New Mac OSX Daw - Harrison Mixbuss

[SubFunk]

Umm... What should make me think that just because Person X knows how to build a quality analog compressor or EQ that this gives them any great insight on coding a quality digital compressor or EQ?

I build an analog synth once... I won't be coding Reaktor anytime soon.

that is a very lame comparison...

a company like harrison consoles will surely not jeopardize there reputation, therefore employ coders who can!

and @ ukruss, yeah check if you have set up the jack pilot properly...

[UKRuss]

I bought, I dl'd I installed, i installed Jack...I cannot get the fucker to start up...it just keeps on crashing.

i had the same problem, is it crashing at the splash window?

most likely you haven't setup Jack properly yet... go into the JackPilot prefs and set it to use your audio interface... if you want to use the built-in audio on an Intel Mac, you need to create an aggregate device that combines the built-in input (or mic) and the built-in output...

oh, and you need to stop Jack (hit the stop button on JackPilot) before you can change the JackPilot prefs...

Nice, thats probably my issue then...I'll give that a whirl! Thanks.

[UKRuss]

Fish, thanks, That sorted it.

Now i have one final problemo:

I can't think of a way to be able to route all Lives tracks direct to a different track in Mixbuss. No problem i thought, I'll solo each rtrack, re-route in jack and record each one onto a different track in Mixbuss.

but then how do you sync start both Live and Mixbuss? All the tracks will be out of sync with each other no?

Any ideas?

[fishmonkey]

if you were wanting to work that way (working with recordings of all the separate tracks in Mixbus), then it would make more sense to bounce the tracks down in Live, rather than routing them all through Jack...

you'd route them through Jack if you wanted to use Mixbus as a mixer front-end, with Live providing all the audio in realtime...

[UKRuss]

I thought I might have to bounce down. But, what if i did want to use Mixbuss as a mixer front end, is there a way to route Live's tracks individually to mixbuss?

Is it interface dependant? I suppose it must be, so with enough outs on an interface i could use jack to pick them up and route them to MixBuss.

Then i could sync....yes...thinking out loud here.

[supamonsta]

thinking out loud too..

cant' you simply just route live's individual tracks each to a virtual jack track, then configure each channel in mixbuss to receive each virtual jack track individually?

doesn't JACK appear in your live's tracks "audio out" menus ? and in your mixbus channel's input menus?

>> first you'll have to configure jack to provide enough virtual tracks. <<

thinking out loud...

you'd route them through Jack if you wanted to use Mixbus as a mixer front-end, with Live providing all the audio in realtime...

THAT IS GOING TO BE REALLY INTERESTING... providing in depth mixing abilities without the limitations of bounced tracks (further rework / manipulation, even at the midi stage...)

[UKRuss]

You're the man!...of course. Glad we thought out loud. Well played sir!

[supamonsta]

happy to see I didn't think too loud and "misplacedly" !!

well , any new owner to give us a kind of review?

I'd like to get some comparison between live's mixing console and tools and harrison's mixbus..

-are the EQs so great, and not too limited in comparison with EQ8?

-do you feel a real difference with this harrison summing algorythm?

-do you feel that 4 busses are enough?

-are the automation tools easy to use?

-low or high on CPU ??

-did you try using it "jack-ed" to live, as a front-end console with live providing the audio in realtime, what about the CPU use in that case, delay times...?

well, I browsed the web but there seem to be still ne real pro review yet.

cheers

[UKRuss]

It's taken me a day to get the thing working...but I have a project to meeks, so i shall Harrison it up and see what happens.

[jOop.]

Umm... What should make me think that just because Person X knows how to build a quality analog compressor or EQ that this gives them any great insight on coding a quality digital compressor or EQ?

I build an analog synth once... I won't be coding Reaktor anytime soon.

that is a very lame comparison...

a company like harrison consoles will surely not jeopardize there reputation, therefore employ coders who can!

and @ ukruss, yeah check if you have set up the jack pilot properly...

