Mixbus 32C Released

[fedexnman]

I think they'd do better to team up with a less buggy host than Ardour . Ardour is great for what it is , I liked it okay on Linux with Linux plugins before they added the new version with Midi .... I think that was version 3 ... IMHO other than a lack of Linux version it'd seem Reaper/Mixbuss would seem more appropriate option than Mixbuss/Ardour.

[LawrenceF]

I think they'd do better to team up with a less buggy host than Ardour .

Yeah. IIRC, Ben or somebody explained that long ago. To paraphrase (sorry Ben if I get this wrong) ...

- They considered that and investigated doing it with Reaper, but the legailites of sharing proprietary code, "who owns what?", were too complex. I think he said they literally re-coded Ardours summing for MB so apparently, a good bit of the sound of MixBus is in it's summing engine, not just the on-board DSP like saturation and similar, so it became an insurmountable legal hurdle.

- Given the above roadblock, Ardour is maybe the only open source DAW anywhere near being or being considered a professional audio DAW, so ... that was maybe more of a necessity than a choice, aside from them maybe coding a brand new daw from scratch which I assume they had no interest in doing.

- Related to the first point, it was also implied that's why they don't sell the MixBus stock things (comps, EQ's, saturation, etc) as stand alone plugins because (or so the implication went) that the "sound" is a combination of all of those things working together, the internal summing and the DSP parts.

[wasi]

That sounds very plausible. Except the last one, that is. I think they're selling their plugins as proprietary plugins to add value to Mixbus and cultivate the brand. Besides, you can't not sell the mixer as a VST plugin when you are selling the compressor as such.

[LawrenceF]

I think they're selling their plugins as proprietary plugins to add value to Mixbus and cultivate the brand.

I know they're selling some plugins but (and granted, I haven't looked lately, so just asking) are they selling plugins with the same built in DSP? The comps and saturation and stuff from MixBus?

That was my question to Ben that generated that paraphrased answer... asking him if they'd make the MixBus channel strips and bus channels as VST plugins that are exact duplicates of the MB channels strips and bus channels, visually and sound wise. Like the Slate stuff, but Harrison.

That last bullet point was a paraphrase of his answer to that question.

[ObsoleteAcc99]

They won't do that Lawrence.. Their business model regarding anything to do with mixbus is pretty clear by now. That said if they ever have a no brainer sale again on regular mixbus, just because the curiosity will be my undoing otherwise lol, I'm going to take a completed mix from cubase and bounce the stems completely dry at -18dbfs level (using something like satson with saturation off to gain stage), and re do the mix in mixbus with same fx but using the mixbus saturation, and see if I feel it really does improve mixes.

29$ will do it

[BenLoftis]

@LawrenceF and @TheoM,

Thanks for your insightful comments!

We have considered making plugins many times in the past, but our expertise is in "mixing", and plugins don't address the process of mixing. They are equivalent to outboard gear that you plug into a mixer. They don't replace the need for the mixer.

Our expertise goes far beyond DSP and into workflow, control surfaces, timecode sync, automation, signal flow, bussing, monitoring, metering and file-management. A plugin doesn't give you much opportunity to exercise all those capabilities.

A mixer was the central piece of a control room; it was the piece that everything got plugged into. A DAW is the computer user's equivalent of a mixer. It's the thing that sits in the center of your workflow, and you plug stuff into it. So that's why we are developing a DAW instead of plugins.

As Lawrence said, we had the option to develop our own workstation. But we recognized that -another- workstation is the last thing anyone needs. So we looked for a system that we could modify to meet our needs. We joined up with the Ardour community, which was already several-thousand users strong. This has turned out to be an excellent collaboration and we are now the primary contributor and promoter of the platform. Over the last few years we have fixed uncountable bugs, added hundreds of features, and introduced many thousands of users to the platform. And everything we've contributed to that platform is now available to future generations. It's a really cool thing.

Some of the previous posters have mentioned problems with plugin support, or stability, or whatever. That may have been true 5 years ago when we started Mixbus. But we have continuously improved the platform and the massively positive response to our 32C launch is a clear indication that our users are very happy with where we are, and where we are going.

