Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeFFG 
I checked out the mellowmuse software and it does look good but not perfect. I'd think it'd still get a bit annoying after awhile. Also, it seems there is only 'Aux' groups 1-5...does anyone ever run out of aux groups and once you do how do you deal with that?
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The "Auxes" in the Mellowmuse ATA are not quite the same as "auxes" in Pro Tools. When Mellowmuse says "auxes", they're actually referring to how many layers of groups there are in your mix. For instance, if you send all your guitar tracks to a stereo Aux track in Pro Tools, you would have an instance of the ATA on each guitar track and have them set to "Audio". Then you would have an instance of ATA on your stereo guitar Aux track, and you would set that ATA to "Aux 1". If you send that same Aux track to yet another aux track (before it gets sent to the master), the next Aux track must have an instance of ATA on it that is set to "Aux 2", because thats the second "Aux" that the audio hits before the master track.
If you do the same thing to all your drum tracks, you would still select "Aux 1" on the Mellowmuse plug inserted on your Drum bus. You don't have to use seperate Auxes in Mellowmuse for different instruments/tracks because "Aux 1" is only telling the software that it is the first layer of bussing going on. So theoretically you could have an entire mix, where every instrument is sent only to it's corresponding bus (guitar bus, drum bus, vocal bus, etc), and you would never need to select "Aux 2" on any ATA instance. You would only do that if any bus was being sent to yet another Aux track.
I see no reason you'd ever need more than 5 auxes in the Mellowmuse software. Honestly, the ATA was a bitch to learn at first (I learned on the beta version, which was somewhat more of a pain in the ass from the newest one), but once you understand it, it's a breeze.
The only cons are: 1) it eats up a plugin slot on every track; and 2) you have to unmute all tracks, mute time-based effects, and sometimes temporarily change your routing to ping (I mix OTB, so this is especially true for me.)