Harrison Mixbus

[Jostein]

Anyone out there having used the Harrison Mixbus?  Looks really interesting!

Cheers,
Jostein.

[taylordeupree]

yeah, looks really interesting indeed.. though, the last time i read about it.. when it was first coming out... i guess it's a DAW of its own. .and i have no desire to learn a new DAW or stop using Digital Performer... and integrating it with another DAW requires the Jack software which is a total pain in the ass.

however, i had a mastering client recently who used it for his mixing and the result was quite good, and the Harrison EQ for the UAD platform is pretty nice.

[pascal savy]

i've just used mixbus for a recent project and i was quite surprised by the results.

my experience with daws includes cubase (in the atari days) and ableton live, and learning mixbus was quite easy. i'd say within a week of daily use i was fluent enough to work quickly.

in terms of workflow, i create my tracks in live and export stems that i re-import in mixbus. i then use mainly the mixbus eq and compression and of course the busses that features a native tape saturation plugin.

compare to composing and mixing as i go in live, i'd say the improvement is 2-fold:

- mixing is now separated from composing, which makes me focus on the mixing process only. since everything is laid out like on an analogue console the workflow is improved and there is less/no need for constantly cliclking away on plugins and whatnot  to change parameters etc. it would be nice to have another band of eq and a lpf but that's about the only problem i see so far. but the visual and direct access to things completely change the mixing experience vs 'norml' daw. it is also easy to map to a mackie control unit or compatible flying fader unit, which makes it even better and intuitive.

- the sound is quite different from what i'd get staying within live and using eq, compression and tape plugins for that purpose. i'd say the soundstage is wider and deeper. just exporting stems from live and playing them in mixbus changes the sound in a subtle way that were completely different from what i'm used to. the best way to describe it would be to say there is more grain and texture but that's very subjective and very very subtle. the panning seems also more precise.

so far i've been very happy with mixbus but i think i need to 'learn' the sound it imparts to the music a bit better.


re: Taylor

regarding the jack software i found it really easy to setup and much more stable than soundflower. i didn't feel i had to learn another daw per se. it was more like learning a new plugin. i don't arrange in mixbus.but the minor adjustements i had to make (ie moving parts, cutting and pasting, duplicating, fades etc) were very very intuitive.

[jórgos]

- mixing is now separated from composing, which makes me focus on the mixing process only

I do the same thing and like you stated, really helps you out to focus more on the mix.
I compose stuff with Ableton ( i believe it's the most flexible DAW for composing) but i don't really like to mix in there and also i dislike some live's plug-ins like compressors and the Eq8 (seriously this Eq doesn't work for me).
So, i usually mix in Logic or i use Ableton as a slave to Logic.


I find Mixbus really interesting, especially it's interface. I will give it a try, maybe the demo version if there is one, although i don't like the idea of a new DAW that i have to learn from scratch.