Harrison Mixbuss?

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I'm copying and pasting the following.

I've known about "Harrison Mixbuss" for about a year and once in awhile I've seen no-brainer deals for $39.00 usually $219.00. I got curious and Googled it
yesterday and it brought up a thread at Gearslutz and sure enough another no-brainer good until May 15'th now at $19.95. Not a fully featured Daw like Cubase, Reaper, Logic etc. and sure it has some kinks, but it is fantastic for mix/mastering. You can record in it and it takes VST's(not VSTi's) but the sound. It is awesome. What many do is record and arrange in their DAW of choice, export :"stems'(audio files), then import these stems into Mixbuss. It is modeled after the famous Harrison consoles(many hit records used them) and I am hearing spot on. In many cases people haven't had to use their more expensive plugs like Compression, eq, and Tape saturation. I went to the url provided at GS, bought it in the morning, got the DL and license key in the afternoon. The install went smoothly. In fact the license was already activated with the install as the key was in the same download folder. No c/r, dongle or serial # to fuss with. So far really no isues with my 3'rd party 32 bit plugs. Harrison Mixbuss is 32 bit app for now. No Problem on my 64 bit Win 7 machine. Linux, Mac. and Windows OS.
My Pal here in town with a Project studio here in town bought it as well and no problems so far using his Uad plugs. Just wanted to give a heads up. Truly worth it, will save a lot of cash not having to buy plug-ins you may think you need to make you tracks and songs sound better. Once you get over what might seem dauting at first(the GUI), it really looks like an expensive mixer it is actually easier to get around
here is the url
Harrison Mixbus V2.5 - $19.95 - Gearslutz.com
also there is a series of YT vids,
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=harrison+mixbuss
the first one one w/o talking "shut up and mix", there is text on screen though. Is a great way to start and see what the buzz is all about. And for you Reaper users check out down the page "Reaper vs Mixbuss. That was done a year ago and now the version of mixbuss is up to 2.5...

I replied:
I guess if you do not have DAW experience, it's a good cheap starting spot. Most full-featured DAWs have the same features and abilities, so it really is the User Interface that makes the difference.


OP replied:
No dude, you are missing the point. It just plain sounds better. I personally know Studio owners that have had their eye on this. People Using Logic Pro, Cubase, Pro tools and Reaper were willing to shell out the 200+ bucks for it. Now we got a real no-brainer @ 20 bucks(WHICH I MIGHT ADD EXPIRES MAY 15'th)
Harrison Consoles are well known and many feel it hard to tell the difference between the actual hardware and Harrison's OWN effort to emulate them.The ability to increase 3db's without clipping is awesome, plus the fact it sounds less digital than most DAWs out there. I have already heard a mix in Reaper, then stemmed over to Mixbuss. Quite an improvement that I noticed.
Sure you can track with Mixbuss however at this stage of development I would recommend mixes that don't need extensive arranging or Virutal instruments. Makes a great summing mixer that has the ability to track as well. My bet is it will allow one to use less 3rd party VST's and AU's which will make it more light on it's feet. Helps UAD owners as well

Thoughts, comments?
 
Wow, that does look really nice. I agree at 20 bucks its a no brainer.
 
The Harrison site seems to say their DSP algorithms are "different". Maybe so.
 
If it's emulating the Harrison console, then I kind of see that as comparing plug-ins to plug-ins. There could be a difference. Maybe compared to Cubase/Sonar/PT stock plug-ins it does sound better. But will it sound better if using only 3rd party plugs? He mentioned UAD, is the Harrison console sound coded right into the DAW software? (Too lazy to go look at the links)
 
I'd say yes, you can definitely hear a difference between a standard mix and the same mix going through Mixbuss. It has a slightly bigger sound in the low end and a smoother high end. The only thing that doesn't work for me is that I'd have to transfer all my VSTi's to stems and honestly I don't think Mixbuss does much more than any good buss compressor and saturation plug-in would do, but for 20 bucks if it suits your projects it seems like a very nice sounding platform.
 
