by Steve Cunningham
We’ve been recording, editing, and mixing digital audio for long enough that most of us long ago settled on a favorite program (or perhaps two of them) for their work, and generally we tend to stick with it. For voiceover folks, the editor of choice seems to be Forge or Audition on the PC, and Twisted Wave or even Pro Tools on the Mac. For production pros, you can add Vegas on the PC and still more Pro Tools on the Mac.
These are our old friends, and occasionally our antagonists. We know and usually understand them, and we’re comfortable with them. It can be a rare occurrence when we switch from one to another. We may go, but we don’t go quietly.
Yet there seem to be more software editors available, stereo and multitrack, than ever before. Most of the newer ones are oriented toward music, and some specifically toward modern electronic music. But now and again one appears that seems a good fit for radio producers, and interesting for voice actors as well.
Harrison Consoles <www.harrisonconsoles.com> is long known for large-format “big iron” mixing consoles, often used to mix movies and television shows, along with a few record albums (can you say “Thriller”?). With software “in-the-box” (ITB) mixing becoming the norm, the company decided to take advantage of their reputation and perform a preemptive strike by introducing a software representation of their console product. The mixer layout borrows from both their legendary 1970’s vintage 32-series, and their 1980’s MR-series consoles. Harrison integrated that console representation with an existing open-source multitrack recorder and editor known as Ardour <www.ardour.org>. They then tweaked the whole business to their liking and released it as Mixbus.
CAPABILITIES
Mixbus provides an infinite number of stereo and mono input channels and tracks, limited only by available CPU power. Each channel features a high-pass filter, parametric or quasi-parametric EQ, a compressor and eight buss sends. Each of the eight stereo mix busses includes tone controls, compression, side-chain control and analog tape saturation emulation, and each can be used either as a group or auxiliary return.
Also included is built-in delay compensation, as well as a phase button (Polarity) and Input Trim and Makeup Gain controls on every channel. The master stereo bus also features tone controls and analog tape saturation emulation, as well as K-metering, a stereo correlation meter and a limiter.
The integrated software editor has all the features and functions one would expect from a multitrack audio editor. However, its MIDI implementation is limited to controls and setting recall (which is, in pro recording studios, what we used MIDI for in the first place). Note that Mixbus is essentially a highly-customized version of Ardour, a fully open-source software program. However, Mixbus uses a lot of proprietary code developed by Harrison Consoles, and that’s what you pay for when you buy it. For simplicity’s sake we will refer to the entire business as Mixbus.
REQUIREMENTS
It runs on everything, that’s what. Mixbus is available for just about anything you have that will still boot up, and when you buy a copy you get the licenses for Mac, Windows and Linux machines. On the Mac you need OSX 10.4.11 or newer, rolling all the way forward to 10.8 (Mountain Lion), running on either an Intel or PPC (yes, G4 and G5 CPUs!), with a CoreAudio interface. On a Windows box it’s going to be looking for XP or later, on Intel or AMD, 64bit or 32 bit, and according to Harrison “...any system soundcard should work” although a modern ASIO interface will always give better sound and performance. Mixbus also runs on Linux, and is something I intend to fully test on UbuntuStudio in the near future, but for now I’m just impressed that it’s available. Harrison suggests that the CPU should have two or more cores or processors for best performance, which implies the software’s use of threaded processing for efficiency. 2 GB of RAM is absolutely the minimum requirement; I would suggest 8 GB to make Mixbus sing. More RAM yields the more memory space for the program to run, and the less fetching code from the hard drive, which is slow.
Mixbus supports a vast array of file formats for both import and export. Multiple file formats and sample rates can be utilized in a single session, and there’s even the obligatory option to export finished projects directly up to your SoundCloud account.
Note that both the Mac and the Linux versions come with an audio routing program called JACK, which can allow the Mixbus mixer to replace the mixer in another multitrack editor by routing its output into the Mixbus. It should also be noted that on the Mac one has to employ a small workaround if one wants to use the built-in audio; one creates an OSX “aggregate” device that combines the built-in speakers and inputs together, and ties those separate devices into a single duplex device. No similar workarounds are required on Windows or Linux, but a good audio interface couldn’t hurt.
Authorization is accomplished via a serial number file which is downloadable along with the software itself. The software license is specifically for one user, which means that Mixbus can be installed on several computers, so long as only one copy is in use at a time, being used by the licensee who paid for it.
GETTING AROUND
Once you’ve created a session in Mixbus, you’re faced with a window that should look pretty familiar to users of other editors: tracks going down the left side, transport on top, and lots of iconic buttons and switches to call up different functions. But looks here are definitely deceiving -- Mixbus combines multiple functions into some controls, and specific functions are not always where one is used to finding them. Fortunately, handy tooltips aid in acquainting yourself with the program. So does the well-written and well-organized PDF manual. In short, there’s a learning curve here, particularly in the recording and editing areas. Don’t assume, and you’ll be alright. And don’t schedule that important session until you’ve had some time to find your footing.
