Neve 8816 Summing Mixer

The Sound

This Mixer is fundamental for everyone that needs to reach a professional sound for the industry! the summing technique with this, makes all the difference on your tracks! with the exact size, and the basic operation, you can do wonderful mixes in such a reduced level of peripherals! great price! wonderful sound! great deal!

Almost perfect!! Some defects but sounds phenomenal

So, I put up with a lot of crap from this old machine, but I still use it on all my mixes because it just does such a good job.

The PAN and Gain pots don’t zero out perfectly. No indent.

The software hardly works.

BUT..... holy carp Batman this this sounds so amazing!

I wish AMS Neve would simply update the software to help implement all the features I’m missing. That would be fine. Let me setup my own profile by entering the values I need, and then load it into the the console using the manual recall system. I’ve told them. I even offered to do the programming. They don’t seem interested, which is sad considering how great and timeless this product is and how friggin’ expensive. But, I still can’t finish a mix without it.

Superb sound

The AMS Neve 8816 Summing Mixer proved to me that an analogue summing mixer genuinely does create a warmer, glued mixdown. I did wonder whether it was a case of The Emperor's New Clothes, but I genuinely believe that sound of the mixdown is better when passed through the 8816.

They have crammed a lot into a small box here and there are some compromises in doing that. All the knobs are really close together and some of them wobble a little. Not whatI would expect for the price - though it did not have any adverse effect on the sound (no crackle with the movement).

The width control is great. It's a bit of a mystery what it does. Maybe a little bit of M/S control and maybe a little compression(?) somewhere, but just adding the tiniest little width makes a Stereo mix-down sound magically better. Some might say, if I knew how to I could do that inside the box with digital tools. Maybe so. But I don't know how to make it sound just like that with just a little tweak of the knob.

Other than the wobbliness in some of the knobs the only other thing I got frustrated with was the USB-based recall software. I've had to flash the firmware in the 8816 a number of times because it loses contact with the computer. I don't know whether other people have experienced this or whether it is my setup, but the software side feels a little Heath Robinson. A chinagraph pencil could however probably be adequate to mark levels on the knobs for recall later.

Great summing mixer!