Mixbus and Snow Leo Jack only works 1 out of 5

Don´t know if it´s Mixbus or Jack but one of them or maby both acts really strange and I´m lucky if I get it to work about 1 out of 5 times, sometimes I try for hours with no luck at all.

I´m running Snow Leo 10.6 but I doubt it will fixe it self uptdating to latest snow Leo cause Logic and everything else works just good.

It´s very confusing I´m not even sure I clearly can describe the different kind of problems I experience with this combo Mixbus and Jack. See my first language is not English.

Any way after only a short time using Mixbus I´m a fan I love the program but it´s not stable and Jack man what a strange thing. Who would need all it can do and when it comes down to buissnes it shows it actually can´t deliver at all, not everytime anyway. So why program such a complecated thing and first of all why hook up Mixbus with it, that´s what I can´t understand. Why not just work something out like Rewire between Reason and Logic etc etc.

A couple of days ago I even managed to connect Logic to Mixbus (with a couple of guitar amp and esx24 loaded in Logic, esx24 cause of the lack of midi in Mixbus). It did´nt work right away but in some strange way planlessly klicking around in Jack Pilot router trying to figure out how to work that thing it suddenly decided it wanted to work. Ofcourse I thought I did something wrong so that´s why I had to go through all the huzzle.

Anyway I recorded a short piece cause I wanted to show the guys over at a forum what a wonderfull thing I just found and man what a price, incredibly good sounding and moast of all so cheap. It´s allmoast for free guys was the message.

Next step was to try to hunt down a free guitarplugin that would work in Mixbus and I did with a little help

http://www.studiodevil.com/products/

It worked ok, still can´t find no basgit plugin though and for drums well in my case I have to use Logic and EZ drummer or Adictive Drums. So after a few days playing around with mixbus standalone I decided to dig in to that Logic and Mixbus running at the same time thing again to be able to get some drums in to the music.

This is where it´s getting midly spoken confusing cause I was so sure I did something wrong the time before I tried this.

That firts time I was following a tip I found here and it said open the Jack Pilot app set your preferences, start jack pilot then Logic then Mixbus rout your ports the way you want them and your good to go. And like I wrote over here after a while it worked. Sure I had a delay playing guitar amp pro in Logic in to Mixbus but I thought that´s what you´d have to expect doing an advanced operation like that.

Anyway this time what ever I did I had no luck sat there for hours trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. Tried it again later the same evening but without starting up Jack Pilot, I only started up Logic and then Mixbus and routed my signals as I wanted them and voila SOUND from Logics guitar amp in mixbus. That´s when I thought OK you only start up Jack Pilot when you want to change something in you preferences if not just leave it, yeah that´s what was doing wrong before ok I got it.

I should tell you that all these times trying to get it to work stable I also have tried to tweak all options you have avaliable in OSX and the software that comes with my soundcard Safire Pro 10 i/o in just about every combination and order I could possibly think of.

Anyway today I wanted to record a song and as I said earlier I thought I knew how to get it to work so I was sure I was going to get lucky. Yeah sure man hehe and this time nothing worked at all, well I could play a short sample I recorded before Mixbus but that´s it can´t even get Jack Pilot to start. Well it does start sometimes depending on if I start Mixbus first but not for sure no no.

Well there´s no use in going on cause as you can see there´s no way I can give you a fair chance to understand what´s happening here and that´s not cause my bad english cause this is actually just plain strange. There´s no Logic hehe to it.

Anyway it seems that from the first time I downloaded Jack for Snow Leo the good guys programming it has come up with an update so I updated Jack too but it does´nt change anything, same crazy behaviour.

What´s bothering me is the “this is pro stuff”. It is when it works man it´s good then and I´ve been trying to tell the small piece of the world that I´m connected to what a good thing it is but…

In short words this whole idea with Jack, Ardour, Mixbus and open sorce is just to valuable and I´d hate to see it fail. Mixbus is one heck of a chance to place Ardour “on the map” in the competition with all the other daws.

Thanks
Göran

Sorry guys but Mixbus, Jack and all the cool stuff you´re supoused to be able to do with it just does´nt work stable enough for my taste anyway, now I can´t get it to work at all. I´m getting tired of this so Im staying with Logic. I´m putting Mixbus on the shelf, hell in fact I´ll give it away for free to anybody who want´s it. Exactly how to do this I mean unregister me as owner and register somebody else I don´t know but it just can´t be more complecated than to get the damn program to work.

@starobrno1: i’d like to politely remind you that Mixbus is not currently supported on Snow Leopard. We have not claimed that it works and we do not claim that it works. From the first release of Mixbus we attempted to make it clear that although it may work for a few users who got the right version of JACK, it was not intended to be installed and used on Snow Leopard. We have not announced any changed in this status yet, so I am really unclear why you’ve gone to all this trouble on a platform clearly labelled “currently unsupported”.

Hello Paul
Thanks for your reply. Well though what I write might look a bit uggly I mean no harm cause I like Mixbus and this whole concept. That´s why it´s so frustrating it does´nt work like I thought it would and like it does when it actually works.

