Recording - December 2016 - 52

&
Harrison Mixbus 32C
by James Lindenschmidt

...where we bring you follow-up articles
with application hints and upgrade news
about gear already reviewed in Recording

This is quite useful; for instance, you could use the smaller and
faster Mixbus 3 for tracking sessions, and then open the exact
same file in Mixbus 32C for mixing, giving access to the more
powerful tools available on the 32C console.

Figure 1. Mixbus 32C features Harrison's circuit-level emulation of the famous Harrison 32C analog console, including its
classic EQ on each channel and its 12-bus architecture.
Like all good software, Harrison's Mixbus is a constantly-evolving
world into itself. When we last checked in with Harrison, it was a
review of Mixbus 3.0 in the September 2015 issue. Since then,
there have been some incremental upgrades, with 3.4 being the
current version as of this writing. Now there is another new, even
more powerful branch of the Mixbus family tree: Mixbus 32C.
Mixbus 32C is similar to Mixbus 3, in the sense that it is a virtual Harrison mixing console bootstrapped to the open-source
Ardour DAW. But this time, instead of the simple, elegant, nicesounding console from the regular version of Mixbus, we have
an entirely new console-an emulation of the famous Harrison
32C mixing desk.
For those unfamiliar with the name, the Harrison 32C console
is one of the most famous consoles in history, right up there with
other classics from Neve, API, Trident, and other manufacturers.
It has many fans, including (perhaps most famously) Bruce
Swedien. The console has been used on many very well-known
recordings, including albums the likes of Thriller by Michael
Jackson and discs by Queen, Supertramp, and Genesis.
The only difference between the $79 Mixbus 3 and the $299
Mixbus 32C is the console available. All the other DAW features come from Ardour, so they work identically in both programs. It might be easy to dismiss 32C because of this, but
don't... you're only getting one new console, but what a console
to have! We'll get to the fantastic 32C virtual console soon
enough, but first let's get up-to-date with some new features in
the world of Harrison Mixbus.
Updates in the Mixbus world
Mixbus 32C is very similar to Mixbus 3, down to the file formats
for both DAWs being exactly the same and (mostly) interchangeable. This means you can open Mixbus projects in both DAWs.
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RECORDING DECEMBER 2016

The only caveat is that while plug-ins are maintained in
both versions, settings from the Harrison console itself will not
carry over between Mixbus 3 and Mixbus 32C. So you will
have to re-adjust all settings from the Harrison consoles if you
move back and forth between the versions regularly.
Normally this won't be a problem, since once you go to 32C
there are few reasons to take a project back to Mixbus 3.
This limitation seems strange until you consider that the
EQ, compression, and saturation circuits in the consoles are
not identical to one another. Mixbus 32C is a circuit-level
emulation of the entire console, and not just the equalizer circuits within the console. Therefore, the same frequency or
level settings won't necessarily translate identically.
Furthermore, Mixbus 32C has more "knobs" and adjustable
parameters than Mixbus 3. Fortunately, all the other features
translate well, including several new features in the Mixbus
world that are available on both workstations.
The new Polarity Optimizer is fantastic, one of those features where you are astonished someone didn't think of it
years ago. You simply select some audio across multiple
tracks, in which the tracks are bleeding into one another
(such as all the drum mics, for instance), choose the Polarity
Optimizer, and it will automatically calculate the best polarity
settings for each track. Genius! Even better is that you are
still free to reverse polarity for some tracks, if you have reason to do so for special effects, phase shifting as a virtual
EQ on a guitar recording, etc.
Polarity Optimizer calculates the total volume (in dB) of all
the tracks mixed together, in all possible combinations of
polarity. So even if you are just checking a few tracks, it
saves loads of time, and for a full, modern drum kit recording
of 10-16 tracks or more, it calculates thousands of possible

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - December 2016