Non-Linear Summing Tutorial

Over the past few decades, many popular songs were recorded in expensive studios with even more costly equipment. One of these high-end pieces of equipment is analog mixing desks, which are highly praised for the sound they deliver. That warmth and depth introduced to any instrument processed through mixing desks like Neve or SSL are clearly distinguishable compared to digital mixers or software. That unique sound primarily comes from each channel's dynamic, harmonic, and frequency response from the mentioned consoles. What's more, the master busses on analog consoles are also playing a big role in shaping and coloring the sound.  

Non-linear Summation

Recently, Waves audio presented us with a digital emulation of the aforementioned legendary NLS Non-Linear Summer consoles. Consequently, this allowed us to get closer to that famous analog sound. They modeled each left and right channel of the master bus to accurately reproduce the perceived stereo image and the bus amplifier harmonics of each console. The interface is relatively simple, and it sounds great. Therefore, I will show you how to set it up in the following tutorial. In addition, I will demonstrate how the track sounds with and without it.  

Improve Your Sound Easily

In a newly made SoundBridge project, I made a few channels with drums, bass, and piano. The first thing to do would be to create 3 group tracks within SoundBridge and place instruments separately for each group. After that, I will place an NLS Channel plugin on the drum group track and choose a version of the console that I find best sounding for drums (you can choose between Spike, Mike, and Nevo). Furthermore, I will set the amount of distortion/drive and send the VCA group fader to the first channel.

Next, I will repeat the same process for the bass and piano groups with different console selections and drive amounts. Then, I will send the VCA Group of the bass to the second channel and the VCA group of the piano to the third channel. It is important to remember that this doesn't mean much if we don't place a second NLS plugin to the master channel in SoundBrige (named NLS Buss). This is because this plugin is summing the signals sent over NLS Channels. As you can see in the picture above, the groups can be further mixed with faders. Moreover, there is a drive knob as well if you feel like adding more distortion. Finally, let's hear how the drum group and the whole mix sound without and with the NLS plugins.

~Drum group without NLS

~Drum group with NLS

~Full mix without NLS

~Full mix with NLS

You can hear that instantly. Everything sounds richer and wider. My advice would be to experiment with settings in order to get the best possible results.