Hello. Medium/long time lurker here. I have an all hardware personal project studio in which I make electronic music and dance music. I am looking to come up with my first mix buss chain.

For reference, I am not personally a fan of the current production tendencies associated with "EDM". My ears scream at me that today's tendencies of extreme density, saturation, ambience, width, compression are obvious anti-patterns in music. But that's just my opinion man .. and maybe even barely relevant for this thread.

Also I am somewhat sensitive to price, but if there is not much comparison between two things in different price brackets, then I'm willing to take that fact seriously and potentially spend more now to save later :-/

Some stereo gear that I already have

• CAG HDE-250a (thinking I might put this as something of a "corrective" EQ before compressor, but possibly I'd prefer it after in practice)
• API 2500+ (though I think it maybe "flattens" the space and color too much on the mix so I might just keep this on the drum buss)

Vari-mu compressors that I'm considering (I suspect I don't want it to trigger *too* slowly)

• IGS Tubecore 3U (CHEAP, M/S, mix control)
• Thermionic Culture Phoenix (very very popular and for dance music)
• Gyraf G22 (priced similarly to phoenix, very intriguing features and company)

Broad strokes / sweetening EQ (possibly as last in chain after aforementioned compressor)

• API 5500 (if I think API 2500+ can be the wrong sound change for an entire mix, would I think that about this too?)
• IGS Rubber Bands (CHEAP, stereo tube pultec)
• Gyraf G23-S (intriguing company, smaller moves/more for mastering applications?)
• and then this list starts to ramble on with more and more and more EQs I've come across at some point or another: IGS Tilt N' Bands, Hendyamps Michaelangelo, TK Audio TK-lizer 2, Retro 2A3, Thermionic Culture Swift, but whew some of that is pricey

I can appreciate aiming for a set of complementary gear--not picking everything from a single kind of sound or color. Also of course welcome to hearing about other gear and other approaches.

Well now all I can do is hope that folks who have first hand experience with some of this gear enjoy participating in this sort of thread

8 Channel high end Interface is covered?

My choice would be a Dangerous Dbox. For superb Monitoring, summing and routing your gear together.

Outside of this I can recommend anything from Eylsia. Not as expensive as competition and super high quality / great sounding. I have the Xfilter and it’s super warm, sheen and transparent.

For mixing I have a large analog live board--APB Dynasonics Spectra Ti-48. For 2-buss conversion--Lavry AD10. And a monitor controller from Nero. Looking into a way to get myself multitrack recording possibly with the just-released Ferrofish A32pro but I haven't seen any reviews or posts about that piece yet--so we're not multitracking in this project studio quite yet. My studio has a pretty decent amount of acoustic treatment but the listening experience feels pretty strange. All the aforementioned could definitely be improved but each is a whole different rabbit hole I feel.

For what it's worth, from Elysia I have the Nvelope 500 and Karacter 500 as things I typically use on individual tracks to get a little creative along with a few other 500 pieces--2x VOG Little Labs, 2x AML ez1073-500. I'll take another look at some of the other Elysia stuff.

Thanks so much for taking the time to reply, and let me know if you happen to have any questions about the stuff I mentioned.

I know what you mean about the 2500+.
But put it in parallel comp mode, dial in a fair amount of compression, and mix it in to taste. You should hear the sweet spot as you increase the volume of the compressed signal.
I find it quite amazing on the 2 bus used that way.

Why not SSL BUS+? It is still not available, but it surely looks promising.

BTW, there is no hardware that can make your mix screamy like EDM.

Thanks for the tip. I'll definitely listen for this.

It looks like an amazing piece at an amazing price. But I've been enticed by the color I can get from a vari-mu. I actually have a fair amount of comps and all but one are VCA: API 2500+, half-rack Overstayer stereo VCA compressor, half-rack Overstayer stereo FET compressor, symetrix 501, dbx 166, bss dpr-402

I went with a used TC Phoenix. It'll primarily be just that and the CAG HDE-250A on the mix buss for now.

Try to add a TK VCA comp or another quality SSL clone for the control.

Thanks Paul. I believe opinions about the alan smart stuff c1, c2, c1la and dramastic obsidian have remained very high over the years too. I feel like a broad strokes/sweetener EQ of some kind also makes sense on mix bus.

In which case 2 channels of Pultec and you’re done.
You don’t have to spend a lot of money to get good results.

I was looking at the IGS Rubber Bands which is a stereo unit, partially because of the price. I was a little concerned that that would give me a 2nd instance of tube flavor (since I'll have the phoenix now) and that maybe I should diversify with other flavors of sweetness. But I might be theorycrafting too much here...

With a lot of this it seems to be very hard to find enough good audio samples or youtube videos to really get a proper sense of all the different pieces out there.

The IGS stuff is built great. You’ll need some sweet top end to brighten up up the Phoenix darkness. Go with your gut. Don’t overthink it, pultec style eq’s are simple enough. You have the CAG for solid state and plug ins for cuts etc. sounds like you have a good armoury you can always upgrade.