Somebody tried Harrison Mixbus for Windows?

[gckilla]

Hi sqigls,

The license has your name embedded in it, so it is not practical to sell it.

We provide videos to see the operation of Mixbus, and we provide fast email support to help you learn Mixbus once you've purchased it. We have found this to be a better combination than a demo.

Best Regards
Ben Loftis
Harrison Consoles

I can confirm that their email support is very good. While you can use this as your daw, I feel that it's main purpose is for mixing. And it is damn good.

If people want to try the editing/recording features, then just try out Ardour, which underpins Mixbus.

The Mixbus videos are more than sufficient to let you know if you want to mix this way.

Harrison's approach is totally reasonable.

Cheers,
Hasan

[Selfik]

What about people who bought this recently, will they get a free upgrade to v3 now that release is close?

[sqigls]

Hi sqigls,

The license has your name embedded in it, so it is not practical to sell it.

We provide videos to see the operation of Mixbus, and we provide fast email support to help you learn Mixbus once you've purchased it. We have found this to be a better combination than a demo.

Best Regards
Ben Loftis
Harrison Consoles

Thank you for the response.

I really don't understand how watching a video is better than trying the software on your system first. That is a definite no sale. It really doesn't matter HOW good email support is, if you are stuck with potentially buggy software that you can't even give away. Learned that lesson already.

[wasi]

Native Jack support under windows needs to be seen to be believed. It's awesome.

If you added midi functionality for VSTi this DAW would be a serious contender. As it is, it's sadly somewhat limited.

I'll be using it for my generative projects though, because jack lets you route anything anywhere anyway, I can run the instruments standalone. At the current special deal it's a steal.

[billybk1]

What about people who bought this recently, will they get a free upgrade to v3 now that release is close?

I believe it was reported that an update was "close", as in v2.3 (which will be free), v3.0 is still a ways off. I probably would not expect it until late 2013 or even early 2014. Typically, companies will reasonably offer a free upgrade if you buy a previous version within 30 days before release of new one.

Cheers,

Billy Buck

[musikmachine]

Native Jack support under windows needs to be seen to be believed. It's awesome.

If you added midi functionality for VSTi this DAW would be a serious contender. As it is, it's sadly somewhat limited.

I'll be using it for my generative projects though, because jack lets you route anything anywhere anyway, I can run the instruments standalone. At the current special deal it's a steal.

Is that with the standalone jack update?

[bharris22]

I see there is another sale on for this software.

Are you referring to the $49 sale for KVR users? If so, any idea how long this sale will last? Thanks!

[wasi]

Native Jack support under windows needs to be seen to be believed. It's awesome.

If you added midi functionality for VSTi this DAW would be a serious contender. As it is, it's sadly somewhat limited.

I'll be using it for my generative projects though, because jack lets you route anything anywhere anyway, I can run the instruments standalone. At the current special deal it's a steal.

Is that with the standalone jack update?

If you mean that you need Jack for Windows installed as well, yeah. Run Jack first, then Mixbus.

But then you have all inputs and outputs that are available in jack directly available in Mixbus. All the Jack routing you need to do is route any outputs (from the interface and any internal programs) into mixbus and the mixbus out to your system out. That's my understanding at least.

[shanecgriffo]

this news might be welcome here.. for a bit down the track
http://bedroomproducersblog.com/2013/03 ... -released/

[musikmachine]

Native Jack support under windows needs to be seen to be believed. It's awesome.

If you added midi functionality for VSTi this DAW would be a serious contender. As it is, it's sadly somewhat limited.

I'll be using it for my generative projects though, because jack lets you route anything anywhere anyway, I can run the instruments standalone. At the current special deal it's a steal.

Is that with the standalone jack update?

If you mean that you need Jack for Windows installed as well, yeah. Run Jack first, then Mixbus.

But then you have all inputs and outputs that are available in jack directly available in Mixbus. All the Jack routing you need to do is route any outputs (from the interface and any internal programs) into mixbus and the mixbus out to your system out. That's my understanding at least.

Thanks.

