Harrison Mixbus - Virtual Harrison Mixer plus full-featured DAW for OS X

[ebot9000]

Okay it's time for one of the early adopters to do a VERY simple & quick summing test.

Load a handful of audio files into both the Mixbus and whatever your old DAW was.

In both cases, set all channel levels to unity, panned directly to the center, with no FX on anything, and then bounce completely ITB.

Then see if the two bounced "mixes" null against each other in your old DAW.

It would at least start to answer some of our questions.

[Nowak]

Mate, if you're that interested, spring the 80 bucks and do it yourself.

[indecline]

Looks awesome! And $80?! Finally something to get excited about that all us poor folks can afford lol. AU plugs, delay compensation, and Harrison eq's?

Finally! :D

edit: I'll get it next paycheck.... Even though the electricity might not be on lol

[Nowak]

electricity is sooooo overrated....

[andyspiller]

Originally Posted by Nowak

Mate, if you're that interested, spring the 80 bucks and do it yourself.

[neon]

Originally Posted by Nowak

Mate, if you're that interested, spring the 80 bucks and do it yourself.

Did you get it for free?? do you work for them?
you are so defensive!

A 14 days demo of Mixbus will be the best way to stop our questions, or maybe some answers!

[fossaree]

Originally Posted by Nowak

Mate, if you're that interested, spring the 80 bucks and do it yourself.

+2

[Nowak]

Did I get it for free? Almost

Go to the site, you can get it for next to free also.

I don't work for Harrison, just myself, always happy to get new stuff especially cheap and that works great.

I really like records I've heard off Harrison boards so I thought it would be worth a go.

I have certainly wasted more dough on less.....so it really was a no brainer.

Stef

[2busdriver]

Can I burn a CD with Mixbus or would I need a separate prog? Thanks

[BenLoftis]

Hi 2busdriver,

Mixbus does not have facilities for burning a CD. It has a lot of nice features for creating the wav files and TOC (table of contents) files that you need to make a music CD.

You can use markers to designate tracks, and export one long wav file with the TOC file showing where the tracks are.

Or, you can set up export ranges that are overlapping or even nested. Then whenever you want, click a menu item that says "export all ranges to audio files". Really powerful stuff like that.

I think Mac has some pretty good built-in tools for making CDs.

[2busdriver]

Thanks Ben!...much appreciated

Rich

[ProducerBoy]

Just pulled the trigger.

I'll be digging in tomorrow. After a Twilight Zone day of mixing in Logic 9.0.1 (or is it Logic 6.6.6?), I'm ready to try something fresh. (invisible tracks playing deleted files, buses auto assigning themselves to other buses, the entire song deciding it wants to play through the bass track while the vocal channelstrip settings decided to erase the bass channelstrip settings on the already pillaged bass channel!)

I'll be happy to report back tomorrow, but now it's time to shoot 'em up in COD4!

[fossaree]

Guys , you know what ?

I've just uninstalled Snow Leopard ! LOL , Besides troubles i've came across apple's new OS and some plugs (also some logic 8 sessions) , I was very anxious to install Mixbus ... So I'm Leopard again !

Just curious to know if when I upgrade again to snow ( for sure by the time Jack has SL 10.6 support!) my license will still be good . (??)

Ben ?

[BBT]

Originally Posted by ebot9000

Load a handful of audio files into both the Mixbus and whatever your old DAW was.

This would only work if your old DAW is bit accurate (with no effects) , because Ardour / Mixbuss is.

[fossaree]

Originally Posted by ProducerBoy

I'll be digging in tomorrow. After a Twilight Zone day of mixing in Logic 9.0.1 (or is it Logic 6.6.6?), I'm ready to try something fresh. (invisible tracks playing deleted files, buses auto assigning themselves to other buses, the entire song deciding it wants to play through the bass track while the vocal channelstrip settings decided to erase the bass channelstrip settings on the already pillaged bass channel!)

How annoying !

I hope apple is listening .

[H-Rezz]

Let me say this is not a scientific test so no need to shoot it down for whatever reason ...

The method was simple create a bit of music and make bounces of the Logic intruments and guitar as the mix volume, bring the same files into Logic and Harrison mixbus with no panning/efx or volume tweaks in either DAW and do a bounce in each, Logic's pan law was set to zero as this was the closest in volume to the mixbus which i'm still learning and couldn't find a pan law setting ....

To my ears there is definately a difference in sound, how subtle that is depends on the listener ....btw they are mp3's but i do have wav files if anybody thinks that matters.....

[fossaree]

Thanks I gave it my listening ;-)

[fossaree]

Also , I'd like to report I'm having some issues with mixbus :

set-up : Mac OS 10.5.8 , mac pro 8-core , fireface 800
issue : when I close Mixbus it crashes ...

