Now in its second decade, Harrison’s Mixbus sets out to bring the American console manufacturer’s sound and workflow into the box. Here we give an overview of Mixbus 10 and its new features, get some user opinion, and some background from the people behind it.

Harrison Mixbus - The Story So Far

Harrison Mixbus will be a familiar name to many readers of the blog. Introduced in 2009, the DAW can run not only on Windows and MacOS, but also on Linux. With the Ardour platform as its open-source foundation, Mixbus is perhaps best known for supercharging this with proprietary processing to deliver a console-like workflow. This comes courtesy of its virtual recreation of the Harrison analogue console, achieved using its 'True Analog Mixing Engine' (TAME). As of the latest release, Mixbus now comes in 10, 10 plus, and 10 pro tiers. Mixbus 32c is no longer available.

The original Mixbus DAW had an analogue-modelled 3band EQ, a simple compressor, and Harrison's customised panning and summing on every channel. Version 1 had only 4 stereo busses with tape saturation, but this later increased to 8 stereo busses and then finally 12 stereo buses in the Mixbus32C DAW. This replaced the 3 band EQ with Harrison's 32C 4 band EQ with high and low-pass filters. Mixbus's bundled plugins (the XT range) were derived from Harrison's digital consoles to fix live recordings. Unlike many DAWs, these plugins required a separate purchase to unlock them in the DAW. Users may recognise some of the XT plugins in a modified form: Harrison's AVA plugins, which share the same DNA, but work in any DAW and many are now available in SSL's Complete subscription.

Mixbus allows for the import or recording of an unlimited number of audio or MIDI tracks. Users can perform editing, mixing, and mastering tasks as on any other platform, with options such as the ability to import Pro Tools sessions helping cross-compatibility between studios.

Mixbus 10 New Features In Full

• Object-oriented mixing for MacOS/Windows/Linux. No additional software needed to create immersive files for “Atmos compatible” immersive streaming services such as Tidal, Amazon, and Apple Music.

• Object panning on every channelstrip as a 'sub-feature' of Dolby Atmos immersive panning.

• All tiers of Mixbus now have the famous 32C equalizer.

• All tiers benefit from Pre/post switches on every mixbus send knob, an often-requested feature.

• Monitor the mix on 7.1.4 speakers, or binaurally on headphones, directly from the Mixbus software as a 'sub-feature' of Dolby Atmos immersive panning.

• LUFS and dBTP displayed directly in the main mixer window as a 'sub-feature' of Dolby Atmos support.

• The PRO tier can switch between the 32C EQ and the SSL 9kJ equalizer, on a channel-by-channel basis - A/B the two EQs and choose the one that fits your source the best.

• Support for immersive workflows (PRO tier only).

• New, selectable SSL 9000J EQ in the channelstrip (PRO tier only).

• The PLUS and PRO tiers now include the complete collection of 19 XT plugins for Mixbus.

Mixbus Tiers Are Here

Harrison’s Mixbus32C name has been retired. There is now one DAW product: Mixbus. This is available across three tiers, with each progressively adding features to cater for different types of user. All three tiers now have the Harrison 32C equalizer in every channel strip. After installing Mixbus, a licence can be purchased and applied from one of Mixbus’ three tiers:

• Mixbus: A full-featured DAW, basically equivalent to the flagship Mixbus32C. Featuring the 32C EQ and mixbus’ 12 sends, with the addition of Pre/Post sends for v10.

• Mixbus Plus: adds the Channelstrip Gate, and all of the XT plugins.

• Mixbus Pro : the complete application that includes all Immersive functions, SSL EQ, Channelstrip Gate, and the complete suite of XT plugins.

Mixbus 10 - From The Inside

Here Ben Loftis, Mixbus Product Manager, talks about Mixbus and the thinking behind its development:

PE: We saw Mixbus enter the market in the late 2000's. Many engineers were long-term Pro Tools users by this point; what led you to develop it and who was the target group of users?

BL: Mixbus was driven by our personal frustration with DAW mixers. As developers and users of hardware mixers, our feeling was that typical DAW mixer-window misses the point of ‘mixing’ to make a record.

Mixing is about balancing the elements of multiple tracks ‘in context’ with each other, using level, bussing, and eq. The ‘popup dialogs’ of most DAWs feel like something else entirely: yes they are good for sound-design, but not for the task of mixing.

