New to Mixbus, long time recording/mixing engineer, specific workflow/view questions

[vicenzajay]

Hey everyone,

Couldn't pass up the latest deal on MB 5 and the included essentials bundle, not least due to the fact that I love the Harrison 32C eq UAD emulation and have used it as a primary channel eq for the majority of the projects I've recorded/mixed in the past.

I am most experienced with Reaper, having been an early adopter (before version 1.0 was rolled out) a *long time ago. For context, I ran a small, but self-sufficient recording/mixing studio as well for a bit, specializing in on-location recording and delivering demo mixes, website audio content, and producing several full length CD/record projects. My mixing setup currently is hybrid. I record through very nice hardware into the box using Lynx conversion. I edit and automate within Reaper and then mix sending buss and channel tracks outboard through some exceptional hardware I am fortunate enough to own. This also forces me to make decisions relatively efficiently (and commit to those decisions - while taking *very good notes). The hardware channels are summed through an X-Sum summing mixer and then the stereo mix is bounced (via a few more units) realtime back ITB to high bitrate wav files suitable for sending away to be mastered. Of course this process works for individual tracks as well.

With that context in mind, I spent a few hours with Mixbus and have some specific questions that I'm hoping the experts here can help me with going forward.

First, what is the most efficient workflow for importing audio files into MB? Yes, I see the menu items (and used them); however, I found the process quite a bit more clunky than I have in Reaper and Cubase. Of note, often I record at an 88.2kHz sampling rate, but I prefer to mix at 48k for many reasons. That said, it took *forever* for MB to resample the audio files (even for a small project) and then import them into a new session. After the import was complete, I was 50/50 with having the imported audio then sound like the chipmunks at roughly double the recorded tempo when first pressing "play" on the transport panel. Is this something that the session settings can tame?

Is there a way to preserve timing when importing the files? Probably not, given that the import is just plopping wav files into MB; however, the edit window does not seem to have easy L/R scrolling such that moving/dragging those files is (at first glance) easy to do. Workflow/view suggestions would be very helpful here!

Every time I click a plugin (native or not) on or off to audition/compare the effect that plugin is having, the DAW makes an awful "click" in the monitors. This is troubling. Bypassing a plugin or hardware processor should be, in any professional mixing setup, seamless and without audio artifacts if possible. Auditioning effects and processor changes is essential, as I'm sure everyone knows, to "checking" yourself at various intervals. That's going to be hard to do if I'm worried about my monitors, etc. every time I click the 'bypass' button. Any help?

When you work with inserts/sends/etc. in Mixbus, where do you find the easiest way/place in which to set these up? The visual space for reordering the signal for each track is very nice, I suppose that the "matrix" is the preferred method for arranging sends/receives? Honestly, Reaper's dialog for audio routing is much more sophisticated and user-friendly in this regard, so I'm hoping I've not yet found the "best" track-context menu dialog for setting up sends and receives.

There are more questions, but perhaps these are plenty with which to start. As a preview, my goal with Mixbus is to set it up as a platform for mixing, full stop. I want to import audio/midi/etc. rendered tracks/stems into Mixbus sessions and then use it as "the desk" for the heavy lifting for the mix stage of the project. To do this, I'll need to have a foolproof way of importing tracks, setting up their timing quickly in the session, routing them appropriately to busses and assigning hardware outputs for the outboard gear, and then receiving a L/R signal for bouncing to a final 32 bit WAV file for delivery/final processing.

Lastly - some configuration details. I run a Win 7 machine (not new) but fully SSD, AMD 6-core CPU and 16gb RAM. It is an off-line machine (online capable, but I have it finely tweaked for processing audio, so I prefer it to be stand alone). My interface is a RME Fireface 800 (using FW800 protocol - yes, I'm dated, but this system rocks and I want to stick with what has worked well for some time). My AD/DA converters are Lynx (Aurora 16), time-sync'd to the FF800 (the Lynx is the master clock).

I run two UAD octo cards (PCIe) for UAD plugin processing. For sampling/bit rate settings, I typically record at 88.2kHz and 128 for buffer size. I mix at 48k and 256 samples.

