Mixcraft 8 Pro -- early days yet, but a nice surprise so far

[lingyai]

After using mainly Sonar and sometimes Studio One the past few years, I've been messing with Acoustica's Mixcraft 8 Pro over a few days and am really suprised, it seems very well-thought-out (their staff include Sonic Foundry alumni ), extremely stable (more so on my PC than the other two DAWs), and intuitive to use. Easy to have fun with without referring to the manual much at all. The midi side of things is refreshingly straightforward and reliable.

I'd always thought for some reason that it was sort of an "adolescent" DAW, but I'd say this version, if it were a person, it'd be in its mid-30s -- not capable of everything you could possibly want yet, but certainly trustable with an awful lot of core tasks. It probably can't top Cubase, ProTools et al for the professional mix engineer or composer, but so far looks great for keen hobbyists like me.

(I've not tried any of the many bundled FX and VSTis, just been treating it as a host for my own.)

Any thoughts form anyone else who's spent some time with it?

[Spencer Maddox]

I don’t own Mixcraft, but I agree it’s deceptively good feature wise.
It’s definently got some cool features.
unfortantly it suffers a bit of FL Studio syndrome.
People view it as more of a toy and seem to forget how powerful it can be if operated correctly.

[lingyai]

I don’t own Mixcraft, but I agree it’s deceptively good feature wise.
It’s definently got some cool features.
unfortantly it suffers a bit of FL Studio syndrome.
People view it as more of a toy and seem to forget how powerful it can be if operated correctly.

I'm not sure why I'd thought of it as a toy, perhaps it had something to do with the look of the old GUI -- like the way someone in 1979 would imagine a music computer in (gasp) ... the year 2000! Now that styling is much more subdued, kind of Logic-like, except for the time / bar readout over the transport bar, which still uses the Battlestar Galactica font.

It also does come a kind of a grab-bag assortment of VSTis and FX which might offend some peoples' snob sensors. Personally I seldom care about these in any DAW, I already have way more 3rd party plugs than I need. (Also, if you rey on bundled plugs, and your DAW-maker goes out of business suddenly (ahem), you might find you've painted yourself into a corner, unable to port your mix to a new DAW without the comrpomises of rendering.)

[Steve Bolivar]

I haven't tried it yet but have been reading positive reviews about it. The Audio Control function is really impressive.

[mumpcake]

It also does come a kind of a grab-bag assortment of VSTis and FX which might offend some peoples' snob sensors. Personally I seldom care about these in any DAW, I already have way more 3rd party plugs than I need.

I don't know if it hits my "snob sensors", but to me it doesn't look good when they are bundling a number of outdated freebies like the MDA and Kjaerhus series. Maybe it comes across that they are trying to put one over on us.

I have heard a lot of good things about the program from quite a few people who generally know what they are talking about. I may end up checking them out at some time and hope they do well.

[ATS]

I own Mixcraft and think it's a great host. I do however prefer Studio 1 for the most part. But those are the only two hosts I own and the only ones I really got along with.

[lfm]

Having a MC7 license - I ran it a while two years ago.
One brilliant thing is how you stack synths on a track - and easily also make a preset for that.
Track becomes like a folder/bus for all loaded and each synth outs is available separately.
And ability to limit midi key range and transpose on each minimize need for what in other hosts become endless routing stuff.

Midi input on track flows downwards, so you can place an arpeggiator anywhere and out from that can be picked up by that below.

All this is something I wish other daws would copy/mimic.

But for me general audio routing abilities were not enough. If using lanes on a track you get a bus on that track for those, and can also route to another bus - but that is it. No deeper nesting than that was possible. Don't know if this is addressed in MC8 though. You really need to route a bus to a bus in any level you like - especially not having VCA's.

And things like eq you don't use, is always in your face anyway. Most hosts allow to hide modules in mixer.

But MC7 felt really stable and good in many ways. If starting out and want lots of content and plugins - why not. Your needs are surely met for a good while. So as a package I find it good value.

Reaper is really cut down on plugins and content - but as a host very capable. No limitation almost. But you have a learning curve to get things as you like them - toolbars, gui theme maybe and similar. And buy 3rd party stuff is a must, I think. So if ok with that, it's almost unbeatable as moneys worth.

StudioOne is an oddball in my world how they had everybody buying Producer 2.x version need to get 3.x Pro version or buy an addon to get VST support. Not sure if they fixed that later on. And reporting bugs I suddenly was referred to local music store where I bought it, since I was not us citizen. How convenient for them. Red flags all over for me with Presonus.

[Zexila]

Does it have bezier automation curves?