Furthermore, we saw an opening because while bundled plugins are good quality, nobody really wants a stock EQ ... they want something with a pedigree. Mixbus is in a unique position due to Harrisons legacy in making music. Few DAW developers are associated with the sound of “Thriller” or “Another One Bites the Dust”, or “Sweetest Taboo” like we are.

Our console customers prefer to work on our expensive hardware even though, technically, you can do everything in a DAW. There’s something about the knob-per-function immediacy of a console that just makes mixes happen faster. So our goal was to bring some of that feel to DAW users.

As a final comment, Mixbus was driven by a very real desire to give back to the audio community:

We wanted our own DAW, but we didn’t want to introduce ‘yet another’ proprietary DAW. So we chose to partner with an open-source community and this makes Mixbus very special. Not just the product itself, but the outreach it generates. When we have an intern come to work for us, we tell them that any changes they make to Mixbus, they get to keep and carry forward with them in their career. That may sound odd, but it is an explicit goal of ours to develop talent in the pro-audio industry.

PE: Many DAWs take a familiar form with a timeline-plus-mixer type approach. Did you intend Mixbus to be a refinement of that or were you looking to make something more fundamentally different?

BL: I think Mixbus will be familiar to anyone who has used a DAW or a mixer! Our goal is simply to meet people where they are in their DAW needs, but focus much more on the task of mixing, which is of course our specialty.

There was a short period, during the initial Mixbus v1 launch, when people viewed Mixbus as a mixer-only. They were trying to use their prior DAW for editing and arranging, and ‘pipe’ the audio into Mixbus for mixing. But that was never our intent.

We understood the superiority of a DAW for many tasks… particularly the visual immediacy of the waveforms on the timeline: these days you’d never use mixer automation to duck an essy bit of audio, instead you just select it in the editor and draw it down a bit (and in fact “clip gain” is an innovation that we had for about a decade before Pro Tools incorporated it).

To answer your question, Mixbus *is* a timeline-plus-mixer - i.e. a full-featured DAW… But our focus is on making a great mix, while having fun in the process. Mixbus isn’t intended to compete with mainstream DAWs but rather to meet the desires of a certain kind of user… Typically someone who is familiar with an analog mixer and wants to feel that same immediacy in their workflow, or someone who is keen to.

Whereas in the business case, Mixbus is fundamentally different. Because of our open platform, we’ve incorporated user-contributed features that we might never have pursued ourselves. If someone is sufficiently motivated, they can make changes happen. That’s not something you see.

Mixbus 10 - From The User

Here long-time user of Mixbus Russ Cottier shares his in-depth thoughts on the latest iteration of the DAW:

Simply put Mixbus 10 is the closest thing that I’ve used to an analogue studio in my Mac.

I’ve been using Mixbus since version one. I was drawn to it, because at that point, I was already applying EQ and dynamics to all of my channels in my chosen DAW and routing to buses, just like the groups on my Amek console at the time.

Full disclosure, I’ve been an ambassador of Harrison Mixbus for many years, but why do I choose to work with it?

Deep down, I’m a nerd, a geek or as I prefer to term it, a power user! One of the key features of Harrison Mixbus is that I have deep access to my session files.

There’s no hidden proprietary information in there. If I want to go into a session file with a text editor and make changes, identify files, edit positions, or even check plug-in parameters, I can absolutely do that. You might be asking why this is important? Well, just you think back to that moment we almost all experience in certain other DAWs “Your Session File Cannot Be Loaded”. From an archival point of view, it’s a no-brainer to use a more open system for storing this important data.

Let’s talk about LUA, put bluntly, the scripting power of Mixbus increases my productivity and pays my bills. I use a custom script that organises multitracks that might be sent in by clients. It identifies files by name, lays out tracks, groups and colour codes everything, sets my gain structure, adds my usual plug-in chains, automates drum sample addition and much more. Easily saving me a so much time with a single button click I even have some scripts that complete other mixing tasks, just like I would, such as making space for vocals, delay throws etc.

But this is all talk of tech and futuristic things, what about that classic sound that Mixbus gives? For me, mixing on a console was always about the various stages of saturation and the ease of control with a consistent layout. Mixbus has always offered this, but the drive features and selectable EQ in Mixbus 10 have taken this to another level.

Constant improvements with the dynamics control section have left me reaching for additional plug-ins even less with each version and the bundled plug-in suite is excellent. The system supports pretty much any kind of plug-in format which could just open up a whole new world of creativity.

He’s the most important thing though, Harrison Mixbus is a pleasure to use, it’s actually fun!