Harrison Mixbus Forum

So here is my personal mixbus review. I am German so apologies for grammatical issues …..

I purchased the very first Mixbus Version cause I am always interested in Alternatives.
But after using it a little bit it turned out a bit like a toy for me .
So I missed the upcoming versions until Mixbus 3.

I am a long time Sadie User for Mastering , Nuendo and Pro Tools HD3 /HDX for Music Production . Logic for Midi ..
Besides that I got all other Major DAWs in the Studio just for the reason to be able to open customers sessions.
I also used Euphonix R1 Recorder at a time where doing a 3 hour Live Recording in 96khz with any of those DAWs could cost your job.
In the past a DAW was nothing else for me than a digital Reel to Reel with some options making Life easier…
I mixed analog and still do on my ADT Console and did a lot of Tracking on a Harrsion 32 C

What i want to say is I am not the one you can catch with Advertising Gags like "fully modeled analog Path " "or absolute true analog Sound"
and I do not believe in a Holy Grail of any Audio Gear out there !!
If an engineer at Studer would have developed a Tape Machine which sounded like most of todays Tape Plug Ins out there ,he would have been fired.
And besides the fact the Harrsion 32C is a great console ,there should be no reason to model those horrible IC op-amps available in the 70´s

But i do not want to start a Discussion about Convolution or modeling ………

So I got Mixbus 32C now and I think you are doing a great Job .

I really enjoy mixing with it and I like the Sound which seems different to the other DAWs in a positive way .
What ever you are programming there it seems to be good.
If I just compare you are at Version 3 , Avid is at Version 12…..

I mixed some songs I already did in PT and most of the time anything which is supplied in the 32C Mixer was enough reaching the same or even a better Result.
Unless you have to do major adjustments on tracks. But that means on the other side you did something wrong while Tracking .
At the End of the day it turn out to be the best to bounce Tracks in PT before importing into Mixbus. For example bounce three Snare tracks to one mono Track.
Same for Guitar tracks with different Mic´s etc….Make your decision ……like working with a 24 Track …..

My opinion in Detail

Editing Functions are basic but you can´t compare editing functions in Pro Tools with Sadie or Sonic either …..

Midi is less than basic but I treat Mixbus as a Mixing DAW.

Workflow when it comes to the mixer views could and should be better ….recall Mixer views would be great like PT Workspace , I hate mouse and lots of big screens …

You loose a lot of the advantages having a ready to go 32C Mixer by the limitations of any Screen . Having even bigger Screens is acoustically a p…i…t….A…..

Faderport is ok …..Eucon would be great
Smart AV Tango Support would be fantastic ….best DAW Controller ever …

Missing multiple edit groups ……

automatic import Track after Export , place it to its time stamp

bypass tape simulation during export ….like export some tracks to one mono to reimport it . Or is the Tape Simulation bypassed when turned all away to the left ?

Harrison Plug Ins in other Plug In Formats ! Or is there a Bridge like Blue Cat patchwork ?

Phase Check is great ….

Phase alignment like little labs ITB would be great ….ok , that is a big wish…

OK , this is it for now.

I keep on tracking with HDX cause I am still sick of Latency issues while tracking …or having a bathroom on the headphones ……or using an extra mixer .Even my Sadie classic was zero latency 1996 !

But I enjoy more and more mixing in mix bus looking forward to upcoming versions…

Wow, that's some serious background and experience you've got there. I respect your opinions and insights regarding recording in early-days digital, plugins, console use and the DAW's you've accrued over the years. Makes always for a good read and kind of 'validates' some of my own opinions.

Quote:What i want to say is I am not the one you can catch with Advertising Gags like "fully modeled analog Path " "or absolute true analog Sound"
and I do not believe in a Holy Grail of any Audio Gear out there !!
If an engineer at Studer would have developed a Tape Machine which sounded like most of todays Tape Plug Ins out there ,he would have been fired.
And besides the fact the Harrsion 32C is a great console ,there should be no reason to model those horrible IC op-amps available in the 70´s

While I also don't consider myself a sucker for such gags (even if they were from a company whose products I respect or use) I am a sucker for that 70's tape sound and analog-sounding plugin's in general, if I think they sound good enough.

Quote:automatic import Track after Export , place it to its time stamp

kind of trivial I think, but certainly a valid request. With the latest version real-time export will be available making the workaround of manually bouncing to tracks less necessary for certain purposes. Not that they necessarily apply to your needs.

Quote: bypass tape simulation during export ….like export some tracks to one mono to reimport it . Or is the Tape Simulation bypassed when turned all away to the left ?

As explained elsewhere on this forum the Tape Saturation, when turned down all the way to -40dB is almost bit for bit identical with an otherwise unchanged waveform. The noise differences being at about the level of the dither. If I'm wrong about this please correct me.

