I’ve been curious for a while about the fuss surrounding analog summing. But with commercial boxes priced $600+ I wasn’t that curious. Luckily, passive summing is a pretty simple concept and one that’s very wallet- and DIY-friendly to achieve. Check out the video above for a quick run-through of how I built my 16-channel summing box.

How It Works
Most analog summing designs take a number of mono inputs and assign them to the stereo bus via either pan pots or L-C-R switches. This route, while superior in functionality, is rather complex and expensive. The design below leaves out panning/assigning and makeup gain in order to avoid the need for power and forgo toggle switches (≈$7.50/channel). What we end up with is a passive bus mixer: 4 or 8 stereo pairs are summed via L and R buses, which are then sent to external microphone preamps for makeup gain.

https://www.diyrecordingequipment.com/products/sb2-16×2-passive-summing-mixer