Hey guys, has anyone any experience of using Harrison Mixbus for audio-only mixing?
I've looked at a trial version and first impression was that it looked amazing. Second impression was that I can actually configure my Power Tracks mixer to do most of, and in some cases more than, Mixbus. But this is just scratching the surface and I wondered if anyone had worked with it for longer and could pass on their opinion?
I just wish my Power Tracks mixer looked like that!
ROG.
Lots of flash there and claims of heritage being worth money. I don't know about that. Price is reasonable considering the built-in plugins (if they work as advertised). It does have some features which PTPA and RB need to add in (like the easy cross fading of clips on a track) to avoid having to do volume envelope editing to comp tracks, etc.
Had you purchased Tracktion last year for $19, you would have had all of these features without some of the restrictions of mixbus (like 8 send limit - though who needs more than that?).
If you HAVE to have a mixer look like a hardware mixer, then this piece of code looks pretty cool. For me, I need to visualize the signal flow - and modular DAWs work better for that (energyXt, Tracktion, a few others). Most people find them more frustrating and need a visual representation of a mixing desk like Mixbus has.
One thing that makes extra mental strain for me:
Almost every DAW software operates like a musical score; tracks run in time left to right, multiple tracks go vertical.
Tracktion, and a few other codes, put the mixing aspect at the end of the tracks. There's no 90 degree translation from composition to mixing - it's just the end of the chain on the right side of the screen.
Having to translate that through a 90 degree transpose to a traditional mixing desk has always been a bit of mental strain on me.
And I'm a live sound guy - been mixing from singer songwriters, to 120 voice choirs with small orchestras, since the early 1980's. I have no trouble mixing a live show with a traditional mixing desk - but for me, the DAW is an extension of my main songwriting and composition tools and so to have signal chain go from notes all the way through to audio output just makes sense to my brain. It's clear that most people doing home recording don't think that way because the most popular tools don't seem to follow this mental mapping - most have a more traditional looking mixer thrown in.
-Scott