Mixing w/ Analog Summing Question

[Kerouac]

Alright, so a friend of mine is planning on mixing his album and then he will send it out for mastering. He is renting some gear from a local rental place (DA, Summing Mixer, Buss Compressor) and wants to set it up like this:

His tracks > Apogee DA > Neve Summing Mixer w/ Buss Compressor on Drums for "glue" > Apogee Duet > Logic for a single stereo track, monitored through a Benchmark DA.

Now, I told him that I thought the Buss Compressor wasn't a necessity but he says he wants to do it and it's his coin, so go nuts, man. :idk: But he wants to record it at 24/96khz on the Duet and into Logic, while the source materials were originally recorded at 16/44.1 and occasionally 24/48. He says that mastering engineers will want int in 96 and since he's running it through an analog stage he wants to recapture that "analog sex." :lol: I maintain that if he didn't record his sources in such a way to take advantage of the higher sample rate, it really won't have any positive effect and will end up being dithered down later.

What do you all think? I suppose we can also record it both ways and then see if there is a discernible difference between the takes.

Help me, El Borrachito... you're my only hope! :o

[huskerdude]

Definitely capture it at 96k. Re-recording it at a lower rate is going to make all the fancy analog gear pretty useless. Going through the summing box and a nice compressor is going to change the sound, regardless of what's going in. He might as well capture that sound (assuming he's happy with it) as accurately as possible. Since it's going through an analog stage, the original bitrate, etc isn't really relevant, excepting that it would have probably sounded a bit better to begin with.

[Kerouac]

Definitely capture it at 96k. Re-recording it at a lower rate is going to make all the fancy analog gear pretty useless. Going through the summing box and a nice compressor is going to change the sound, regardless of what's going in. He might as well capture that sound (assuming he's happy with it) as accurately as possible. Since it's going through an analog stage, the original bitrate, etc isn't really relevant, excepting that it would have probably sounded a bit better to begin with.

Maybe I'm being overly pessimistic (or showing my ignorance :o) but running through analog gear wouldn't be able to restore or compensate for truncated frequencies, only affect what's already there. The "fancy analog gear" (http://www.ams-neve.com/Products/Outboard/8816/8816.aspx) will certainly pass on a measure of colouration during the process, but the extended frequency range will be dithered down to 16/44.1 in the end and since that frequency content wasn't recorded in the first place, I really don't understand why we should bother. :idk:

[Kerouac]

John from Massive Mastering sent me this reply:


You make different decisions when mixing through a buss compressor. A dB or two of "glue" is fine ("slamming" it would be a not-so-hot idea for the most part).

As far as sample rates are concerned, I'm with Farview. The target rate is absolutely fine. If he really "needs to" go higher, a multiple of the target rate is by far better as far as the "clean math" used to bring it back to the target.

That all said - I've not tried the Duet at higher rates - A lot of AD's fall apart, many distort terribly, etc., etc. while they might sound perfectly fine at target rates. I'd sort of assume the Duet would be fine, but that's just an assumption.

[El Borrachito]

Higher sample rates for sure!
Going 88.2 makes sense in terms of the "clean math" argument. Maybe do another pass at 96k just for posterity. Either way 24bit!
If your going to do the analog summing mixer thing, then you might as well take advantage of the opportunity to use an analog buss compressor.
You should be OK with the apogees. I wouldn't necessarily try this with low end AD/DA gear.

How about going on to 1/2"?
Here's a great trick:
Mix on to 1/2", then as soon as you are done, rent a bitchin A/D (Genex, Lavery, whatever) for a day and run the stuff off to 96k 24bit audio from the same 1/2" machine while it's still aligned and set up the way you were mixing into it.