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

[jonljacobi]

I've been impressed in my quick look. The only issues for me are that the GUI isn't scalable, and it doesn't run on the Mac. Surprisingly capable was my initial impression and I thought features were implemented pretty intelligently. Didn't spend a ton of time with it because the fonts and other stuff are too darn small, but you shouldn't dismiss it lightly. It supports VST3, notation, and ARA, things Live still doesn't have.

[Rik]

I watched couple videos... The UI is really scary... it has many dialogs Win 3.1 style

[digitalboytn]

Unfortunately,Mixcraft 8 just feels like it's a toy to me....

And those graphics are nothing short of scary.

But the more I dig into Reaper 5,the more impressed I am....

Reaper doesn't give you instant karma,but it's a very serious DAW

[jonljacobi]

Shape consciousness is alive and well. There are so many great skin designers, they should look one up. My issue is not the look, it's that everything is so tiny. But it's not a toy by any means.

Reaper is seriously feature-filled, but it too has interface issues. Starting with the default menus. But some of the methodologies are arcane and then some.

[jonljacobi]

I watched couple videos... The UI is really scary... it has many dialogs Win 3.1 style

What version? The latest 8.1 does not.

[Rik]

I watched couple videos... The UI is really scary... it has many dialogs Win 3.1 style

What version? The latest 8.1 does not.

Ok that was version 7 - I checked out the "Quick start" video.

[braj]

How is the video editing, has anyone used that a lot? It is also interesting that you can launch clips like in Live. How is that in practice?

[jonljacobi]

There are elements of the interface that have a dated look. Some like the piano roll are quite nice. But in actual use, everything I've tried so far is very easy and logical. Far more so than most.

It's kind of like hopping into a old VW Beetle and finding out it's as fast as a Porsche. No idea on the video though.

[lingyai]

[Deleted post: started as a bug report of sorts but might have been pilot error]

[jonljacobi]

I have to partially retract, there are a couple of older dialogs that are XP-like. But it seems they're slowly reworking the look. They also told me they'd look into making the interface scalable. Regardless, I keep throwing things at it, and it keeps doing them the way I would expect a proper DAW to do them.

[lingyai]

I I keep throwing things at it, and it keeps doing them the way I would expect a proper DAW to do them.

Funny, same here

[jonljacobi]

One other thing I like is that, like Live, it's not modal. You select an object, right-click, and get the appropriate options. I don't like having to select tools to perform an action because I rarely perform the same action multiple times. I'm increasingly impressed.

[lingyai]

One other thing I like is that, like Live, it's not modal. You select an object, right-click, and get the appropriate options. I don't like having to select tools to perform an action because I rarely perform the same action multiple times. I'm increasingly impressed.

+11

With Sonar you needed to switch tools from the toolbar (head's up display) all the time to make your mouse do something. One click / subclick to get you in the mode for cutting. Another click for selecting. Another for stretching. Another for writing. A sometimes useful overall smart tool. And several more, something like 15 in all if you click into all the sub-modes. And they did not always behave the same way depending on whether you were in regular track mode, comping mode, piano roll ... by the end it was a right mess imho.

Magically, Mixcraft manages to give you I think a maximum of three mouse modes in any situation, with the main one being the humble arrow cursor, it's a smart tool without the label. It just does what anyone with basic Windows DAW-sense would expect it to do. It's as though they replaced the pages and pages of documentation of Sonar's tools with a haiku.

"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them." -- Alfred North Whitehead

[lingyai]

This is typical of the many little lovely make-life-easier features I'm seeing in Mixcraft.

There are different, sometimes fiddly ways to set up midi-generating vstis (Cthulu, Nora, EZKeys, EZDrummer, certain Kontakt libraries which can send scripted midi out mode, other arps. chorders etc). Not uncommon to see in their documentation or on their forums a section per major DAW on how to do it.

This is the entirety of the Mixcraft documentation on this.



It works as described

Another small thing -- to add a new vst without having to deal with a scan or re-scan folder X dialogue box, you can just drag the dll from Windows Explorer and drop it anywhere on the mixcraft interface.

I haven't come across any "WTF were they thinking" stuff yet.

[fluffy_little_something]

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.

I assume they keep including those mediocre plugins in order to maintain backward compatibility as they have been used on many of the preset sounds across several versions.