How do I MUX this?

[ras.s]

Hello everyone, a new MUXer here, an old time effect addict..


Could anyone help me out a little bit, I'm having a bit of trouble figuring this out. I'm trying to create a mixer with MUX and while it's quite simple, what is giving me a bit of headache is I can't figure out how to do the solo-switches.

What I'm doing is I've got each track going to both an amplifier and a mixer. Each track has a parametric event generator set to two steps modulating the mixer's mute button, simple enough, and another two step event generator to choose between a solo or a channel bus (balancing between a audio balancer's outputs). Both the mixer and the amplifier are then routed to a one more amplifier that works as the master output channel.

The mixer is the "channel sum bus" and the amplifier is the "solo bus". Other than the master output, the solo bus also has an audio envelope generator that outputs an event everytime something goes into that bus and that bus then triggers another parametric event generator that mutes the "channel sum bus", essentially a really fast acting gate that kills every signal that doesn't go to the "solo bus".

That sort of works, but then again, not really since it's essentially just a gate. When the release portion of the event goes out, the non-soloed signals come back in. It doesn't help if I put an envelope after the audio envelope generator, that just gives me more precision for the duration of the release portion. Kind of a cool effect for creative mixing, but not what I'm aiming for here.

Another thing I tried was setting the release really long, but trying to invert the modulation to open the "channel sum" when there's no signal in the "solo bus". I couldn't get it to work.



Any ideas how to do this properly? How do analog mixers deal with the solo-buttons, anyone have any idea about that?



You can right-click the picture and view it as a larger image. That's a relatively simple setup, I'm working on making the solo switches work.. The knobs on the interface are pan, gain, mute, solo and auxiliary sends.


Now that I'm here, I've got to say, I'm really enjoying MUX over here.. I've had it for only a few days and it's really making me rethink about my music making. I've been using EnergyXT as an subhost for years now and I wanted something more complex to do layering and effects chains in.. Yea sure, I'll do layering and effects in MUX --- but what I'm really aiming for now is to actually have my entire studio inside it! Making my own mixer (customizing it per project if I want!), entire channel chains with options for modulations and hands on control for every damn thing I can imagine and then some, it's simply just a dream come true to a roots reggae & dub fanatic like myself. The two stereo inputs give me possibility for four audio tracks and synthesizers I can hold inside MUX, feeding them with MIDI from my sequencer. Amazing piece of software, phew, a lot to figure out..

[MuTools]

I've added a note on the wishlist that the individual Mixer Strip modules should get a solo button too, working on all mixer strips within the same MUX. Then the next challenge will be to make it possible to add such [M] buttons directly on a MUX front panel.

[ras.s]

Thank you for considering adding such a functionality, it would solve the problem elegantly.

Having a solo button in the mixer and making them work inside individual MUXes makes sense and gives more complex possibilities (say, soloing a oscillator within a synthesizer, but not affecting other instruments), I really hope you put it in there..

Also, regarding the mixer-module, I'm wondering if setting the stereo width to 0% makes the signal truly mono -- meaning that the modules that come after the mixer then deal with it as if the signal is mono?

Regarding buttons.. The way I've set this up right now, the mute and solo knobs on the interface already function like buttons when mapped to a button on my MIDI controller. The parameter event generators set to resolution of 2 make sure of that - the buttons on the controller send a value of either 0 or 127 and when they trigger the event generator, it's a on/off-functionality. So while it would be nice to have buttons on the interface, the functionality is already there.

And the solo buttons in that setup, they do work if the signal is busy enough. The problem rises when the signal is more sparse - as the release portion fades, the gate opens again. It soloes properly if I got a high hat going in there, but if I give it just the snare, the gate opens before the next snare comes in. Of course I can use this in a mixing situation, making sure first that the signal I want to solo is busy enough - often it is, especially if I solo more than one channel at a time. (I tend to mix live, and I mix dub, so that's why this stuff is important to me.)

I think I'll scratch my head a bit more with this one, I'll try using meta-parameters instead of audio signal.. It's sort of an excercise in logic and I like it. If someone comes up with a solution, I'd appreciate hearing about it.



Anyways, to anyone reading my walls of text..

The possibilities with building a mixer with MUX, it's something quite unique I think. I don't know other software that allow me to build my own consoles. Perhaps I could do something like that with Synthedit or Reaktor or something, but with MUX it's very fast, hands-on and on-the-spot so to speak. The benefit of that is that it changes the mixing workflow, which can be highly beneficial for creativity (or on the negative side, add a huge amount of labour for little gain) - it's what you make of it.

Thinking in terms of buses (like I've done here with having that separate solo-bus) also gives the possibility to have a "cue/pfl mix" (a pre-fader/pre-mute mix, good if you want to listen to something on your headphones that doesn't reach the actual mix, ie. djs selecting tunes), a "dim button" (that lowers the volume of selected channels by a certain amount), a separate monitor mix (for instance if someone you're recording with wants to hear a louder signal than you want, the drummer might want more bass..) and obviously submix/group channels with their own insert chains and channel strips.


Yea, I'm really excited about having MUX. Truly high grade.