Regarding a demo: it was always our intent to provide personalized support for everyone who tried Mixbus. Not only to help with bugs and compatibility issues, but more importantly we genuinely wanted to know what features our users want and need. It is not possible to provide that level of support for everyone who downloads a demo. Instead we encourage people to watch our videos, and read the manual. If they find that Mixbus is the kind of platform they want to work on, then we will go the extra mile to lessen their learning curve.

Best,
Ben at Harrison

[Robert Randolph]

Regarding a demo: it was always our intent to provide personalized support for everyone who tried Mixbus. Not only to help with bugs and compatibility issues, but more importantly we genuinely wanted to know what features our users want and need. It is not possible to provide that level of support for everyone who downloads a demo. Instead we encourage people to watch our videos, and read the manual. If they find that Mixbus is the kind of platform they want to work on, then we will go the extra mile to lessen their learning curve.

Best,
Ben at Harrison

It's not just about learning.

I want to find out if the thing works on my system.

[josander]

I can't say I have the same experience and worries as some people here about the stability, abandonment of the ordinary Mixbus and so on. I will probably continue to use both Mixbus and 32C side by side for a while, the differences in sound are big but still in the same category. And for tracking with a laptop, I will still have to use the old Mixbus (or Ardour) because they don't demand big screens the way MB32C does, but I don't consider that to be a problem at all.

I've had a rock stable system for some years now (Linux) and the Mixbus 32C is no lesser than great! I already use it for a new project and all my Licensed Harrison plugins (I think I have all the Harrison mad ones) works in Mixbus 32C too. When I started to use Mixbus more than 5 years ago, the fun came back in mixing, and I can assure you that it's even much funnier now!

Sure, the no refunding and no demo policies are a little bit odd, but i consider this to be a take it or leave it history, if you don't like it, then get over with it and use something else. The support is incredible and the responsiveness when you need help or have suggestions are better than anything I've ever seen or experienced anywhere, they behave as I've paid thousands for my licenses and I feel a kind of personal relation to Harrison - which is the way I like things to be. So it may sound weird, but I can't say I miss demos or refund policies, I trust them 100% and know by experience that they do what it takes to make and improve their products as good as possible.

[LawrenceF]

A DAW is the computer user's equivalent of a mixer.

Yeah, a pretty poor equivalent.

In fairness to Harrison, MixBus is (workflow wise) the closest thing to a real mixer in software, imo, mmv, as relates to all the things right there on the main work surface. It also seems to benefit their ... intent or focus ... that the Ardour guys gave monitoring and other similar things that real mixers have some good directed focus. It's one of the few products out there with pro level monitoring (and great meter switching and arguably the best pre/post channel and plugin staging design I've ever seen) ... but... of course... 'midi producers' ... the single largest demographic out there, don't really need that stuff.

I think where it comes up short is when some try to fit it's square peg into a round hole (modern midi production workflows which is like... the 'uber-popular' thing these days)... when it's not really that.

As relates to Ardour: Where they currently miss (imo, workflow related) is mousing. If you really look at the interface, the grouping panels and other simiar things, that stuff is really great, and accessible on the main work surface. Where it fails is it's still kind of a click fest (last I looked anyway), clicking 20+ rows of check boxes and similar.

They probably need (imo) to pause and modernize the mouse behaviors across the entire main UI, those parts, for swiping and more modern approaches.

[LawrenceF]

Regarding a demo: it was always our intent to provide personalized support for everyone who tried Mixbus. Not only to help with bugs and compatibility issues, but more importantly we genuinely wanted to know what features our users want and need. It is not possible to provide that level of support for everyone who downloads a demo.

Hey Ben,

I know you're required to regularly answer that question ... "why no demo?" .... and that being a company rep you can't just ignore people asking it, but that dog won't hunt.

Obviously, in every other company, people with demos don't get official support really. They may occasionally get help from friendly sales or pre-sales people, but most users with demos get support from other users, not the company, since support staff costs money.

I get the feeling that you wish you could just take that dog (that question) out back and shoot it, do a mercy killing.