I have it, bought it in a no brainer a year or so ago, but I have not downloaded the free update yet, yes it does sound very nice but here I usually mix on a console so I just have it for the odd project.


Alan.
 
I've actually mixed on a Harrison. But it was live in a weird room so who knows...? I did like the mute groups, VCAs, balanced inserts, insert bypass button, pre/post fader button on all eight aux sends etc.
 
Since I'm probably going to end up mastering my next album myself (only can find so many folks who'll master for free), might this be a good option? I'd mix in reaper, then export the 24 bit stereo files and use Mixbuss for mastering.
 
I own it as well. It's a 100% no frills recording/mixing DAW. It does not have MIDI. It is based on Ardour, which if you've used in Linux/Ubuntu, is a little bit clunky. Mixbuss doesn't play nicely with a lot of third party plugins.

I wish it had a four band parametric EQ in the channel strip instead of a three band (high shelf, mid parametric, low shelf). However, the dynamics and saturation algos sound fantastic, particularly the tape emulations on the eight busses. It's a bare bones "tape machine and console" DAW. If you like the "analogue" approach and do a lot of audio recording (no MIDI), you'll dig it.

Me? I am yet to use it on a project.

Cheers :)
 
I loaded the update last night and had a play (with the mix buss of course). I love the sound of this software, but I am still getting a glitchy playback some of the time. I can't figure out why this is as the computer plays back all the other software fine even with a large number of tracks and plugins. Anyone experience this with mix buss.

I always forget to mention that I want to use mix buss due to it importing broadcast wave directly, as I use broadcast wave in the Tascam MX machines. I just need to fix the glitch problem and learn how to use everything.

Alan.
 
Yeah, it's not a very stable platform, IMO. Some plugins (even commercial ones) just refuse to play nice.

Cheers :)
 
I grabbed it while it was still $20. Made sure it loaded up already but haven't tried it yet. GUI is not as friendly-looking as Reaper, IMO.
 
I know I'm late, but I've been using mixbus for about a year now. I record in Cubase and transfer everything over for the mix process. I love how it's hard to make things complicated. For example, you can't send one of the 8 mixbusses to another. It forces me to think more globally and my mixes have come a long way.
I say give it a try. It sounds awesome and makes your life simple.
 
This DAW sounds fantastic, real simple, but a little clunky yet. I used it with UA plugs on an old Macbook Pro and it behaved really well.

Once Harrison gets the user interface together it will be my go to mix DAW.
I will probably still track in Logic, but depending what Harrison does, that may change.
 
For $19 not bad to test out.
I never got over the DAW and won't be using it. It seems transferring each track over is the way to use it then and I havent got around to that. I might try it as a "two-track-premaster" thing, like Ive been doing with Audacity....but for now Tracking is staying with Reaper, Ardour won't be used.
 
I'd give it a go it they had a Demo version but I can't see one. I've had a look every now and then at the website. Even at that cheap price, I'm not going to buy it if I'm never going to use it.

I'm quite happy with my set up that I have using Reaper. :thumbs up:
 
So last night I tried out Harrison for the first time. A mostly-finished mix (for the Lyrical Challenge, so not something that will go on my next album, or needs to match up soundwise with other songs). After the intial realization that you have to pick your interface/soundcard BEFORE loading up your project :p I was surprised how long it took to load up the stereo master track I had ready for it. As I've never really mastered anything, I just used the built-in tools, with compression on the track and then limiter on the master buss to boost the overall volume a little. Liked the built-in tape saturation feature. Haven't had the chance to A/B what it did yet.
 
Ok, so give a listen to the two files here at Dropbox (wanted to use full WAV format).

The first one has just had the volume boosted, close to what Mixbuss boosted to.
The second one, "Lucid Dreams master ..." was done with Mixbuss.

Is there a difference? Maybe not, and I was using Mixbuss all wrong. I kept the 'Tape Saturation' and EQ meters down below the red section. Looking at the waveforms, I don't see any real difference at all, and A/B-ing the two versions I couldn't real discern much, although the Mixbuss version seemed to be a little louder in the lower volume parts, that might have been my ears playing tricks on me.
 
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