Recording - September 2017 - 46

REVISITED

Harrison

but it is friendlier to smaller screens (yes, I include 17" laptops as
small screens) and is roughly one-quarter of the cost.

FaderPort 8 native support

A very exciting new feature for me is that Mixbus is, as of
this writing, the only other DAW apart from Studio One that
works in the Native mode of the new PreSonus Faderport 8
(see our June 2017 review).
I was able to get the FaderPort 8 to function under both
Windows (with the PreSonus Control One software) and under
Linux (as a native USB device). Its functionality is a bit different
with Mixbus than with Studio One, but it's similar enough that
adapting to its use is a no-brainer. See Figure 1.
The very tight integration of the Faderport 8 into the Mixbus
ecosystem of wide configurability
allows each engineer to tweak
By James Lindenschmidt
Mixbus for their own workflow,
There are a lot of reasons to root for Harrison Mixbus. One of them is the extraordinary
and creates a highly usable
hands-on interface for mixing
development model, where Harrison works closely with the open-source community around
and editing.

Mixbus 4

Better tempo mapping, advanced
control surface support, VCA faders...
and Linux

the multiplatform Ardour DAW. Another, of course, is the sound, with Harrison's decades of
experience in building high-end consoles made available in Mixbus.

We last checked in on Mixbus in September 2016, when
Mixbus 32C introduced an upgraded mixer section modeled
from the classic Harrison 32C console (Thriller, Back In Black,
The Game, and many more classic albums were made with
this console). Now, Mixbus is back with version 4.0 for both
regular Mixbus and Mixbus 32C.
Mixbus runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux. There are two
versions, the $79 Mixbus 4 and the $299 Mixbus 32C v4. Both
are based on the Ardour DAW, with all the same features for
audio and MIDI editing, routing, etc. The difference between the
two versions is the mixer bootstrapped on top of Ardour. Mixbus
has simpler EQs and fewer buses compared to the full-on 32C,
46

RECORDING September 2017

Tempo mapping

There are some exciting
new tempo map features in
Mixbus, particularly useful
when you want to record
music not originally performed
to a click track. Imagine a
recording that was not performed to a click. You can
quickly and easily drag the
first meter marker (4/4 in
Figure 2) to line up with the
downbeat that begins the song.
Then, you can shift-click the
blue tempo bar at a specific
point on the timeline (say, at
the beginning of measure 5),
and drag it to visually align
with the beginning of measure
5 in the audio. With practice,
you can get through an entire song in just a few minutes, setting
up the grid to conform to the performance, rather than adapting the performance to a perfect grid.
Once the song is mapped out properly, you can turn the grid
on for snapping, easy editing, and quantizing MIDI tracks to the
original performance, just as if the musicians had played to a click,
but with the natural ebb and flow of their original performance
preserved. The computer adapts to the musicians, not vice versa.

Other goodies

As of v4, Mixbus has VCA Faders, which allow you to organize multiple faders (such as all the drum tracks) to respond in

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - September 2017