Quote:I hope Harrison never abandons the focus on sound and ease of use in favor of adding bells and whistles like other DAWS that try to be everything for everyone. I prefer limitations and great warm, brilliant sound over millions of features and shrill, antiseptic sound that makes you want to listen to something else.

Agreed completely here and something tells me they won't. Granted that something is the dialogue in my head :) In fact if MIDI (and video) use stayed less fully-fleshed out compared to other programs/workstations that's cool with me.

Still, I wonder why so many still track in other DAW's before mixing in Mixbus especially given the positive accounts of how it sounds after mixing. I do also use SONAR 8.5 and Ardour at times but it's typically with the intent to Mix and export on it as well. Is it the CPU overhead? editing limitations? Don't most of us track 'dry' before any processing is done anyway.

Also wonder what exactly people would change about the Mixer view (especially considering it's MIXbus not EDITORforge were talking about) or choose not to use it for? To me, the mixer view is the programs centerpiece.

Not trivial. "automatic import Track after Export , place it to its time stamp" drives me nuts, having to do that manually. Great review over all, detailed, and honest. Good stuff. Most appreciated.

(08-14-2016, 01:13 PM)BigstevE Wrote: [ -> ]Wow, that's some serious background and experience you've got there. I respect your opinions and insights regarding recording in early-days digital, plugins, console use and the DAW's you've accrued over the years. Makes always for a good read and kind of 'validates' some of my own opinions.

Quote:What i want to say is I am not the one you can catch with Advertising Gags like "fully modeled analog Path " "or absolute true analog Sound"
and I do not believe in a Holy Grail of any Audio Gear out there !!
If an engineer at Studer would have developed a Tape Machine which sounded like most of todays Tape Plug Ins out there ,he would have been fired.
And besides the fact the Harrsion 32C is a great console ,there should be no reason to model those horrible IC op-amps available in the 70´s

Quote:While I also don't consider myself a sucker for such gags (even if they were from a company whose products I respect or use) I am a sucker for that 70's tape sound and analog-sounding plugin's in general, if I think they sound good enough.

Quote:Well I use Tape Plug Ins to . But here is the story : A friend of mine called me mixing a song in his Logic X ITB . As usual he already added Plug Ins all over the session . It sounded muddy (hope it is the right word) and real to fat in low mids. I started to eq channels to the point it sounded clear to my ears…..as I was almost finished with the mix i recordnized some Plug ins on the main output. One of them was a Tape Plug In . I bypassed it and immediately evrthing was thin. Started bypassing most of the EQs i had done and everything was ok. Ok , next time better look on the main bus first ….but the plug in sounded raelly like a f…..up one never degaussed or cleaned Tape machine on 7.5 ips. By the way my favourite one is UHe Satin . The UAD A800 works fine especially if you know the Machine . I own a A800 and pretty much know from doing the alignemt what happens. It is a great opportunity to change tape speed / tape / bias different Tracks ..

Quote:automatic import Track after Export , place it to its time stamp

kind of trivial I think, but certainly a valid request. With the latest version real-time export will be available making the workaround of manually bouncing to tracks less necessary for certain purposes. Not that they necessarily apply to your needs.

Quote: bypass tape simulation during export ….like export some tracks to one mono to reimport it . Or is the Tape Simulation bypassed when turned all away to the left ?

As explained elsewhere on this forum the Tape Saturation, when turned down all the way to -40dB is almost bit for bit identical with an otherwise unchanged waveform. The noise differences being at about the level of the dither. If I'm wrong about this please correct me.

Quote:I hope Harrison never abandons the focus on sound and ease of use in favor of adding bells and whistles like other DAWS that try to be everything for everyone. I prefer limitations and great warm, brilliant sound over millions of features and shrill, antiseptic sound that makes you want to listen to something else.

Agreed completely here and something tells me they won't. Granted that something is the dialogue in my head In fact if MIDI (and video) use stayed less fully-fleshed out compared to other programs/workstations that's cool with me.

Still, I wonder why so many still track in other DAW's before mixing in Mixbus especially given the positive accounts of how it sounds after mixing. I do also use SONAR 8.5 and Ardour at times but it's typically with the intent to Mix and export on it as well. Is it the CPU overhead? editing limitations? Don't most of us track 'dry' before any processing is done anyway.

I did tracking in mixbus with a singer/songwriter without a headphone mix.
Fine ….

If you are tracking a band let´s say 24 Tracks live in the Studio and you have to do a punch in plus headphone mixes there it comes to the point
where a dedicated DSP System still beats any native Systems.
My experience working native compared to a DSP System , depending
on the daw and interface is that there is always something. The worst what happened to me , Drumtracks where placed about 20 bars before the punch in point after stopping…...



Also wonder what exactly people would change about the Mixer view (especially considering it's MIXbus not EDITORforge were talking about) or choose not to use it for? To me, the mixer view is the programs centerpiece.

