Mixbus, Mixbus32C: v7.1 Update - Now Available

[Ben@Harrison]

We have published a new version of Mixbus and Mixbus32C!

This software update is FREE for both "Demo" and "Licensed" users of Mixbus and Mixbus32C.  If you have a license for v7, it will be found by the new software with no additional steps required.

You can always get the latest version of Mixbus and Mixbus32C software from the Harrison Software Downloads page on our new website:
Harrison Software Downloads Page

You may have already talked with a new product specialist on the Mixbus team: Nathan McFarland.  Nathan is a long-time Mixbus user, a guitar player, and a music producer who works with talented Nashville artists and bands. The immediate effect of Nathan joining the team is a reworking of the "Slip Edit" feature in Mixbus's editor as well as some improvements in our editing shortcuts.  Nathan and I took a deep dive into the behavior of Playlists and Plugins for this release.

You can watch a video of me and Nathan jamming together and making an unintentional funk song with the new playlist and varispeed features.

Nathan finishes the song, from editing to mixing, with the new v7.1 features here: 7.1 - Editing and Mixing Shortcuts 

I look forward to your opinion of these new features and I hope you'll write me to tell me your thoughts!

Best,
-Ben Loftis
Harrison Mixbus product manager


What's in the Update?

New "Plugin Manager" window



Take control of your plugin collection in a powerful new way:

• You'll find the new "Plugin Manager" in the Window menu
  
• The Plugin Manager provides a complete list of plugins that were found on your system, and data about each plugin's scan results.
  
• New standalone scanner applications for VST and AU plugins will scan your whole plugin collection without danger of crashing Mixbus. 
  
• The new scanner dialog allows you to skip individual plugins without canceling the whole scan process. Or set the scanner to auto-timeout while you take a break, and come back later to re-scan those individual plugins that wanted some user input.
  
• Sort and filter your plugins by name, brand, tags, or format.
  
• Tell Mixbus to Ignore troublesome plugins so we won't try to load them at all.
  
• Mixbus loads AU, VST, VST3, and LV2 format plugins.  Choose the format that works best for each plugin, and Hide the ones you don't use (but might be used in some existing sessions).
  

Next-Level Playlists



Sweeping new changes to Playlists include:

• Global playlist actions like "New Playlist for rec-armed tracks" allow you to record a new take on all tracks that are record-armed, whether they are in a Group or not.  You'll find these actions in the Track menu.
  
• "Copy Playlist for All Tracks" will store the timeline state of your arrangement, edits and automation.  You can later switch between them while leaving your static mixer and plugin settings intact.
  
• Select a track and click "?" keyboard shortcut to open the Playlist Selector dialog.  Click any playlist to listen to the alternative takes of that track, OR...
  
• ...change the scope to "ALL Tracks" and you can switch all tracks that have a matching playlist to your selection:  if you recorded a take of the drums and bass together, you can switch the drum and bass playlists together even if they aren't in a Group.
  
• Create the perfect vocal or guitar comp:  Create a new empty playlist and call it 'comp'.  Then use the selector to switch between different takes and move the best take to your comp playlist.  You can even have more than one comp playlist to compare with each other.  And like the other playlist functions, you can edit multitracks with ease:  by group, rec-armed, or ALL tracks.
  

Varispeed Recording (Mixbus32C only)



Varispeed recording provides traditional tape-style varispeed techniques:

• Slow down a recording by one or two semitones, and play along at the lower pitch to master a tricky solo, or retune a song to match a singer's range.
  
• Change the recording by a few cents and detune your guitar to match: now record a shimmering doubled guitar without having to use a different guitar for each pass.
  
• A blinking red indicator shows when the Varispeed dialog is operational.  Click the VS button to enable and disable your varispeed settings.  Your setting is remembered so you can revert to regular playback for auditioning, then re-enable varispeed for additional recording passes.
  

v7.1 includes dozens of other user-requested Improvements:

• "Slip Contents" editing modifier
  
•   Hold Ctrl+Shift  (or Cmd+Shift on Mac) to slip the contents of a region without moving the region start/end points
  
• New shortcuts (mac shortcuts shown; check the menus for windows equivalents):
  
•   Ctrl+0  = Toggle Region Opaque
  
•   {  = All {selected} tracks switch to "overlaid" layer view
  
•   }  = All {selected} tracks switch to "stacked" layer view
  
•   | = Raise to top layer   (was Ctrl+0)
  
• Playlist shortcuts:
  
