Two contentious issues in modern audio production: Audio summing and audio clocking. In both cases they often divide opinions, some consider them to be the holy grail of great sound and others think both things are hype, created to sell more stuff.

We decided to give you the chance to have your say, we asked our community to answer two polls and also gives their thoughts on both technologies.

Audio Summing

Here are the results of the poll.

Of those who have tried analogue summing 36% said they wouldn’t mix without it, whereas around half (19%) said they had tried it but it makes no difference in their opinion. 26% said they wanted to try using analogue summing, with 18% saying they didn’t want to try it as they felt mixing in the box was just as good.

Community member Matt Foster said;

“I've tried analogue summing and it has a cool sound, but not one I prefer on every project over ITB”

John G said;

“My actual answer would be yes, I hear a difference, but it's not always the sound I want.”

Matthew Tryba made a good point;

“I’ve used both scenarios… makes maybe the tiniest difference, but we should all really be focusing our mental energy on writing better songs and capturing better performances, it’s 10,000 times more impactful than the summing and clocking.”

Ian Z Anderson said;

“These days I tend to only use analog summing (Matrix 2 - faders at 0, 8 stereo stems) on rock. I've sent jazz clients ITB and OTB mixes (stereo stems summed as above) and all of my regular clients have chosen ITB every time. Also recently had pop-punk and metal bands choose the ITB summing over the OTB summing. Go figure. I have to admit it really blows my mind just how far ITB mixing has come in the past 10 years or so.”

So, on number alone summing is a winner for those who have tried it.

External Clocking

Here are the results of the poll.

Rob Williams said;

“I get the concept of external summing and if I owned a high enough quality piece of hardware I might well give it a go. But I don't. Years ago when I worked in pro audio retail we proved to ourselves and the engineers we worked with that an external Apogee clock source made a noticeable difference to Pro Tools HD systems. Since then interface hardware has improved so much that I really don't think it's necessary any more, as long as any digital hardware you have is all running on the same clock, and that it's the best one you have. I use RME and I don't think there's anything more stable than that now.”

Ian Z Anderson said;

“As for clocking, I have 4 interfaces, so external it is, for better or worse.”

Christophe Darlot said;

“We long know that the only case where an external clock *might* help is when we use more than one converting device. If you clock a converter with an external clock, it will always perform worse than with its internal clock. Please read the white papers of experts such as Dan Lavry who is very clear on this point. External clocking will always bring more jitter than internal clocking.”

Summary

Given the febrile nature these debates normally engender we were pleasantly surprised by both the numbers in the poll and the quality of the debate.

What the discussion has shown is that it seems that analogue hardware summing is well worth exploring. It’s not better or worse, but different.

Our poll suggests that those who use external clocking for their audio devices can hear a difference. However, the science suggest that clocks in modern audio interfaces when used in a single interface scenario, will not benefit from the use of an external clock.

Discuss.