Thanks in advance for any help. Cheers - Jay

[JamieLang]

Inserts: there's only one place I'm aware of.

Sends: I use the busses. There are no user created sends.

Clicking on bypass: don't have it. I've used MB32c on OSX.12, Win7, and now Win10. Never heard it. Something's malfunctioning.

Timing: the import dialog contains: "to time stamp" "at session start" as options for importing directly to the timestamp. I find most cases, it's the export not HAVING proper timestamping as the culprit.

[vicenzajay]

Inserts: there's only one place I'm aware of.

Sends: I use the busses. There are no user created sends.

Clicking on bypass: don't have it. I've used MB32c on OSX.12, Win7, and now Win10. Never heard it. Something's malfunctioning.

Timing: the import dialog contains: "to time stamp" "at session start" as options for importing directly to the timestamp. I find most cases, it's the export not HAVING proper timestamping as the culprit.

Appreciate the quick reply. I will try the "to time stamp" option and report back.

So what could be malfunctioning for the click? Not clicking or causing issues on other DAWs, so it's definitely a MixBus thing.

No user created sends - okay - can you then output audio (from track or bus) to a hardware (in this case, ADAT via firewire) output? Hopefully so, if not, this program and I will most likely part ways quickly.

Copy on inserts.

Still wondering why resampling is taking so long. Downsampling files in Reaper literally takes seconds...whole projects typically less than a minute or two. I had to go eat and come back trying to get 15 88.2khz sampled wav files into a session.

Would love overall import/edit/etc. workflow for those using other DAWs for recording/editing and then taking the entire project into MixBus for mixing.

[Dingo]

No user created sends - okay - can you then output audio (from track or bus) to a hardware (in this case, ADAT via firewire) output? Hopefully so, if not, this program and I will most likely part ways quickly.

Copy on inserts.

Still wondering why resampling is taking so long. Downsampling files in Reaper literally takes seconds...whole projects typically less than a minute or two. I had to go eat and come back trying to get 15 88.2khz sampled wav files into a session.

Would love overall import/edit/etc. workflow for those using other DAWs for recording/editing and then taking the entire project into MixBus for mixing.

Sends and inserts : http://www.harrisonconsoles.com/mixbus/m...nd-inserts
Note that hardware inserts work outside the delay compensation loop.

File Conversions takes longer if you have the quality set to Best.

Workflow, I get pre-recorded, edited sessions shipped to me as time stamped Broadcast Wave Files.

As I work in post production its all 24 bit 48 kHz.

[doncolga]

First, what is the most efficient workflow for importing audio files into MB? Yes, I see the menu items (and used them); however, I found the process quite a bit more clunky than I have in Reaper and Cubase. Of note, often I record at an 88.2kHz sampling rate, but I prefer to mix at 48k for many reasons. That said, it took *forever* for MB to resample the audio files (even for a small project) and then import them into a new session. After the import was complete, I was 50/50 with having the imported audio then sound like the chipmunks at roughly double the recorded tempo when first pressing "play" on the transport panel. Is this something that the session settings can tame?

Is there a way to preserve timing when importing the files? Probably not, given that the import is just plopping wav files into MB; however, the edit window does not seem to have easy L/R scrolling such that moving/dragging those files is (at first glance) easy to do. Workflow/view suggestions would be very helpful here!

Every time I click a plugin (native or not) on or off to audition/compare the effect that plugin is having, the DAW makes an awful "click" in the monitors. This is troubling. Bypassing a plugin or hardware processor should be, in any professional mixing setup, seamless and without audio artifacts if possible. Auditioning effects and processor changes is essential, as I'm sure everyone knows, to "checking" yourself at various intervals. That's going to be hard to do if I'm worried about my monitors, etc. every time I click the 'bypass' button. Any help?