•   : = Copy playlist for selected/grouped tracks
  
•   Cmd + Ctrl + Shift + : = Copy playlist for rec-armed tracks
  
•   Cmd + Shift + : = Copy playlist for ALL tracks
  
•   “ = New Playlist for Selected/grouped tracks
  
•   Cmd + “ = New playlist for rec armed tracks
  
•   Cmd + Ctrl + Shift + “ = New Playlist for ALL tracks
  
•   ? =  Show/Hide playlist select dialog box for selected track
  
•   <  = Start Recording with Pre-Roll
  
•   > = Start Recording with Count-In
  
• Cue Markers in Regions
  
•   Right-click in a region to add a Cue marker
  
•   Cue markers display the embedded cues in imported midi (.MID) files
  
•   Cue markers are a good place to add comments or lyrics
  
•   Cue markers move with the region, and copy/duplicate with it
  
•   "Promote to timeline marker" converts all region markers to location markers in the timeline
  
• New "DSP Stats" window
  
•   Window->DSP Stats
  
•   Helps troubleshoot DSP usage
  
•   Calculates the worst-case DSP usage
  
• New: Region loudness normalization/analysis (same feature as the master-bus loudness analysis, but applied to a single region)
  
• Export improvements:
  
•   Include loudness (LUFS) graph in export report
  
•   Updates to loudness normalization (add limiter, streaming presets)
  
•   Warn when overwriting files
  
•   Fix export analysis when trimming silence
  
•   Use triangular dither as default
  
•   Count xruns during realtime export
  
•   Fix timespan count (progress report)
  
•   Fix exporting multiple timespans
  
• LAN (Loudness Analysis) dialog has been updated with user-customizable presets, loudness graph
  
• New "Remove Gaps" feature: removes gaps between regions
  
• Various improvements for ripple-edit (proper undo, significant speedup, automation ripple)
  
• Significantly sped-up region edits
  
• Improved realtime scheduling (notably Linux cpu/dma latencty, some macOS tweaks, windows MIDI and ctrl surface priority)
  
• Add a preference for "No auto-return-after-rewind-ffwd"
  
• TapeX: Tweak track renaming (allow to move to next/prev, cancel on focus out)
  
• ACE-fluidsynth: add dedicated bypass (ignore notes, but retain reverb)
  
• PT Import: significant speedup, fix importing of large sessions
  
• New MIDI selection modes (invert + extend note selection)
  
• Control Points no longer obey Lock Edit
  
• Directly import the audio from M4A files
  
• MIDI tracer can directly monitor input ports
  
• Multiple MIDI tracer windows
  
• Change Mackie Control combined meter to use a peak meter with falloff
  
• More consistent control surface rewind/ffwd behavior, MCU separate shuttle and scroll
  
• Allow to skip setting MIDI patch on session-load (do not change synth parameters by sending a PGM message)
  
• 'Escape' key was not working to cancel all selections when in Internal Editing mode ... this has been fixed
  
• Tascam US-2400 fixes: fixed the panner direction, fix the joystick, fix the order of mixbuses in Flip mode
  
• Do not show controller ports (like Mackie, US-2400) in the Recorder page meters
  
• Replace the missing View items for toggling 32C EQ and Sends
  
• Slip Contents drag: the region should go transparent when slipping, so you can "line up the transients" for the lower layers (or if there is no lower layer you can line it up to the marker line)
  
• Plugin "Favorite" list on the mixer-window: now correctly searches the Tags as well as plugin names
  

7.1 has over 900 "under the hood" changes since the last release, including:

• Fixed cue monitoring during record w/preroll
  
• Fix asymmetric systemic I/O latencies
  
• Disable rec-arm on export (was on with latched-record-enable)
  
• Fix muted MIDI regions
  
• Update record file-name when changing track names
  
• Fix blurry text in connection manager
  
• Remove unused auditioner MIDI port
  
• Preferably show port names in port-matrix (not bundles)
  
• Fix an occasional crash when consolidating range with automation
  
• Fix video-monitor display when seeking
  
• Fix for region-drag to the dropzone
  
• Use insert-position when adding route from template
  
• Fix loading old (v4) route-templates
  
• Keep MIDI List Editor in sync when region changes
  
• Fix export race condition (and crash) when exporting multiple ranges
  
• Fix position of imported MIDI markers (apply tempo map)
  
• Fix rare hang at exit (waveview threads)
  
• Fix session loading when aborting latency measurement
  
• Fix Automation context menu when used from track-header
  
• XTouch: Don't crash if master fader is not available.
  
