A detailed hybrid mixing leeson would be great

[MaartenParticipant]

I've been watching the videos about hybrid mixing, on Youtube, but it doesnt explain much more than the videos about mixing in the box, the difference is that some functions are now hardware, instead of software. What I would like to know is what possibilities there are when combining ITB and analog, in this way. When you're mixing on a desk, you cant leave it set up for a certain mix, all week. Daytime you're working for a customer, evening hours, you're working a on personal project, someone comes with something that has to be fitted in between, somewhere..whatever... To keep changing those mixer settings when changing projects takes up so much time in the end, its just not practical. Besides that, if you end a mix and start another, its very likely you have to revisit the earlier mix to make some slight adjustments. To prevent problems with revisits to past mixes, I'd record the analog processed tracks, or sums of tracks, back to my DAW and when I have to adjust some levels, I adjust those rerecorded tracks.
But if you rerecord things, the ones you have rerecorded dont need to stay on the mixer, so if you, say, rerecord a stereo pair for the toms and move on to the OHs, you can use the channels for the toms now for the OHs, so you would just need 2 tracks, for this example. Or when you sum all snare tracks analog, you'd need 4 or 5 tracks, to rerecord on a single track. So for this I'm wondering, why do we still spread out so many tracks on the mixer, while we can do with just a few?

I put certain tracks from an ITB mix, I did, over the channels from my A&H GS3000 and it seemed like the whole mix came to life! So I sure want to start using my desk and I've been thinking up so many different ways to do this, that I dont know where to start and when I do, halfway I got so many other ideas, I start over... 😛
And I got so much in my head I want to try, I havent even started trying those 2 tube channels of this desk and I know those are awesome!
So there are many possibilities you can think of to put some, or more tracks to the mixer, rerecord, or not rerecord, to come to an end result that mixes analog with digital and I would like to hear some theories from experienced hybrid mixers about why certain techniques are preferred over others. I would like to learn everything besides 'replace this plugin ITB, by the EQ on the desk. 😉
So simply put, lets keep the plugins ITB, for now, and talk about every possible reason for specific ways of summing on the mixer and why rerecord certain things, or maybe why not to rerecord specific things. I'd love to see some videos about this topic popping up, sometime. 😉

[Andrew (AKA Ajay)Participant]

Hi Maarten,

That's a great suggestion for a video.....

I'm always fascinated by the different ways engineers use their hybrid set-ups. I track drums through my old Soundcraft 800B which has made a huge difference to the sound I'm recording. It was such a simple thing to do to get my drums sounding bigger and full of life and to see, in more details, how the bigger guys have set up their hybrid systems would be awesome.

Something to think about.....I have my new Presonus SL32III which has just been updated to include new Plugins inside the mixer itself. Could the ITB concept be evolving to the hybrid systems simply being from one BOX to the other?

This is a great subject for discussion, thanks.

Andrew (AKA Ajay)

[Patrick PeetersParticipant]

Hi Maarten,

Thanks for starting this thread, this has my interest too in some ways on "amateur" level.

Andrew,

You say that your recording through your old Soundcraft 800B has made such a difference. Do you mean that the pre-amps in the console sound better than any pre-amps you used before? And if so, which were they? Do you send the outputs of the Soundcraft through additional pre-amps line-ins afterwards?

Me too am continuously trying to improve the recorded sound on my drumset, hence my question.

Kind regards,
Patrick

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