"Are you fighting with your studio? STOP IT! Stop the insanity!!! Seriously, you aren't hearing things properly. I guarantee it. Your monitoring situation sucks and the your results will suck as well until you get this under control. Again, I guarantee it. For the project studio and songwriter, enter the Dangerous Music D-Box.
So, what is the Dangerous Music D-Box? Well, simply put - it's everything you need that you've been missing. No, it's not a new front end for your system; it's the whole monitoring chain minus your monitors.
Your experience with the D-Box begins with it's 8-channel Summing Amp section. Basically, if you have either an 8-channel AD/DA converter or interface, then you take those unused DACs straight into the summing inputs. In your DAW, you set up your session so that you are mixing through either 3 or 4 stereo stems (drums go through 1/2, bass and guitars through 3/4, vocals through 5/6, and effects through 7/8, for example). Inputs 7 and 8 are controlled by two panning potentiometers on the front panel of the D-Box which allows you to pan them anywhere you like within the stereo spectrum. This can be handy if you decide to do a sub/pre-mix of your drums - just run your kick and snare to 7 and 8 respectively, and pan them where you want and take your mix back in to print a stereo drum track (Maximize what you've got!). Studying the diagrams linkable up above, you can see the signal flow. As you can see, you'll take the L/R summing outputs and run that stereo signal through your mix chain (stereo compressor, equalizer, whatever you wish) and then into a pair of A/D converters and print your mix into your session. Then assign that mix to go out of your digital output. The D-Box has a pair of DACs in it - one dedicated as the DAW input. Just plug into it with an AES/EBU cable (We've got the S/PDIF to AES adapter cable if you've only got a S/PDIF output - just ask us! AES-3 is compatible with S/PDIF, so, no worries!). The other DAC is labelled CD and is obviously for connecting a CD player and having the same pristine conversion that the DAW has - perfect for checking your mixes against a familiar reference.
So many people want to get into analog summing. However, it gets forgotten that one needs to really get their monitoring under control in the process. SUMMING IS A SYSTEM - understanding this is of paramount importance. Plus, as many of us have experienced, most interfaces leave MUCH to be desired in their monitoring capabilities. Music can lose much of it's body and punch in the typical monitoring signal path, which results in us making ill-informed mix decisions. Dangerous Music figured this out a while ago and developed the D-Box; which solves these issues very easily, preserving your audio as best it can and giving you back something which is quite obviously better than what you had before - because it hasn't been destroyed by bad accountant-inspired/dictated-designs (rampant!). Seriously, without spending a fortune, the project studio engineer now has a wealth of tools that will improve the functionality and sound of their studio contained within a single rack space. This should be considered a required accessory for anyone with an Ensemble, Fireface, product in the Digi002 or Digi003 families, or similar interface.
"Also, if you have a Lynx Aurora 8, Mytek Digital 8x192, or Rosetta 800 as your primary conversion interface, you would be well served by the Dangerous Music D-Box.
Finally, if you need all the functionality of the D-Box, but need (or simply want) more channels of summing, then you can easily add a Dangerous Music 2-Bus LT or 2-Bus to the D-Box for a whopping 24 Channels of summing! How? Run 8-channels into the summing amp of the D-Box and then take the D-Box's summing amp's stereo outs into the Expansion In of either the 2-Bus LT or 2-Bus. This then combines the two units together onto the main outs of the 2-Bus and connect as normal through your regular mix bus chain into your recorder. Nice, huh? Actually, that combination is perfect for use with the Solid State Logic Alpha Link MADI AX w/ MadiXtreme 64 Card Bundle.
"Ultimately, you NEED to use it in your environment with your monitors; it;s the only way you're going to 'get it'. But more importantly, it's the only way the quality of your work is going to increase dramatically - not to mention your enjoyment of the creative process. So, give us a call. We've got them in stock and ready to change your life."
Alan Moon - Front End Audio
D-box is D ****! 