When you work with inserts/sends/etc. in Mixbus, where do you find the easiest way/place in which to set these up? The visual space for reordering the signal for each track is very nice, I suppose that the "matrix" is the preferred method for arranging sends/receives? Honestly, Reaper's dialog for audio routing is much more sophisticated and user-friendly in this regard, so I'm hoping I've not yet found the "best" track-context menu dialog for setting up sends and receives.

There are more questions, but perhaps these are plenty with which to start. As a preview, my goal with Mixbus is to set it up as a platform for mixing, full stop. I want to import audio/midi/etc. rendered tracks/stems into Mixbus sessions and then use it as "the desk" for the heavy lifting for the mix stage of the project. To do this, I'll need to have a foolproof way of importing tracks, setting up their timing quickly in the session, routing them appropriately to busses and assigning hardware outputs for the outboard gear, and then receiving a L/R signal for bouncing to a final 32 bit WAV file for delivery/final processing.

Hi Jay,

Welcome to the forum. Sometimes its a little quiet and takes a while to get a response back. Yes, the import is slow. I'm not sure why, but I know it does copy the files from where ever they are into the MixBus Project folder, at least that's my understanding and how I rationalized the slowness of that process. I do ctrl+I to bring up the import window, then browse and pull in what I want.

I'm not sure about the timing question. Maybe someone else can respond to that.

Shift+Wheel will scroll left and right on the editor.

I've not encountered the popping on disabling plugins. Does it do that on all sample rates?

Donny

[vicenzajay]

Hi Jay,

Welcome to the forum. Sometimes its a little quiet and takes a while to get a response back. Yes, the import is slow. I'm not sure why, but I know it does copy the files from where ever they are into the MixBus Project folder, at least that's my understanding and how I rationalized the slowness of that process. I do ctrl+I to bring up the import window, then browse and pull in what I want.

I'm not sure about the timing question. Maybe someone else can respond to that.

Shift+Wheel will scroll left and right on the editor.

I've not encountered the popping on disabling plugins. Does it do that on all sample rates?

Donny

Thank you,

To be honest - this is *really quick (in my experience) to get any reply, let alone three or four of them. Thanks to all so far.

So on the popping piece. Tonight I spent another couple of hours working on a older mix for which I have the original recorded audio. Time stamp import worked okay...for some reason the process imported something like 10 minutes of silence and then all the tracks were there - in the correct order. That could very well, of course, be something interesting within the audio files themselves.

In any case, the import took (again) a *long time, but things were lined up and ready to go. That's good news.

Thanks for the shift/wheel shortcut...will try that post-haste.

On the popping. I verified that if I use the "on/off" control within the plugin's native controls, the click does *not happen (I'm mainly using UAD plugs). It's when I bypass or re-enable plugs using the "bypass" button in the Mixbus plugin instance window that it pops.

Of note, the worst scenario occurs when enabling or disabling the limiter on the master channel. It's more like a bang in that case.

Again, thanks for all the quick guidance. I at least was able to do some 'mixing' tonight for the purpose of learning this program. That's always enjoyable. Also good to know that I can send audio out of the box after being processed through Mixbus. That'll be something I work on figuring out from a practical perspective the next time I get the chance to continue my learning curve here.

Cheers,
Jay

[vicenzajay]

To follow up as I work through migration issues. I have been trying to spend about an hour a day working with Mixbus on older stuff, remixes/etc., and some of my questions have become moot (or have been answered by the manual or trial-and-error). To cut to the chase, I offer some good, awesome, and "other" notes to summarize the work thus far.

The good. Well, it's kind of obvious (and why I'm integrating this DAW into the studio) - it just sounds good. It's very easy to get a rough mix quickly that sounds nice and keeps getting better as the mix is refined. I love the hardware-ish feel and the mixer window organizational concept (for the most part).

The awesome. What was a question about sends is moot. Sends (dialog boxes and functionality) in Mixbus are brilliant and work seamlessly for tracks and busses. It is the work of a moment to send tracks/busses out of the box, through my hardware, and back to a record-armed track for bouncing in real time (the way I work as outlined in the first post of this thread).