• Avoid playhead jumping while we locate from a control surface
  
• Various Control Surfaces: Fix one-off error in calculation of fader position
  
• Fix missing entries in source/region-list
  
• Record Window: Fix record-region display when a track playlist is changed
  
• Fix A/B plugins, skip internal but visible plugins
  
• Fix bounced region filename 
  
• Fix running multiple instances on Windows
  
• Fix loading old session w/missing playlist
  
• TapeX: Refactor input port monitoring (use less resources)
  
• Fix capture alignment (MIDI, loop recording, manual punch in/out)
  
• Fix pre-roll MIDI capture alignment
  
• Fix Rec w/count-in: directly roll transport
  
• Fix crash on MIDI bounce w/processing
  
• Fix crash when deleting Plugin within 30 sec after MIDI binding
  
• Fix incorrect splash screen visibility
  
• Fix crash when switching backends, and chasing external TC
  
• Fix handling of SMF files with consecutive noteOn events
  
• LV2: allow multiple atom buffers, ignore CV plugins
  
• Fix VST2 enter/return key-press ambiguity
  
• VST3: do not split cycles for automation
  
• VST3: fix crash on fan-out
  
• Ignore symlinked, duplicated VST plugins
  
• Linux fixes:
  
•   Override Ubuntu global menu (fixes crashes on some Linux systems)
  
• Mac fixes:
  
•   Coreaudio: fix duplicates in device list, retain current device even if list changes
  
•   Fix plugin resizing for some plugins
  
•   Fix an occasional crash when unloading mac VST2 plugins
  
• Windows fixes:
  
•   fix BPM/Note button text in main transport
  
•   prevent config file corruption
  
•   limit to single-instance only
  

[krans]

Wow! Impressive!
Looking forward to trying it all out (but I have tested, and it looks fabulous).

[Andy76]

Congratulations to all users with another impressive update and cheers to Harrison!

[Theotherguy]

The Varispeed seems to work great. Excellent addition. Works well during playback. I will play with it more tomorrow but it seems to work fine and remain stable. Twenty one tracks and a fair amount of XT and X-24 plugins. No AVA plugins. So far so good. It does remind me of my Reel to Reel multitrack. Sometimes a vocal will sound better just 1 semitone higher or lower, worked very well on a female vocal.

[johndev]

Some very nice features here. Excellent. Thank you.

A couple of questions...

Cue Markers: where do they appear? I can see the context menu item for them, e.g. {track name} > Markers > Add Region Cue Marker asks me for a name but I can't see anything resulting from that action, and not sure where to be looking for it.

> EDIT: oh, now I see them. I did two things in the preferences and not sure which one (if any) fixed it:
1) turned off [Editor > show cue markers in regions] and then turned on again
2) turned on [Appearance > Editor > Use name highlight bars...] (and turned off again later - cues still visible)
I also restarted a few times during all of that.

New "DSP Stats" window: I don't have a "Window > DSP Stats" menu item. I do have "Window > Performance Meters", presumably that's the one.

[bjohnh]

It really is a nice update. Thank you!

The region cue markers are a welcome addition; I use them all the time in other DAWs. This also sets the stage for importing cue markers from .wav files made by field recorders such as the Sound Devices MixPre series or Tascam recorders. I was one of the people who requested that feature in Ardour and sent Paul Davis an example file so he could see which metadata field needs to be captured; presumably this will come in a future version. I do most of my recording on a dedicated recorder, and it's great when cue marks added with the recorder show up in my DAW.

[eyal]

Thanks, excellent new features.
is there a way to some kind of "back to original position" on Slip Edit?

[dspasic]

Thank you for your efforts. The varispeed feature looks more usable & stable now!
Looking forward to try out new features!
you rock!

[agilkds]

Hi guys. New here, but a user of 32C for some time (more than 6 years...). Really nice improvements in 7.1, specially the "Plugin Manager", but i would like to keep the "Search for new AU plugins" situation. It was a perfect way to just check AU plugins without having to check also for VST3 plugins. I have also other DAW's in my setup, some are just AU, others are just VST and others are AAX (guess you know what they are...). But i like to keep the VST to the VST ones, and use the AU in Mixbus32C. If possible, bring this little thing back. All the best from Lisboa, Portugal

[Ben@Harrison]

@agilkds: welcome to the forum!

We have a checkbox to *disable* AudioUnit plugins under Preferences->Plugins->AudioUnit. But we do not have a button to disable VST3, and only scan AU's, sorry!

I'll make a note that we need to handle special cases like that.

We encourage people to use VST3 these days, because it's the newest plugin format, and it is cross-platform. If someone sends you a session from a Windows computer, the VST3's are cross compatible where of course the AU's aren't.

Best,
-Ben