[musikmachine]

this news might be welcome here.. for a bit down the track
http://bedroomproducersblog.com/2013/03 ... -released/

Be good if Harrison can get it all ported to windows.

[MickGael]

Hi MickGael,

...

In theory I like your sliding tab idea, but in practice I don't see how it would be better. If screen space is your issue, then adding more sliding/scrolling elements just uses up more pixels. Can you draw me a mockup to show me what you want?

-Ben

Hi Ben,

I did a quick mockup that I hope shows what I mean. Allowing for the mixer to appear INSIDE the main window, as a tab, would significantly improve the usability. I find having to tab between 2 separate screens so off-putting, I rarely use the software. As you requested, it might look something like this:

http://www.danieljslewis.com/harrison/

I would be delighted to hear this is already possible! That is, the fully-functioning mixer window appearing nestled in as a tab.

[LawrenceF]

Bought it on the $60 deal and like it a lot, the Harrison channel strips.

The Ardour DAW behind it is the part that gets a little confusing. On the one hand, the Ardour developers have really studied how high level conventional audio DAWs should work, covering a lot of the little fundamental stuff that most personal production products leave out, or that some of those users maybe wouldn't need anyway, great monitoring options, etc, etc. They didn't miss very much.

While they should get lots of credit for that, and for exceptional routing flexibility, they did the exact opposite of what some other DAWs do... they worried so much about the little things conventional things linear studios need (to really great effect imo) that they overlooked a lot of small UI bits that tend to add up.

There is a heck of a lot of unnecessary clicking around in it... maybe too much. If or when they circle back and refine some of the UI behaviors (drag and drop, swiping track lists, etc, etc, reduce the general amount of clicking around), that thing will be in another class.

It's a really well thought out fundamental design for the recording pro, just not a well thought out design for best case direct interaction with the UI, especially not with a mouse.

But the Harrison channel strips sound great.

[BenLoftis]

Hi LawrenceF

Thanks for your extremely insightful comment! This is exactly how the development of Ardour (and therefore Mixbus) has progressed. The goal was to get the "hard stuff" right first. It's always possible to go back and add eye candy. But if your external sync options or crossfades aren't implemented right, then you can go down the wrong path with the GUI because you don't even know what the GUI is supposed to do. There are LOTS of examples of this in every DAW.

One example that comes to mind is shown in our latest "Pro Tips" video about Automation:


About 7 minutes in, you see an example of how to cut a range of automation. Often when a DAW allows you to edit the automation, there's an assumption that you want to edit the "points" but that is very rarely the case. If you make a cut on the timeline, you only want that section changed, not all the times that would be affected by deleting the "point". This particular feature is currently Mixbus-only, but we will also apply it to the Ardour v3 code soon.

There are still a lot more automation "best practices" to implement ( and this is something that Harrison has a unique advantage to know ), but this struck me as an example of how it's important to know what is the right thing to do regardless of how the UI does it.

Your comment lets me know that people are noticing our hard work! Thanks again!

Best Regards,
-Ben

[LawrenceF]

It's always possible to go back and add eye candy.

Best Regards,
-Ben

Thanks Ben.

To be clear I wasn't really talking eye candy, the thing looks pretty nice to me as it is. I was talking more "interactive UI function"... like moving mixer channels and arrange tracks directly or swiping the mouse through any of those various lists to enable disable a wide range of things in one go instead of clicking 10 times, and/or maybe making the creation of new groups & assignments a bit more direct, select 10 tracks, click a menu, make a new drum group and assign all of the selected channels to it in one go, etc, functional stuff like that... some of which (granted) I may have missed when kinda casually skipping over the manual.

I suspect that if you guys have a code fork of sorts for MixBus, that you could add some of that yourselves for it, and not necessarily wait for standalone Ardour to get it.

As to general looks, the thing already looks pretty darn nice to me. As relates to the other stuff, interacting with the UI, I think you guys actually can have your cake and eat it too, have the higher level audio workstation functions and also improve the UI interaction, if you could just make some of those UI parts a good bit more directly accessible.

Thanks again Ben. Great product.