Quote:If you sit in front of lets say a 48 channel console you have to move from channel 1 to 48 ……when you do that you are passing by you're VCA Groups….so what I like to see in mix bus is just the ability to recall views by a mouse click …..Espeacially in the Digital World ,Workflow is everything for me …..In the moment my ears or imaginaton tell me something to change or try I do not want to be to many mouse clicks away from it ...

(08-15-2016, 11:56 AM)Samson Wrote: [ -> ]I did tracking in mixbus with a singer/songwriter without a headphone mix.
Fine ….

If you are tracking a band let´s say 24 Tracks live in the Studio and you have to do a punch in plus headphone mixes there it comes to the point
where a dedicated DSP System still beats any native Systems.
My experience working native compared to a DSP System , depending
on the daw and interface is that there is always something. The worst what happened to me , Drumtracks where placed about 20 bars before the punch in point after stopping…...

If you sit in front of lets say a 48 channel console you have to move from channel 1 to 48 ……when you do that you are passing by you're VCA Groups….so what I like to see in mix bus is just the ability to recall views by a mouse click …..Espeacially in the Digital World ,Workflow is everything for me …..In the moment my ears or imaginaton tell me something to change or try I do not want to be to many mouse clicks away from it ...

Well the part about the drum tracks being placed about 20 bars before the punch in point seems like a case of major buffer offset on what you refer to as a 'native system'. If that is the case then maybe it could be chalked up to CPU overhead and/or hard disk limitations? I might be confusing it with something else, but I think you mean a hardware digital mixer with it's own discrete processing when you refer to tracking with a dedicated DSP system as opposed to a DAW like Mixbus right?

About recalling views; There is definitely room for improvement here. Many people, including myself, still use snapshots as a sort of 'scene recall' as it applies to the mixer. But that's still a bit clunky, and only one part of a solution that could be implemented in a variety of ways.

I haven't experimented much with it yet, but maybe the saved views could play a part in changing the view-focus to a certain section of the mixer. That would be cool. I do think certain regions of a session within a snapshot could have their mixer parameters set 'statically' with automation though. Perhaps automation layers, if they exist(ed?) could be toggled with view presets and that would multiply the amount of mixer scene recalling that could be done within a snapshot/session. Or maybe that's too convoluted and there should be something 'discrete' like mixer track preset settings that could be copy and pasted onto different areas of a session and switched from something Lua related, like the numeric keypad featured on the transport bar of the pre-release versions of Ardour5. I dunno, just thinking out loud.

Anyway, I agree with you in that I don't like to be any amount of mouse clicks away from anything that requires a mouse-centric edit, let alone something that doesn't. Still, the mixer.bindings keycombinations for scrolling left and right work well enough with mouse clicks to select tracks.

Best,
Steven

Quote:Well the part about the drum tracks being placed about 20 bars before the punch in point seems like a case of major buffer offset on what you refer to as a 'native system'. If that is the case then maybe it could be chalked up to CPU overhead and/or hard disk limitations? I might be confusing it with something else, but I think you mean a hardware digital mixer with it's own discrete processing when you refer to tracking with a dedicated DSP system as opposed to a DAW like Mixbus right?

It was a 12 Core Mac Pro Trashcan / Apollo Interface….

What I mean with a dedicated DSP System is DAWs like PT HD / HDX or Pyramix even a Sadie H64 …..

But these are common Problems with native Systems….and have nothing to do with Mixbus.

I really appreciate how Harrison integrated many features like Tape Style Input Monitoring or LTC ……..

(08-14-2016, 12:03 PM)Bakhano Wrote: [ -> ]Faderport works erratically for me on Win 10 - it does not get recognized after closing and re-opening Mixbus. Don't know why, but I don't use it much, so, it's not a biggie for me.

WOW!

I've had Zero problems with my Faderport in Win 10 64bit with Mixbus and Mixbus 32C.

As well it works flawlessly in SONAR, Reaper and (natch) Studio One 3.

(08-16-2016, 10:53 PM)Bakhano Wrote: [ -> ]

(08-16-2016, 05:59 PM)bapu Wrote: [ -> ]

(08-14-2016, 12:03 PM)Bakhano Wrote: [ -> ]Faderport works erratically for me on Win 10 - it does not get recognized after closing and re-opening Mixbus. Don't know why, but I don't use it much, so, it's not a biggie for me.

WOW!

I've had Zero problems with my Faderport in Win 10 64bit with Mixbus and Mixbus 32C.

As well it works flawlessly in SONAR, Reaper and (natch) Studio One 3.

Mine works perfectly well in Reaper and Studio One. But like I said, not a pressing concern: all I want from Mixbus right now is the great sound and smooth mixing workflow. I'm getting plenty of both.

One more little quirk: I can't script an MP3 export alongside a FLAC export using the Lame for Audacity encoder. Works perfectly well with WAV, but not FLAC

Perhaps you should try using ffmpeg instead. There are plenty of examples for multi-outputs from a google seach. It still uses the LAME libraries to do the mp3 conversion, so there should not be any difference in quality, just more functionality.