Above all, it is the case the right-clicking is your friend in Mixbus. Vast numbers of important functions are easily uncovered by right-clicking in various areas of the interface. Mixbus really demands a three-button mouse, or trackball with a scroll wheel, for efficient operation.
With a design heritage that speaks to those of us who learned our craft on large consoles and tape machines, it’s not surprising to see that Mixbus provides several tape-style features that conventional users may find odd. The destructive audio recording option, for instance, is likely to go unused by most production pros. However, the choice to use Snapshots rather than the conventional “Save As” command to store successive versions of a project has benefits that have to an extent been lost in antiquity. I found it quite useful for quickly going back and forth between different groups of edits. It would be nice to see this function on other editors, since it is more efficient than “Save As” and more intuitive than Undo menus.
Mixbus has some great editing features as well -- for example, regions are transparent while they are being dragged, but they switch to opaque when dropped into place, making it easy to line up transients when sliding a sloppy performance into place. Another nice surprise that recalls earlier days was seeing a momentary timecode readout that appears while moving regions around the arrangement. The shuttle wheel is impressive, allowing you to speed up and down and scrub back and forth in either tape-style (pitch-changing) operation, or in a modern style with no pitch change. There’s also an intuitive and flexible looping and auto-punch feature that should appeal to radio producers who often record themselves. It enables you to select a region to loop and a separate region to punch in and out. While not revolutionary, it does indicate the level of thought that Harrison has invested in the Mixbus recording and editing interface.
The aforementioned MIDI control within Mixbus is comprehensive. MIDI Machine Control is fully supported, and MIDI Continuous Controller information can be mapped to any control within Mixbus. Fader control is via the standard Mackie HUI protocol, although the Windows version of Mixbus has not yet caught up with the Mac and Linux versions in this department.
THAT MIXER
While Mixbus is a complete multitrack editor, it is first and foremost a quite good (and good-sounding) approximation of a Harrison analog mixing console. Whether that strikes you as a Useful Thing or not given your specific situation is left for you to decide, but the mixer’s sonic qualities and analog interface cannot be denied. When it comes to mixing with Mixbus, the first thing I noticed was the sound quality. It sounds very real, and at the risk of sounding pretentious, it sounds “analog” straightaway. It’s not a unique quality, and I will admit it may have more to do with the gorgeous mixer interface, but that analog quality just seems to happen.
Given that every channel has built-in compression and EQ, you would expect that they would best sound good, and they certainly do. The compression is natural and without a particular color, while the EQ is smooth and musical.
Another feature that makes mixing with Mixbus a pleasure is its Plug-in Effect Control Sliders that allow the plug-in controls to be mapped directly to the controls on the mixer strip. Yes, those empty blocks where one would expect to instantiate and insert effects are actually slots that will hold the parameters for an installed effect. This means you can view your plug-in settings and make plug-in parameter adjustments directly on the channel, without having to actually open the plug window. The Mix Busses make it easy to add parallel compression to the VO track or more simulated analog tape saturation to the music track. The automation is easy to learn and powerful, without adding complicated parameters only useful to mastering engineers.
IS IT SWITCH-WORTHY?
I am loving working with the Mixbus software, particularly with the mixer. In the interest of full disclosure: back in the day, the first couple albums “our band” cut when signed with RCA were mixed on Harrison boards, and that process helped lock me into the careers I’ve had since, so my perceptions are probably biased with that nostalgia. It’s great, it sounds good, and frankly I understood its signal paths and gain stages immediately.
Working with the recorder/editor section... not so much. It has all the features I could possibly need and then some. The problem is finding them, and after a couple of weeks I’m still discovering where some functions are and how to access them. I had to go to the manual early and often, which is something I haven’t had to do for a while (it reminds me of the SAW software). And Mixbus has done absolutely everything I needed it to do in the process of producing a collection of short commercial spots and tags for an Internet site (yes, real paying work, and I’m using a completely new-to-me editor. Tsk, tsk).
Mixbus continues to evolve; it’s at version 2.3.1 at this writing, and more functions and features and clarifications are being issued, so it definitely holds some promise.
On the other hand, if you’re as smitten with the look and feel and sound of analog as I am, it may be worth your time and effort to give Mixbus a go. It is the closest thing I’ve seen yet to analog on a computer screen, and the sound matches the interface. Hey, I bought my copy, and they do have a subscription program that will let you get into it and use it on a monthly basis. Check it out.
Harrison’s Mixbus software carries a retail price of $219, although at present it is on sale for $149 direct from the website. More information on Mixbus software is available at www.harrisonconsoles.com/mixbus/website.
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