With almost 20 years in live sound mixing, engineer David Kimmell ventured into a studio of his own – only to find mixing in-the-box to be an unrewarding experience. But from ‘fighting the mix constantly’, he now reckons to have rekindled his mixing joy following the addition of a Dangerous D-Box summing and monitoring unit to his set-up.

‘I come from the live world, and mixing on a killer analogue desk is a joy. For years I tried to capture that feeling and reproduce it in the studio, but once I tried to mix everything down in the computer -in-the-box-it became work, and the joy was lost. When I got the D-Box it removed that wall. Now I have the best of both worlds. The power of the computer matched to the sonic chocolate that is analogue, and that’s just the summing. Add in all the other features of the D-Box and it truly ties the studio together.

Kimmell has mixed a wide variety of music styles over the past year in his Indianapolis-based Masthead Audio studios, including tracks for progressive rock group Ladymoon (where he recorded the band live and then mixed), bluegrass groups Whipstitch Sallies and Flatland Harmony Experiment, EDM’s Digital Tape Machine and Turbo Suit, and experimental hip-hop act DAM!. ‘I like the variety,’ he says. ‘That was my favourite thing about mixing live – almost every show is completely different.’

‘The D-Box and BAX EQ are now both integral parts of my studio configuration,’ he continues. ‘The basic nuts and bolts of my studio are a MacBook Pro running Digital Performer and Glyph hard drives, Waves, Melodyne, and other plug-ins. My hardware includes MotU, Eventide and Dynaudio and Yamaha monitors, all with Mogami cabling. As far as how I use Dangerous Music gear, in short, it makes mixing fun again.

‘When mixing in-the-box, pretty much every time I’d add something into the mix I’d have to go back and change other things to make it work. Using the analogue summing in the D-Box it alleviates that problem so I get back that give, the headroom, there’s not that brick wall at the top like there is in-the-box. With analogue summing I can put up all the tracks and mix like I was used to doing.’

Kimmell uses the BAX EQ as the last stage in mixing before recording the stereo mix from the D-Box’s Sum Output back into his interface’s A-D converter.

‘The BAX EQ is the next piece of the puzzle,’ he says. ‘Through mastering music of different genres I’ve found mastering plug-ins to be sterile sounding. The BAX reduces my need for plug-in EQ correction while sounding infinitely cleaner and more musical than software EQ. Plus, the BAX high- and low-pass filters make the A-Ds colour things less, giving me more accuracy in the conversion.

‘I take the stereo mix from the analogue summing into the BAX to clean up the signal and get rid of some of the artefacts at the bottom and the top, and put a little bit of sugar and shine on it, a little bit of punch before it goes back into the computer.

‘One of the other things about having the D-Box is that I have an easy switchover to my other monitors, plus I use the mono button to check the mix,’ he says.

Another valued feature is the digital input: ‘I can monitor what’s going on when the mix is finished,’ he explains. ‘I run stems of audio into the analogue summing, the stereo mix comes out of the D-Box and into the BAX, and then back to my session through the A-D. I can listen through the D-Box’s onboard converter for exactly what it sounds like after the A-D, and after I’ve done some mastering to it.

‘Another benefit of the D-Box is that I have all those monitoring controls in one place. Like speaker switching, input monitoring for analogue or digital inputs, and the headphone amp – which is definitely top of the line – it’s all in one unit. It used to be that the interface was the hub of the computer studio, at this point it’s the D-Box. It’s where I go first, I barely touch the interface anymore.’

On doing some basic mastering for his clients, Kimmell says: ‘I feel that an engineer should be able to give a client the entire process. From that first musical note to something they can put out to the masses. I think the beginning-to-end cohesiveness is a part of what we’ve lost from classic recordings. To further that ideal I’ve begun to master more and more of my clients’ material, providing even more value to them.’

More: www.dangerousmusic.com