A few years back I had sold him an Inward 16 x 2 which he used in conjunction with a custom built Neve 1084 rack which we built to sum 8 channels into stereo via original 1272 amplifiers. Dave is an advocate of “mixing outside the box” and was a panelist at the most recent Tape op convention on this subject. Knowing he was going to be speaking at the convention we produced our shoot out to be as fair as possible, so that we could display the results for the other convention goers. Now these results are available for download on the Vintage King website. The mixers involved are; the API 8200, Chandler TG Mixer, Inward Connections 16 x 2, Neve 8816, SPL Mix Dream, Tonelux and a Protools “bounce to disk” for comparison. The outbound conversion was through Digidesign 192’s and the inbound stereo track was printed through the UA 2196. We did our best to ensure the levels were matched every step of the way.Although most of these mixers offer 16 input channels, we only had one API 8200, which has 8 inputs. To keep an even playing field we only used 8 inputs on every other mixer. There is a definite performance improvement when more channels are stemmed out of a DAW but this demonstration still shows the qualities and tone each of the mixers impart. We did a series of mixes with an electronic track by the group Baldwin Brothers (TVT) as well as a rock track by Acute (Help).The stereo mixes were printed back into protools and then I converted the files to MP3 directly from Protools using Digidesigns MP3 encoder. For best comparison import the files into a session and A/B away.

Please feel free to call or write me for more information or arrange a shootout of your own.