Lame as it may have been it still seems a more logical conjecture than your equally specious "argument by divine hope" approach.

Either way I was making more of a commentary on their lame marketing angle: Why spend 90% of the video extolling one's past successes in a medium
where those successes aren't a factor in the quality of the product being marketed?

[OvertoneZero]

UAD did it, why not Harrison? It looks like a useful product. I think they are charging too little for it.

the main proof will be in the sound, but the GUI looks cool

[leedsquietman]

The video spends about 20 seconds at the beginning extolling past successes, and runs for several minutes. So not exactly 90%...

A lot of people with great ears and experience are loving it at Gearslutz.

However - don't like the concept then don't buy. It's that simple. There are plenty of alternatives.

If you like an Analog sound, you can always render through an analog mixer, or better still render through analog mixer to Studer, Revox or Otari 2" reel to reel tape, and then run it back into your DAW. Or buy a TL Audio Fatman for a couple of thousand bucks for that mojo. The Harrison Mixbuss is going to give you SOME (not all) of the MoJo of it's analog consoles for 80 bucks, as oppposed to spending thousands.

Digital with Analog MOJO still sounds good - this is why people buy UAD, Powercore, Liquid Mix and SSL Duende etc - it might nor fully recapture the analog sound, but it gives some analogish qualities which often helps and certainly, most people, if they had access to those tools (UAD etc) for 80 bucks would have no hesitation and Live's inbuilt FX would largely be put to bed.

[alex.the.forge]

.. and Live's inbuilt FX would largely be put to bed.

what FX does it have? I thought the mixx buss had compression and EQ, are there others too?

I guess Ardour might, but would they be better than Live's?

I find since they updated the Compressor in Live I have no need to use anything else really. It's amazingly versatile.

Same with the EQs - I think EQ8 is really transparent and EQ3 actually has a nice sound if you use it right. I'd be keen to try the Harrison ones, but I think I'd still use Live's too.

as with anything, it's always horses for courses, but I think Live's FX are pretty good really

[leedsquietman]

Live's FX are variable in quality - compressor is much improved, although I like the character of vintage compressors such as UAD or Sonalksis SV315, or Cytomic's 'The Glue' which I recently reviewed here. I do use Live's compressor quite a bit though, in L6 I barely used it at all.

The reverb - doesn't really cut it for me for most things, although it's OK on synths and completely electronic material - yes, it can be racked up to be a little better, but most 3rd party reverbs out do it, especially on vocals and acoustic instruments.

EQ8 - nice GUI, is great for non surgical cuts, but the cutoff filters are not great and it induces quite a bit more phase distortion when you boost things more than 3-4dB, moreso than most other 3rd party EQs I use, especially the Sonalksis SV517 EQ that thing's peaking and cutoff filters just slam (in a good way, the cutoff filters are like bolt cutters, it's snip - gone, Live's cutoffs allow too much leakage, and you can boost 6 or 7 dB with virtually no phasing at all in the SV517 EQ and it's high end is just sweet.)

Modulation effects - generally not that impressive unless racked - the Chorus and Flanger do a job to a degree but have a brittleness about them I don't like, as opposed to UAD's Dimension D or Audio Damage's Fluid, which have a really nice depth to them without sounding too artificial. Cubase's Studio Chorus and Cloner FX are also more useful to me.

Distortion/Saturation - again, OK to pep up a synth sound, but doesn't exactly match the AMp modelling in Logic 9 or Cubase.

I actually do like the delays (simple and effective) and grain delay and filter FX in Live though.

The effects which are on the Mixbuss all have a different CHARACTER to Live's FX, to many people it is like extra ear candy, so having a great tape saturation/EQ and compressor in that Mixbuss environment (and if using Jack to pipe Live in like Rewire you can still use Live's FX) and 3rd party AUs, for those with a Mac, that's a great little setup.

[OvertoneZero]

nice info leeds