[ras.s]

Hey Ben,

I asked you a question, which you didn't answer. Well, two questions really and for the other I got an answer from another forumite, showing a video in which Harrison jokes about the product. No big deal, I guess you missed it. But I had to go on YouTube to look if there's a video about what I had in mind, and behold, indeed there was. Now I got another question I'd like to ask, but I'm not confident that you're going to answer it. At least not if I don't pay upfront.

This is exactly the type of thing why there should be a demo. Any sort of demo, really. I ask a representative a question, get no answer, look for a video, watch it and another question arises. I guess I could wade through the manual next (assuming it's easily found somewhere) or send a direct e-mail at the support, hoping that I get an answer even though I'm not a paying customer. Yet I've spent a fair amount of time already and don't feel like spending much more. If I had a demo version to test, I could just fire it up and see what is there in the dialog I'm interested in.

For me, the concept is simply just brilliant, but I'm not going to buy something that I consider an instrument without somehow knowing how (or even if) it works.

[Endor-8o8]

Some of the previous posters have mentioned problems with plugin support, or stability, or whatever. That may have been true 5 years ago when we started Mixbus. But we have continuously improved the platform and the massively positive response to our 32C launch is a clear indication that our users are very happy with where we are, and where we are going.

"5 years ago" ? You must be kidding. Maybe 32C is less buggy than Mixbus V3, I can't say for this soft as I'm not able to try it. I've been trying to use Mixbus since the V2 through V3 (the last build I installed and tried was maybe in February of this year) and it still have this compatibility problems with VST support. Also my recent problem with the constant crashing of Mixbus V3 are still here and the last mail I exchanged with your "tech support" was in July 2015. So no, definitely not "5 years ago". I would say that 'it's been 3 years" that I'm trying to use your DAW and it keep acting like a beta verison. But hey maybe I'm just a liar and a KVR troll trying to bash your DAW.
Repeating that it's not raining doesn't make the sun appear. Admit the fact that there are a lot of problems with Mixbus and that it's barely acceptable from such a big company and such bold announcements Harrison's doing about Mixbus. Maybe you're lacking experience in DAW development, maybe you're lacking employees or money or material to make it work right, I don't know. All I know is that I had many troubles with your soft that I didn't have with other DAWs, and I also know that I'm far from being alone in this case.
So please no "it may have been true 5 years ago", you're obviously wrong in saying that.
To end on positive words, I didn't lost hope in seeing a solid working version of Mixbus in a near future. And if it happens I'll be delighted
to work with it.

[Studio Saturn]

As relates to Ardour: Where they currently miss (imo, workflow related) is mousing. If you really look at the interface, the grouping panels and other simiar things, that stuff is really great, and accessible on the main work surface. Where it fails is it's still kind of a click fest (last I looked anyway), clicking 20+ rows of check boxes and similar.

They probably need (imo) to pause and modernize the mouse behaviors across the entire main UI, those parts, for swiping and more modern approaches.

You have never used Mixbus since version 3 don't you Lawrence? for example if you group a drum together you can click only one time and all will be assign to your desire bus.

Actually I can't judge you with that cause you couldn't get a demo to know what Mixbus 3 or Mixbus 32C is capable of.
Here is a simple video to show you how it does.

[LawrenceF]

You have never used Mixbus since version 3 don't you Lawrence? for example if you ...

Well, I did say "last I looked anyway".

For example, open up one of the panels on the right with multiple check boxes like the one with record, mute, solo, etc, etc, those various status checks (nice design) as checkboxes. Is there a way to just swipe through those now? Similarly (on topic to more modern mouse techniques) you should also be able to swipe the mouse through tracks in the console and arrange panels directly to mute, solo, etc, etc, multiple tracks or channels in one motion.

The select + shift/select multiple tracks thing to toggle multiple channel settings like Mute or Solo or similar is a kind of outdated workflow. In most software - and in real hardware mixers actually - you can just swipe through those things across multiple channels (mouse in software or your finger on real mixer).

It's not a knock, more just an observation of my last experience with it that it was a lot more clicking than I am accustomed to for some of those things. In full context, it also does many other things exceptionally well design wise.

[Studio Saturn]

Here is few thing you might like.