Glenn Fricker/SMG MixBus 32c Review

[jonetsu]

Your comment: "the audio drops when it's the most needed eg. when the part being replaced is actually played" is a misinterpretation, I think.

In an auto-punch, Mixbus -stops- playing the existing material, and instead monitors the live input, when the punch-in happens. We think this is best for most users, BUT it does require that you have a monitoring path (either through your interface device, or some other path thru mixbus) so you can hear yourself playing along with the solo -before- you hit the punch-point.

Admittedly it would be nice to do this all within one track. There are other cases - such as overwriting a drum midi part - where you want to monitor both the input and the playback; so we are working on that for a future release.

I'd say it's a misinterpretation at the user level, at what a user might expect. As I've mentioned I do not do punch in/outs but I've given it a quick try just now in Bitwig. As the user might expect it, Bitwig will play the track and then automatically start recording at the punch in point and stop recording at the punch out point and, the user will be able to hear what he plays during that punch in/out time. It simply continues with the metaphor that if the user is recording something, then he hears it.

I understand that if I use qjackctl (this is Linux) for instance to manually connect things together then I would end up hearing the punch in/out. Or create another track, etc.

Although this is not as intuitive for an 'artist', which are common users nowadays. By this I mean that, as a mixing engineer having to do only with mixing, then rigging up things can be fine. But when it comes to the artist composing stuff and needing things to simply be flowing on smoothly, this is not the same. The scope of users of the metaphor has changed.

Which brings another topic, the use of MIDI devices. I find it puzzling that the creators of Ardour and jackd imposes on Linux users the use of an a2j_control utility in order to be able to use MIDI devices. The creators of Bitwig, on the other hand, simple went down the road that if you plug a MIDI device, you instantly are able to use it. Moreover, Bitwig will remember the many devices you have plugged in, so you can switch in a flash w/o configuring anything. Focus kept on creating music, again, the scope of users.

To go back to the review, another point which was mentioned, which is excellent with Mixbus, is the region/track gain editing. This is incredibly useful to be able to select a range and instantly change its gain. As someone pointed out recently, and as I found out before, this should really be extended to multiple tracks !

[Ben@Harrison]

@jonetsu:

"As the user might expect it, Bitwig will play the track and then automatically start recording at the punch in point and stop recording at the punch out point and, the user will be able to hear what he plays during that punch in/out time. It simply continues with the metaphor that if the user is recording something, then he hears it."

...that is exactly how Mixbus works as well.

Glenn is asking that you monitor yourself before, during & after the punch, IN ADDITION TO the playback.

-Ben

[jonetsu]

...that is exactly how Mixbus works as well.

I would have to currently disagree with that. When a punch in/out range is created, the status of these tracks (2 tracks concerned here, two mics for acoustic guitar) is 'Disk'. That makes it possible to hear what's already on the tracks as the play sadvances towards the punch in/out area. Then when the punch in/out area is met by the playhead, the 'Disk' status does not change automatically to 'In'. This means that nothing is heard about what's being recorded. I just tried it again. On the other hand, if the tracks' status is made 'In' right at the beginning, then nothing is heard from the tracks to start with.

This is just by enabling punch in/out as it would be in Bitwig, eg. no other connection made nor any operation. As I've mentioned, if I make some extra connections or create a helper track or whatever, then it would be possible to reach the ease of use as in Bitwig, in which you hear everything, before, during and after, just by enabling punch in/out. At the moment though, if I only enable punch in/out in Mixbus there is no way to work with that. What am I doing wrong ?

[Ben@Harrison]

@jonetsu: if you've clicked the "in" or "disk" button, then you've manually set the input mode. You want Mixbus to control it "automatically". Unclick the buttons so that only a colored border is shown; this indicates that Mixbus is controlling the In/Disk monitoring. This will likely fix your problem. You can learn more here:
http://www.harrisonconsoles.com/mixbus/m...monitoring

[x42]

@jonetsu: or you have configured Mixbus to use Hardware Monitoring in the Preferences -- in which case Mixbus will never play any part in monitoring.
Anyway, what Mixbus cannot play back and monitor input at the same time (cue monitoring) on the same track. It's currently either "Disk" or "In".

All in all I found this review very nice. Sure, Mr Fricker likes to rant, but it's constructive criticism, particularly since he also points out why he misses those features (tempo-map import, cue-monitoring) and where bottlenecks are in his workflow (group creation,..).

PS. favorite quote: "..rhythm-ferret; but I didn't try that out because [..] it's far easier to make the drummer play it right!" -- I'm having a fun time imagining "..make the drummer.." scenarios in studio SMG

[Ben@Harrison]

Regarding group creation, I wonder if he knows that you can drag in the "group bar" to create groups?

[the C.L.A.]

@jonetsu: or you have configured Mixbus to use Hardware Monitoring in the Preferences -- in which case Mixbus will never play any part in monitoring.

Except for the fact that you still can manually switch on input monitoring via the "in" buttons on a per-track basis, of course.

[Studiodawg]

I guess the easiest work around would be create a separate track, do the over dub and then splice/copy/crossfade to taste...easy fix and sure beats belly-aching.