Mixbus arrangement workflow issues

[jvvh]

Hi,

I've been using Mixbus on and off for about a year now. It's worked great for final mixing for one album, and well enough for live multitracking.

However it's been very frustrating to try to use Mixbus as the main DAW for arrangement when working as a solo musician. I think all of these issues go back to Ardour in general. Here's a list of the issues I've ran in to regularly, perhaps there are workarounds or you guys have some tips:

1) There's no way to start looping in the middle of a loop. I often use this to add overdubs by starting at the end of a long loop to come back in at the beginning of the loop. Useful to get the start of repetitive riffs tight.
2) Stacked midi items all play at the same time, which is not how audio works and makes using takes with midi useless.
3) PDC has major issues using multi out plugins like Steven Slate Drums and has to be disabled/enabled to ensure sound does not have weird delays periodically.
4) Midi notes are not auditioned when entered - this is counter to the other daws I've used and is frustrating - was it the D# that was the snare?
5) Midi editing frustrations in general. The idea of keeping midi editing part of the main arrangement editor is a cool idea but not one that works particularly well for me as I usually need completely different zoom levels both horizontally and vertically when working on midi compared to arrangement. The range zoom is great, but doing the same zoom in/out whenever editing midi is tedious - the midi editor window could just be a separate view with it's own zoom level like in other daws.
6) No way of selecting which channel a drawn in midi note is for.
7) No way to change velocity of multiple midi items at once.
8) Region gain scaling does not scale waveforms. If it's not what some people want then it ought to at least be an option as it's very useful.

I also wish Mixbus was a bit more openly open source - apparently it's hidden in the Ardour repo somewhere. It'd be awesome to be able to post pull requests for bug fixes or UI improvements.

Cheers

[Jostein]

The things that come to my mind without making me look at the manual:

2) Stacked midi items all play at the same time, which is not how audio works and makes using takes with midi useless.

I never liked the idea that MIDI items are treated as audio, but to me, it's actually more bearable when all the stacked MIDI plays. I believe that the Harrison workflow for audio is magnificent because it's based upon best practices. But when it comes to MIDI, not so much IMO.

4) Midi notes are not auditioned when entered - this is counter to the other daws I've used and is frustrating - was it the D# that was the snare?

Check "Preferences -> MIDI -> Audition -> Sound MIDI notes as they are selected in the editor"

6) No way of selecting which channel a drawn in midi note is for.

Right-click on the track header in the editing canvas and select "Channel selector..." or for a single note: Right-click on it while in EDIT mode and select "Edit...".

7) No way to change velocity of multiple midi items at once.

Turn on EDIT mode in the editor window and mark MIDI notes with the mouse by drawing a rectangle around several notes or holding the "Ctrl" key while selecting notes. Now you can adjust the velocity on the selected notes with the help of the scroll wheel (TIP: Hold the "Alt" key if you want to adjust in steps of 10).

I also wish Mixbus was a bit more openly open source - apparently it's hidden in the Ardour repo somewhere. It'd be awesome to be able to post pull requests for bug fixes or UI improvements.

Changing the Harrison part of the GUI is probably best done by the feature request part of the forum. Then it can be discussed, slaughtered, approved, or ignored! ;-)

[MakerDP]

I think you will find that a lot of people use another DAW for their MIDI editing and basic tracking and use Mixbus just for mixing and occasional overdubs. For me, that is Studio One.

A more efficient way to edit midi drum parts certainly could use some love by the developers!

[Jostein]

I think you will find that a lot of people use another DAW for their MIDI editing and basic tracking and use Mixbus just for mixing and occasional overdubs. For me, that is Studio One.

When it comes to audio tracking and editing, I can't say I miss anything! :-)

[varpa]

Here is a tutorial on midi in Ardour, probably mostly applicable to Mixbus:
Ardour Midi Tutorial

[PBuryk]

2-hour video... but TOTALLY worth watching!

Cheers!
Patrick

[jvvh]

The things that come to my mind without making me look at the manual:

Thanks for your indepth answers!

2) Stacked midi items all play at the same time, which is not how audio works and makes using takes with midi useless.

I never liked the idea that MIDI items are treated as audio, but to me, it's actually more bearable when all the stacked MIDI plays. I believe that the Harrison workflow for audio is magnificent because it's based upon best practices. But when it comes to MIDI, not so much IMO.

The only reason I can think of wanting the stacking behaviour would be to have items affecting multiple midi channels - you'd be better off routing multiple tracks to a single VST for that case.
Otherwise I can't see any way to do a take workflow with midi - that's a pretty basic feature to be missing.
I must be a bug or oversight on Ardours part.

4) Midi notes are not auditioned when entered - this is counter to the other daws I've used and is frustrating - was it the D# that was the snare?

Check "Preferences -> MIDI -> Audition -> Sound MIDI notes as they are selected in the editor"

Fantastic, thanks!

