Great review! Probably a silly question, but I am assuming that you could use both inputs as mic preamps with independent gain on each? ie. Kick drum mic on 1, Snare drum mic on 2?
As always great video, I like the filming and editing, great job. It would have been interesting to hear the comparison between with and without the mini bus into the bus driver. I personally find (calibrated) summing box to be almost totally useless for ITB mix, analog or hybrid is a different story. I'm not sure what started that trend but if you're ITB splitting your mix in multiple stereo stems into a passive summing box is useless and playing the stereo mix into a stereo hardware is more practical. I think using hardware like the bus driver on the mix bus can be fun, it adds some soft clipping etc, (you probably can approximate it ITB, not as fun but more handy).
I purposefully avoided digging into the summing thin with this video, this was just a demo and I didn’t want to open that can or worms 😂. To me, summing out to more channels is more about the headroom than anything if you’re going to push your outboard gear. You can push more level (collectively) out of your converters when the information is spread out of a few stereo channels as opposed to a single stereo pair. That not as big of a deal with the Bus Driver, as there’s plenty of ways to gain stage in and out to drive it. Regardless of the summing aspect, the Mini Bus is a nice tool to have around for situations like summing together a few synths or something to go into one pair of preamps or something.
@@MillSounds You're right but when summing multiple mics on an amp for example wouldn't you need one more preamp plugged to the output of the mini bus to bring it back to line level? I think one of the few pre rack that had that option was the chandler where you could sum input 1 and input 2. Always nice when you're double miking a cab.
I bet I watched this video 10 times. I actually subscribed to the channel. Love the content. It’s a laidback vibe on your channel. That being said I decided to purchase the bus driver but not the lil sum. I only have a twin x , so the outputs are limited.
@@user-lr3md8fg4m I wasn't hearing a massive difference between the having the mini-bus in or just going into the Bus Driver stereo, I would say the biggest consideration would be how you want to gain stage into it. The Mini Bus is absolutely great if you have some good preamps you wanted to try summing into with a few channels, but I don't think it's necessary for getting good sounds out of the Bus Driver. It sounded just as good to me sending a stereo output to it.
Great track! Super solid recording AND performance. Is that you?
Cool boxes! But that API Box still sounds the best to me!
it sounds excellent ; thanks for the review !
Great review! Probably a silly question, but I am assuming that you could use both inputs as mic preamps with independent gain on each? ie. Kick drum mic on 1, Snare drum mic on 2?
@@hydromag9014 Yes, you’ve got independent control of the level on each channel with the drive knobs.
As always great video, I like the filming and editing, great job. It would have been interesting to hear the comparison between with and without the mini bus into the bus driver.
I personally find (calibrated) summing box to be almost totally useless for ITB mix, analog or hybrid is a different story.
I'm not sure what started that trend but if you're ITB splitting your mix in multiple stereo stems into a passive summing box is useless and playing the stereo mix into a stereo hardware is more practical. I think using hardware like the bus driver on the mix bus can be fun, it adds some soft clipping etc, (you probably can approximate it ITB, not as fun but more handy).
I purposefully avoided digging into the summing thin with this video, this was just a demo and I didn’t want to open that can or worms 😂. To me, summing out to more channels is more about the headroom than anything if you’re going to push your outboard gear. You can push more level (collectively) out of your converters when the information is spread out of a few stereo channels as opposed to a single stereo pair. That not as big of a deal with the Bus Driver, as there’s plenty of ways to gain stage in and out to drive it.
Regardless of the summing aspect, the Mini Bus is a nice tool to have around for situations like summing together a few synths or something to go into one pair of preamps or something.
@@MillSounds You're right but when summing multiple mics on an amp for example wouldn't you need one more preamp plugged to the output of the mini bus to bring it back to line level? I think one of the few pre rack that had that option was the chandler where you could sum input 1 and input 2. Always nice when you're double miking a cab.
What's the price?
The Bus Driver is $450 USD and the Mini Bus is $120 (mcloone.myshopify.com/collections/outboard)
@@MillSoundsThe links not working but I was able to navigate the site to it.
@@richertz Mike's got some issues with the website he's working through... Glad you found it!
I bet I watched this video 10 times. I actually subscribed to the channel. Love the content. It’s a laidback vibe on your channel. That being said I decided to purchase the bus driver but not the lil sum. I only have a twin x , so the outputs are limited.
@@user-lr3md8fg4m I wasn't hearing a massive difference between the having the mini-bus in or just going into the Bus Driver stereo, I would say the biggest consideration would be how you want to gain stage into it. The Mini Bus is absolutely great if you have some good preamps you wanted to try summing into with a few channels, but I don't think it's necessary for getting good sounds out of the Bus Driver. It sounded just as good to me sending a stereo output to it.