[lingyai]

It also does come a kind of a grab-bag assortment of VSTis and FX which might offend some peoples' snob sensors. Personally I seldom care about these in any DAW, I already have way more 3rd party plugs than I need.

I don't know if it hits my "snob sensors", but to me it doesn't look good when they are bundling a number of outdated freebies like the MDA and Kjaerhus series. Maybe it comes across that they are trying to put one over on us.

I don't know MDA but I personally find Kjaerhus quite, not neccessarily top-drawer, but quite serviceable for bread and butter needs -- as much as some of the Melda or Voxengo free stuff (Also, old per se doesn't mean bad e.g. Cakewalk's holdover Sonnitus DXis, or, for that matter, Waves Renaissance plugs. )

They do provide a number of flavours of plugs beyond Kjaerhuis as well; you've also got stuiff from Izotope and Celemony (with ARA integration); as well as their own plugs, which look kind of like Reaplugs. I've not tried them yet, but I suspect that Acoustica is a reasonably proud comany, so at worst, nothing they offer will be crap.

My guess is that, as a small company, competing at $180, they've decided to invest more in the DAW itself.

Sure, they want it to be something that bedroom producers / newbies can enjoy on Xmas morning with everything you need in the box, without having to reinvent the FX/ instrument wheels, hence the kitchen sink of 3rd-party plugs; and they do have VST3 and sidechain support to accomodate gearlslutz like us, with our bloated inventories of must-have favourites.

Rather, they seem to have focussed on maturing Mixcraft by adding useful features while preserving intuitive use and actually improving stability. They seem to have succeeded -- I base this on what I've skimmed from the Mixcraft forum every 12 months or so since version 5.

I can say that so very many things I've been trying just work, and that it is more stable for me at least (on a 5-year old Win 7 Pro 64 built by Scan UK, i7 cpu 2.7 ghz, 16 gb ram, small Focusrite Scarlett) than Sonar and Studio One. Over 15 or so hours now, I have been trying in vain to crash it. Just for the hell of, I've got 9 instances of Kontakt runing maybe a dozen RAM-heavy libraries, some with midi out driving other VSTis; CPU-hungry fx (e.g. 4x oversampled this and that; TDR plugs in Lunatic Precision Mode; Waves CLA series, nom nom nom) I'm having more uninterrupted DAW fun than I've had in a long time.

I have heard a lot of good things about the program from quite a few people who generally know what they are talking about. I may end up checking them out at some time and hope they do well.

I'd suggest to anyone who knows what DAWs are supposed to do, that to download the trial and just monkey around with the opening demo song for 10-20 minutes, would not go amiss.

[Topcheese]

Don't even get me started, MC is not the end-all be-all, but you would be very hard pressed to find anything comparable. You can't talk about old 3rd party plugins that are provided free, and that you know will work within Mixcraft. Speaking of which they also include a bridge for the "old" plugins, where other DAWs that's a separate purchase.

I don't really have any major DAWs, but I has recently purchased Traction Waveform, and I was loving it. Long story short I ended up testing the demo of MC and ended up buying it. Don't let the price fool you, they have created a product that you can craft a mix professionally, and all at a price that is affordable.

Don't get me wrong, it is not all roses. I definitely look forward to the new Sonar users and their useful input. I know people try and knock it for its looks, but at the end of the day you are faced with a DAW that isn't trying to be your date for prom night, nor is it trying to enter any beauty contest.

You have a DAW that wants to simply be there for you, and at the same time not get in your way. It's still too early for me to really come up with any negatives, but believe me I'm working on it. I've also been trying lots of things, and for the most part they just work. My E-MU X3 works on it so I'm a happy camper!

[lingyai]

Does it have bezier automation curves?

No. Just nodes and the straight lines between them.

[lingyai]

Does it have bezier automation curves?

No. Just nodes and the straight lines between them.

Having said that, it does create auto cross-fades when audio clips overlap, if this somehow relates to your question.

[Zexila]

Does it have bezier automation curves?

No. Just nodes and the straight lines between them.

Thanks for the answer, that's showstopper for me unfortunately...

Having said that, it does create auto cross-fades when audio clips overlap, if this somehow relates to your question.

No, but thanks for the info.

[lingyai]

I haven't tried it yet but have been reading positive reviews about it.

Something which helped convinced me to give it serious spin was a detailed, pretty enthusiastic review this summer in Sound on Sound.

[lingyai]

Does it have bezier automation curves?

No. Just nodes and the straight lines between them.

Thanks for the answer, that's showstopper for me unfortunately...

Having said that, it does create auto cross-fades when audio clips overlap, if this somehow relates to your question.

No, but thanks for the info.

Pistols at dawn, then, I'm afraid