6) No way of selecting which channel a drawn in midi note is for.

Right-click on the track header in the editing canvas and select "Channel selector..." or for a single note: Right-click on it while in EDIT mode and select "Edit...".

Also fantastic - very useful menu.

7) No way to change velocity of multiple midi items at once.

Turn on EDIT mode in the editor window and mark MIDI notes with the mouse by drawing a rectangle around several notes or holding the "Ctrl" key while selecting notes. Now you can adjust the velocity on the selected notes with the help of the scroll wheel (TIP: Hold the "Alt" key if you want to adjust in steps of 10).

That partly works - however the usable range is clamped by the lowest and highest items selected - if any item is already at max velocity it prevents other items from gaining velocity. This seems like another Ardour oversight.

I also wish Mixbus was a bit more openly open source - apparently it's hidden in the Ardour repo somewhere. It'd be awesome to be able to post pull requests for bug fixes or UI improvements.

Changing the Harrison part of the GUI is probably best done by the feature request part of the forum. Then it can be discussed, slaughtered, approved, or ignored! ;-)

I think I'm just a bit confused as to the relationship between Ardour and Mixbus. Ardour is openly taking pull requests, which in the end is only positive for Ardour. However, I want to use Mixbus - should I try to contribute to Ardour and hope changes trickle downstream to Mixbus eventually?

---

I think you will find that a lot of people use another DAW for their MIDI editing and basic tracking and use Mixbus just for mixing and occasional overdubs. For me, that is Studio One.

A more efficient way to edit midi drum parts certainly could use some love by the developers!

Yeah have been using Reaper for actually making music, which is a shame as the modal tools and focus on most-often-used shortcuts is fantastic in Mixbus.

Just a shame that Midi specifically hasn't been considered as worthy of needing its own mode in Ardour (yet? )

---

Here is a tutorial on midi in Ardour, probably mostly applicable to Mixbus:
Ardour Midi Tutorial

Awesome, making a brew and checking it out. Cheers!

[MakerDP]

I'll check out that video, but my experience (as recently as just late last night) is that drum-part editing in Mixbus is a ROYAL PITA.

Minor adjustments are not too bad but major development/editing of parts is best left to a program that makes it sooooo much easier.

[Jostein]

7) No way to change velocity of multiple midi items at once.

Turn on EDIT mode in the editor window and mark MIDI notes with the mouse by drawing a rectangle around several notes or holding the "Ctrl" key while selecting notes. Now you can adjust the velocity on the selected notes with the help of the scroll wheel (TIP: Hold the "Alt" key if you want to adjust in steps of 10).

That partly works - however the usable range is clamped by the lowest and highest items selected - if any item is already at max velocity it prevents other items from gaining velocity. This seems like another Ardour oversight.

I think it makes sense as it is. If you IE. have a group of channels while mixing, then you will also have to stop when one channel reaches its maximum or minimum level.

I also wish Mixbus was a bit more openly open source - apparently it's hidden in the Ardour repo somewhere. It'd be awesome to be able to post pull requests for bug fixes or UI improvements.

Changing the Harrison part of the GUI is probably best done by the feature request part of the forum. Then it can be discussed, slaughtered, approved, or ignored! ;-)

I think I'm just a bit confused as to the relationship between Ardour and Mixbus. Ardour is openly taking pull requests, which in the end is only positive for Ardour. However, I want to use Mixbus - should I try to contribute to Ardour and hope changes trickle downstream to Mixbus eventually?

The things that basically make Mixbus and Mixbus32C different from Ardour is the channel strips and the mix buses, and perhaps the summing(?), the rest is basically the same. So if you want to improve the MIDI part, then working with Ardour is the way to go. But you should dive deep into forums there before you do anything. MIDI is not a priority for the Ardour developers if one judge from the forums and the risk is also that they will downgrade the MIDI functionality. Have a look at this thread: https://discourse.ardour.org/t/my-ardour.../104367/44, this is unfortunately not the only thread that shows that the MIDI functionality in Ardour (and therefore also Mixbus) is in danger.


EDIT (2020-01-05) I must add to my comments that I find the MIDI implementation more than powerful enough and I accept the Ardour/Mixbus ways of doing MIDI, everything is not necessarily my favorite way of doing things, but that is not a problem. My problem is more the long outstanding and well-known bugs and quirks that kill my workflow and demands workarounds.

But from what I can see now after more closely investigating MIDI connected to Ardour, it looks like old bugs will not be fixed before Ardour 7 comes out, which will have some MIDI overhaul if I understand everything right. That means I will not bother to complain more about MIDI or send bug reports and I will wait and see what will happen when version 7 comes to Ardour and Mixbus.

I have also earlier expressed a wish for a score editor (mode), but after I have started using MuseScore, I can't see any need for such an editor at all. In addition to mixing, I have also for years used Mixbus for audio tracking and editing and I'm very happy about it.