Mixbus6 32C Nitpicking

[Andy76]

Mixbus 32C 6 is a masterpiece

The intention of this post is to attract the attention of the devs and users to further polish it in terms of visual interface and workflow improvements. This is not a Feature Request tread, rather Improvement of Small Things.
Version discussed is Mixbus 32C 6.0.655. I use the word “Dashboard” to refer to the upper part of Mixbus where the Transport, Timeline and other controls are situated (because I don't know the proper name). Please add your own ideas and suggestions and join the discussion.

Nitpicking

1. More design love to the flat interface. I am on a standard 1920x1080 wide monitor. The default size and 3D design is unusable for me because everything is tiny and cluttered. Changing to flat design together with increasing GUI and font scaling way up the 100% and setting Mixer strip size to 130% gave me my dream DAW interface. Wow, what's a difference!
   
Maybe one day Harrison will apply some slight aesthetic improvements to the flat interface but I can't tell exactly what it is missing, maybe some nice shadows here and there or better smoothing for the fonts or whatever. Just an observation. But there is really one important thing in the interface desperately calling for the improvement right now that is:



2. Bigger Eq, Sends buttons. Imagine that you have made Mute and Solo buttons like they are now, tiny horizontal lines. Is it really convenient to use?
EQ-SND-FX toggle happens much more in the flow than M and S. I know there are shortcuts to toggle them but ergonomically speaking many times its less energy to move a mouse a tiny bit without changing the eye focus then to move and place a hand on the keyboard, turn the head down to look for the combination of the keys and then spend some brain energy recalling the shortcut combination. Think driving a car, not good to lose eye control of the road.

Suggestion:



3. Proper bypass light indication. Follow your own convention on indicators. Light ON=function ON, Light OFF=function OFF, e.g, any button or plugin light indicator.. The human brain is wired from childhood to perceive Light ON as a state of the Device On, e.g. a light bulb. With the current Light On=Bypass ON in the plugin window you are confusing human reality with the machine reality. For us a device is working when its lit! Let's talk to the humans via the visual interface, and to the machine via its own language under the hood. In the case of bypassing the importance of the action is not bypass by itself rather the state of the device. I don't care if a switch on a bedside lamp is bypassing or disengaging or whatever, I am looking for an expected action which I did million of times before - turn the thing off or on.



4. Assign custom names to Action Buttons and bigger size buttons. Those buttons are a really cool toolbar but they lack text on them, bigger size will permit more text.


Just don't make the text tiny, leave it the size like it is now.



Number of buttons should be indefinite, limited only by the available size of the Dashboard which leads to:


5. Ability to hide ALL elements from the Dashboard, e.g. Clock, Editor/Mixer buttons, Transport. To give space to the Timeline and Action Buttons (“Toolbar” name for Action Buttons is shorter and more intuitive, if you know what I mean).


6. Timeline Start marker aligned to the left. Now if I get rid of everything on the Dashboard to make the Timeline as big as possible I don't gain benefit because the start marker sits in the middle of the Timeline, to the left of it is a totally wasted area. The whole idea of a long Timeline is to see all markers and be able to navigate the song easier. Maybe the part of the problem is that the cursor is stationary in the Timeline and the area with markers moves to the left. I would prefer normal cursor travel, from zero left to the right and the Timeline stays put.



7. Aux Bus love. After all please rename Audio Bus to Aux Bus. Its a better name. “Create Aux Bus from selected tracks”, custom color, default to Stereo, assigned Group should be visible from Show Sends, add “Delete all assigned tracks”.


8. Indicators for Mono and Dim on the main Dashboard, reduced size of Solo, Audition, Feedback. To see the toggle state without opening the Monitor section to increase space for tracks. And to be able to toggle Mono and Dim in the Editor if you fix this.



9. Make user-defined shortcuts for Dim and Mono work in Editor, now they work only in Mixer.


10. Align Master name to the center. To tidy up.



11. Add 3.40 min, Entire song options to the Timeline. 3.40 is a popular radio song format, Entire is obvious.


12. Clicking on a marker “flag” in the Editor should snap the cursor to marker position like in the Timeline.


13. Lock sign near SLIDE dropdown, right-click to select what is locked.


14. Lock sign on a track. When I edit the vocal I want to be sure it is locked, Lock sign on the track is easier than annoying complex right-click menus.




15. “Import and Close” button. Import dialog window should optionally close on import completion.

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16. Just numbers for the Grid. Grid division numbers look cluttered with a word “note” attached to them. Could be just numbers.



17. Bigger arrow buttons in Export window - Revision. The frequently used arrow buttons are so tiny that they win the Grand Prix for the tiniest button in the industry! Make them like those at Nudge Region/Selection please?




18. A separate Fit all tracks button near the “Fit X tracks” dropdown. To not click the annoying dropdown. There's a lot of unused space in this area.


19. Custom color for Mixbuses. To visually separate them a bit.
   


20. Really annoying one. When the plugin window is open and in focus it doesn't permit to use the spacebar as a start/stop key without clicking on the Mixbus interface first to change focus. So I need to click each time to start/stop. Very frustrating experience! In generic control mode it is possible though.


21. Option to NOT follow the color of the region for the track names in the Mixer. Many times I want my regions in the Editor to be very soft on the eye, almost invisible, but I need clear, bold, easy to read names in the Mixer tracks. An option like this is highly welcome.