Other stuff. The pop thing needs to stop. Toggling plug in bypass or even just starting Mixbus causes a loud 'pop' to occur through the studio monitors. If I toggle the Master Bus limiter on and off, the volume of this 'pop' is magnified (and borders on being dangerous for the drivers).

Plugin management and scanning. Something is not working well here. I continue to see plugins being scanned (in the scan window) that then do not appear as options for selection when attempting to instantiate them on a track. The UAD plugs all translate nicely, but the Bootsy (Variety of Sound) and Reaper vst plugs (and others) do not show up at all. Note that they do show up during the plugin scan (briefly as they are scanned, of course). Then they no longer exist. I think VST implementation and compatibility coding still needs some refining within Mixbus, as all these plugs show up flawlessly in other DAWs.

Side-chain compression implementation is nice and easy if you have only one "ducking scenario" to instantiate in your mix. Mixbus needs separate sidechain paths to allow multiple ducking possibilities in the mix. Just summing all sidechain-enabled tracks to a single sidechain bus defeats the most common purpose of doing the side-chaining in the first place.

Lastly, can anyone help with ways to quickly and easily eliminate "space" in the editor window prior to the "start" and "end" points of the timeline? I'm just really used to clicking in the timeline and dragging in a direction to highlight a time-region (and then delete, etc.), but that seems to not be an option here. This flows from the fact that the session imports tend to put the audio files 6 or 7 minutes into the timeline before the audio files are positioned. They are aligned correctly now (with the time-alignment retention option checked), but they show up in the middle of a *lot of empty space. I'm just looking for quick project cleanup practices anyone uses (within Mixbus).

Thanks for all the help thus far. Everything is "sounding" really good. I'm excited about Mixbus being the mixing 'workhorse' of the studio once I work through this familiarization phase.

[V.G.]

Would love overall import/edit/etc. workflow for those using other DAWs for recording/editing and then taking the entire project into MixBus for mixing.

I make a record and pre-edit in LPX. Then I glue together each edited track to make a single track starting from “0”.
Then export each track (32 bit float).
Import these tracks to Mixbus for mixing.

[JamieLang]

...as to the OP's files showing up in the middle...when you import, you have choices on where to put it. I would HOPE you would choose "to timestamp"...that can become problematic if you use Logic with their non standard 1day offset...but, I think I see Reaper? Why would the timestamps be wrong? The other choices are "at beginning of project--which is what you want to use for a Logic import because on top of timestamping (non standardly) they render from zero on export. Then the third option is "to cursor".

Thing is...and I haven't done enough experimenting to tell for sure, but I THINK if you import it incorrectly, you're screwed. It makes THAT it's "origin"...where in Cubase you import it wherever and can at any point instruct it to move to origin (or in Logic "move to original record position")...I think it writes where you import it AS the origin. That's a difference, I think--so choose correctly when you import. I wouldn't use an app that didn't import/export timestamps correctly. Logic will-if you change it's SMPTE offset globally.

reidechaining….you understand you can side chain whatever plug ins like you do in any other app, right? Cubase or Logic don't HAVE a sidechain bus built in at all. So, while Mixbus's is limited--it's not apples to apples...you can still sidechain plug ins like other DAWs, there's just ALSO that global side chain bus built into the mixer. Just so you don't think you can't do all the plug in side chaining you do in another app...

[doncolga]

Hey,

I tried bypassing effects with the MixBus buttons this evening and I'm not getting any pops here at all. I have the following on the stereo bus:

Oxford Inflator (off, but I switched it on and off)
Ozone 8 (EQ and limiter on)
Ozone Tonal Balance Control (off and on)
Reference (Mastering the Mix) (off and on)
Dynameter (MeterPlugs) (off and on)

These are sprinkled on the busses:
Waves L2
Slate Plate Reverb
Slate Room
Echoboy
Repeater

I'm not getting any pops with on or bypass from the MixBus button with the transport stopped or in playback.

Just a shot in the dark here...have you tried Edit, Preferences, Plugins, Silence plugins when the transport it stopped (off or on)? Mine is off. Not if clue if that may have any effect, but it's all I can think of at the moment. I wish there was a better answer for you.