Only thing I remember is I read here (don´t know where else to look sorry) once Jack was updated for Snow Leo Mixbus would work. Maby I personally misunderstood things don´t know but this “currently unsupported” is not exactly cristalclear, not for the interantional comunity anyway. I don´t think I´m the only one not being able to understand english good enough miss a thing like that. Maby I´m one of the few of us that actually bought it though, don´t know. What I do know though is I´ve been trying to tell everyone on every music related forum I´m a member of how good it is. That itself is really frustrating that´s my neck sticking out but ok I´ll just let them know it´s not for SL then

Don´t know what other versions of Jack there is but I´ve tried the two 32/64 bit Snow Leo versions that´s been avaliable lately.

Ok I´ll just delete it don´t run it no more, please if you would be so kind let me know when it´s SL ready. It´s still avaliable as a gift to anybody who wants it if we just can work out the ownership issue. I´ll just buy another one when it´s finnished.
Thanks
Göran

Came to my mind I have CCC of my old 10.5.6 install, I´ll try it out see if it´s working ok on that. I´m pretty sure Mixbus is not the problem though, my guess it´s Jack so if I where involved in this project I´d start looking for another way to communicate with “sound hardware”.

Only thing I remember is I read here (don´t know where else to look sorry) once Jack was updated for Snow Leo Mixbus would work. Maby I personally misunderstood things don´t know but this "currently unsupported" is not exactly cristalclear, not for the interantional comunity anyway.

What you wrote of what you read is correct. If Jack works on Snow Leopard than Mixbus should work(And does for many people). However this is not the same as being supported. If a program is supported generally it means that the company certifies it shoudl work with snow leopard. Harrison began testing Mixbus on Snow Leopard once Jack got updated to run on Snow Leopard, but has not said it is supported because there were still some issues that needed to be worked out(And they have been working out with the JackOSX team when needed). That isn’t to say it won’t work for anyone, but rather there are issues that may only affect a certain set of people, of which you are obviously one.

So in short, you should probably wait till they say it is supported if you need it to be stable.

     Seablade

i don’t mean to be rude, but it seems pretty clear to me that it has not been claimed anywhere that Mixbus is Snow Leopard compatible, and it’s certainly not the only program out there that isn’t yet officially Snow Leopard compatible…

it’s a bit unfair to compare it to Logic, since Logic is owned/developed by Apple…

however i do think it would be a very good idea for Harrison to get someone to put together a straightforward guide on how to setup and use Jack to pipe audio from another DAW…

this is not a critcism, but i guess it’s also a bit confusing for new Mixbus users having to deal with three sort of distinct but interrelated projects when problems do happen… i.e. Harrison/Mixbus + Ardour + JackOSX…

Hey guys thanks for the replys.
I don´t want to be rude nore disrespectfull either I´m just looking at this from an international point of wiew. The information about this Project is not so easy for all of us non english speaking to fully understand.

Who knows maby it´s not Mixbus I mean it could be Ardour or like my guess Jack that´s causing this kind of problems and which is which is not exactly cristal clear. One could easily at first glanse as a foreigner completely miss that Mixbus actually just is a mixer added to Ardour and think that Mixbus is a completely new software.

But I´m using (if I´m not wrong two year old) Logic 8 and have´nt even updated it to the latest version yet since I installed SL.

Yes I know it´s hard to market oneself to the international market but this is so good it would be a disaster for the young not so wealthy guys knocking on the doors to the musicindustry if these kind of issues would get in the way.

I´m just trying to help here I just see the danger in the “this is pro stuff”. I mean already the low price and open source which in fact is good for us could mean a risk people think that this is only a hobby/toy thing.

But no worries I´ve already told the guys over at this forum it does`nt work with SL yet.

Goodnight guys it´s late over here got to get some sleep.

this is not a critcism, but i guess it's also a bit confusing for new Mixbus users having to deal with three sort of distinct but interrelated projects when problems do happen... i.e. Harrison/Mixbus + Ardour + JackOSX...

They don’t.

My understanding is as follows:

They should be going through Harrison’s support. That is it. Harrison has passed on things related to individual projects and worked with Paul or Stephane as appropriate to fix issues in Ardour or Jack OS X.

People CAN come here, and that is fine, but this is not an official support venue for Harrison.

  Seablade

fair enough, i should email my suggestions directly to Harrison…

however, the Mixbus documentation basically says, “go get Jack and install it”, and it also talks freely about Ardour and Mixbus, so it’s no surprise that Mixbus users come here and also head over to the JackOSX resources, as i have done…

Oh don’t worry, I don’t think anyone has a problem with you coming here because of how closely related the two things are. Just keep in mind if you want official support you should go through their channels;)

  Seablade

that’s okay, i wasn’t taking it personally, just an observation really…

Pro-Tools 8 is not yet officially supported for Snow Leopard. And they make the BIG BUCKS.

I´m sorry but it seems Mixbus does´nt work stable on 10.5 either. One thing is half the times it actually do work to import audiofiles to mixbus but half the times it does´nt, not without rebooting the computer anyway. Well I´ve read what´s been said here so I´ll post my thoughts over at the Mixbus site from now on.

Gonna wait a few weeks though since I´m sure next version will be more stable and hopefully also Linux compatible.

Thanks guys

Seems Harrison have no forum or anything like that so? Well I don´t know but hopefully they´ll update us on any progress.

I´m going to download the 32 bit version of Jack see if that works better with my Snow Leo.