22. Bigger horizontal scrollbar. Custom color for it. I can't tell it in the Mixer, because my screen is dimmed. At least give me a custom color for it.



23. Redesign input fields for Nudge, Insert Time, Clock, Ranges etc so that they work and provide immediate understanding of the values (popups or text). Even the main Clock is buggy now.



24. Add “Insert random noise bursts” in the Export window. Would be great to set the volume of it too. To send complete mixes to the clients for preview but watermarked.


25. Click+Del to remove Control element. To save time. To remove it now one has to go back to the plugin, right-click, select Controls, remove check mark from the control.

[Lars]

I stumbled over 3. and the bypass-light, too, asking me which state is the bypassed and why is it green=on in the channel strip and red=off in the plug-in window!

And I like the idea 2. of larger EQ & Sends Buttons!

[JamieLang]

I think the bypass light thing a bug-not a feature. My bypass light works as you would expect in 4.3.

[madmaxmiller]

Teniendo tantos conocimientos y con tantos tantos defectos encontrados en MixBus deberías lanzar tu propio Daw!

Hi Walter, can you please stick to English here?
Kind regards,
MMM

[rdesanti]

I would also add a way to actually make the GTK color preferences, and other obscure desriptions to what they actually DO! Even if it was just added in the user manual. - My .002c

[PBuryk]

I would like to see that too!
But I can envision what a royal PiTA that would be to do.
Considering that effort started now. Then the documentation would be valid for this
point release of the product and maybe not valid for any previous version.
Moreover, if any of the GTK assignments were to change, say to split up the knob
colors of the 32C EQ section, then maybe new GTK variables would be referenced
and that means the reference chart would need to be updated for that release.
Continue some tweaking as and more unique color reference charts need to be
linked somehow to the point release their changes affected. There has got to be a
better way to do that But, other than a major adaptation of color variable assignments
I don't know how that would be done effectively.

Thoughts?
Patrick

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BTW....

1) - I'll have to try this - it looks pretty good!

2) - Yes, I agree with this suggestion.

19) - Yes, Yes, Yes!!!

Cheers!
Patrick

[Killiwatt]

Yes to all but a huge, "SHOUT IT FROM THE ROOFTOPS" for #20!!! It's enough to make me want to use my PT rig.
I also cannot for the life of me believe that you cannot automate the mutes of the Mixbusses. Maybe I'm just an idiot but in order to do so I had to assign the Mixbus to a VCA and then automate that mute instead. A really obtuse use of resources. Am I missing some hidden menu that I've yet to find?
I find the GUI to be sluggish on a simple 34 track piece with two mixbusses, one VCA and a dozen or so plug-ins on my MacBook Pro 16.1. This Laptop is the fastest computer I've ever owned including my old MacPro Tower that still flawlessly runs my ProTools HD4 rig with as many tracks and plugins as I could possibly think to use. Not sure what's going on here but it seems quite dated in that regard. Also, I find the faders to be very sluggish on automation writes. I'm back to the days of 20 years ago when you had to anticipate the VCA's on my old Raindirk Optifile automation. After ProTools some of these basic issues could become deal breakers.
I do, however, love the "console" feel of this DAW and as such am putting it through the wringer and trying to work out these issues.
Any input would be much appreciated.
Ken

[Dingo]

Hi Killiwatt, welcome to the Mixbus Forum...

I also cannot for the life of me believe that you cannot automate the mutes of the Mixbusses. Maybe I'm just an idiot but in order to do so I had to assign the Mixbus to a VCA and then automate that mute instead. A really obtuse use of resources. Am I missing some hidden menu that I've yet to find?

Yes you can automate a Mute on any Channel or Mixbus...

http://www.harrisonconsoles.com/mixbus/m...automation

I find the GUI to be sluggish on a simple 34 track piece with two mixbusses, one VCA and a dozen or so plug-ins on my MacBook Pro 16.1. This Laptop is the fastest computer I've ever owned including my old MacPro Tower that still flawlessly runs my ProTools HD4 rig with as many tracks and plugins as I could possibly think to use. Not sure what's going on here but it seems quite dated in that regard. Also, I find the faders to be very sluggish on automation writes. I'm back to the days of 20 years ago when you had to anticipate the VCA's on my old Raindirk Optifile automation. After ProTools some of these basic issues could become deal breakers.

Do bear in mind that Mixbus Channels and Busses are 'fully loaded' in regards to DSP with onboard EQ and Dynamics for every track.
A lot depends on the additional plugins you are using and how DSP hungry they are, external disc speeds (assuming you are not recording to the internal laptop drive) can also slow things.
In Protools your HD4 rig utilises additional hardware to support accelerated DSP.

I do, however, love the "console" feel of this DAW and as such am putting it through the wringer and trying to work out these issues.
Any input would be much appreciated.
Ken

Yes the console feel is good and when you get the hang of the conventions the workflow is amazingly fast.

[JamieLang]

I think the bypass light thing a bug-not a feature. My bypass light works as you would expect in 4.3.

Quoting myself to say I'm wrong. I see what you mean. I took it from those pics to mean they don't match, and they DO--but, what you mean is bypass lighting makes "active" go dark and there could be a clearer way to do that. I think they could make those match. But, yes-that's nitpicky. I could make a list of FUNCTIONAL improvements to be made in the bypass behavior of the app before we got to window dressing.

[Till]

3. Proper bypass light indication.

Absolutly agree on that. That confused me a lot.