I've google it around , and 've seen people reporting ardour's vs. 2.8.3 to act like this .
Since I couldn't find anywhere in Mixbus to update , I was wondering how could update it ... ( I mean Ardour). Mixbus comes with ardour 2.8.2

as pointed here Regular Crash | ardour , it should be updated to 2.8.3

[Aux13]

Thanx H-Rezz.
I prefer Harrison mix bus, it's a little narrow but more compact than Logic. Compare to Harrison Mixbus Logic sounds wider but a littlebit "plastic"...hey but that's just me ( I'm not in the studio, so I check this on headphones)

[fossaree]

Also , I'm getting random crashes when dealing with UAD plugs .

I'm using two UAD-2 cards . For example I was trying to load a 4K bus comp. plug on one of busses channel - then UAD"s card stopped working and my session crashed .


:-(

[RedArmchairStud]

Originally Posted by Nowak

Here's how to get Logic into Mixbus.

1 - Start the "Jack Pilot" app.
2 - Go to preferences and select sample rate and the amount of channels you wish to route.
3 - Hit "Start" on the JackPilot Window

4 - Boot up Logic
5 - In Preferences/Audio, select Jack Router in place of Core Audio
6 - Hit "Apply"
7 - (Not sure if necessary but do it any way) Quit Logic and restart.
8 - Open your Logic session and route your tracks to the outputs 1 - 32 or 64 or however many you've selected in Jack

9 - Boot up Mixbus
10 - Start a new session
11 - Create tracks
12 - Select from top menu - Window/Track Buss selector
13 - In the window you'll see all your tracks and you'll be able to select their inputs

Then Record arm and you're set

Let me know how you go.

Stef

Thanks it worked!

[matthewdekay]

I would love to see a mix environment like the harrison that can be rewired to a sequencer of choice (logic, ableton, nuendo) So you can use the audio engine of the harrison for example or other manufactures?! anyone else sharing my dream?

[Nowak]

I've had Mixbus running 2 days with Logic now and it goes well.

I have decided however I'm going to install it on a dedicated computer and stream audio out of Logic into it via ethernet.

I'm really looking forward to having a "dedicated" mixer again.

I originally thought of using the SSL MX4 for this but it's PC only.

I have a spare Intel mac here that's dying to be used.

Just have to beg my mates at SmartAV to develop control for it now.

Stef

[matthewdekay]

Hey Stef,
I'm curious about how to send audio over ethernet? can you give me a few tips? I would love to do the exact same thing here. I have 2 intel macs so that would be a perfect solution. Please keep us posted on any further developments

[Leon EA]

Originally Posted by matthewdekay

I would love to see a mix environment like the harrison that can be rewired to a sequencer of choice (logic, ableton, nuendo) So you can use the audio engine of the harrison for example or other manufactures?! anyone else sharing my dream?

Yeah, I suggested Rewire as well in another post, but afaik most hosts don't stream audio into Rewire but only behave as a master. Nothing that couldn't be changed but it requires development time to support "the competition" I guess.

[Nowak]

Yep, Rewire only seems to work one way at the moment, not the way I want!

I've been using Jack with success.

I'm really turned on by having a dedicated computer for mixing.

NetJack is being developed for OSX and will be here soon according to a developer.

Life is good!

[BBT]

Originally Posted by fossaree

Also , I'd like to report I'm having some issues with mixbus :

set-up : Mac OS 10.5.8 , mac pro 8-core , fireface 800
issue : when I close Mixbus it crashes ...

I've google it around , and 've seen people reporting ardour's vs. 2.8.3 to act like this .
Since I couldn't find anywhere in Mixbus to update , I was wondering how could update it ... ( I mean Ardour). Mixbus comes with ardour 2.8.2

as pointed here Regular Crash | ardour , it should be updated to 2.8.3

I have seen someone from Harrison say somewhere (could it be in this forum) that MixBus will follow ardour releases. Ardour 2.8.3 is not released yet, but that should happen in the next week or so, if I interpret the traffic on the ardour-dev mailing list correctly.

The nature of the release package would probably have you download the updates as they become available. They should definitely be free of charge for minor release versions. ( IMHO )

[joemeek]

Originally Posted by H-Rezz

Let me say this is not a scientific test so no need to shoot it down for whatever reason ...

The method was simple create a bit of music and make bounces of the Logic intruments and guitar as the mix volume, bring the same files into Logic and Harrison mixbus with no panning/efx or volume tweaks in either DAW and do a bounce in each, Logic's pan law was set to zero as this was the closest in volume to the mixbus which i'm still learning and couldn't find a pan law setting ....

To my ears there is definately a difference in sound, how subtle that is depends on the listener ....btw they are mp3's but i do have wav files if anybody thinks that matters.....

Thanks for the test!
Harrison sounds more cohesive/real.
Subtle but just better.
My wife recognised the Mixbus as "better" 3 times (even with some attempts to make them sound the same, and with some "mastering")!
WAVs would be still nice...

[H-Rezz]

Here are the .wav files, i took off 2 bars so i don't exceed the 6mb limit .....

[matthewdekay]

thanks for the post H-rezz...

Sounds pretty identical to me? anyone?