the headphones while singing in the studio. They can actually hear their "real" voice inside their head.

[Brad McGowan]

Originally Posted by John Suitcase

There's good digital and bad digital, good analogue and bad analogue.

Personally, I think the analogue summing fans are just working around a headroom issue in most DAWs. Mix with more headroom, and suddenly ITB sounds damn good.

Does anyone make a Wow and Flutter plug-in?

In the end, you're moving diaphragms, both at the mic and the speaker. Digital resolution is very good, and able to move speakers very well.

Analogue does it well, too, though with more distortion and noise (much of it pleasant, of course). Fun stuff!

You make an interesting point about headroom and summing. I want to share an experience I had recently with these two. Earlier this year I mixed an album OTB using a DIY summing box and API preamps. I determined early on in the process of mixing after comparing ITB and OTB mixes for this project that the OTB results were head and shoulders better than was was happening ITB. In comparison, the mixes had all that stuff people generally attribute to OTB mixing: wider, deeper, more engaging, etc. Recently I upgraded my converters to some brand new Mytek. I did a project last week using the new coverters and decided to do the same comparison of ITB versus OTB. I tried my summing box and the API's again. I also tried just running my 2-channel mix (summed in the computer) into the API by way of a custom transformer box. The weird thing was that the OTB mixes now sounded slightly smaller and flatter in comparison to my ITB mix. I was dumbfounded. How could that be? I was even using nicer D/A this time around. What had happened? The project I did earlier in the year had much more agressive levels and less headroom throughout all channels. The second project had much more conservative recording levels and proper headroom was maintained at every step of the mix.

I think the lesson I learned is that it really just comes down to running gear in the sweet spot. Different gear has different sweet spots. And that every project is different. No one solution is going to be perfect every time.

Brad

[John Suitcase]

I agree that each project is different, some benefit from OTB, some don't (assuming you do ITB corrrectly).

Back to the idea of some "randomization" plug-in, it does make some sense. I mean, drum machines have "humanize" functions, and some minor irregularity does, I think, engage our ears and minds in a way that perfect repetition does not.

I may play around with the ideas presetend here, although I suspect that the greatest benefits may be heard by people doing electronic music, or using a lot of editing.

Should the randomization be only along the dimensions of distortion, phase, eq, volume, and panning? Or should these be randomized along the "time" axis as well, so that the amount of distortion changes slightly over the course of the song?

It would be interesting to have a plug-in that can make, say, .01% adjustments to the selected elements (eq, volume, etc) at random intervals.

Sort of an audio fractalization, type thing...

[petsematary]

Can someone explain to a n00b what summing is?

[farjedi]

It's like a mixing desk without eq, faders and mic pres. Some are powered, some you have to hook up mic pres to, like the fulcrom. Supposed to sound good, although there is plenty of speculation as to it's real worth. Another bonus I guess is you can patch it up and intergrate other hardware into the equation.

[username]

thats not quite accurate.. and may confuse a little.. so I'll just clarify...

summing is adding two (or more) signals (ie.. tracks of audio) together.. theres alot of debate around about digital summing (eg.. in protools or nuendo) vs analog summing (on a console on a dedicated "summing box) this is also known as in the box (ITB) and out of the box (OTB) in the box being digital (because you remain in the computer.. box) and out of the box being analog (because you come out of the box)

Hope that clears it up for you