@lathqe: mixbus has its own branch(es) in our svn repository. it is “based” on ardour 2.0-ongoing but has quite a lot of changes that at this time have not been back-ported into ardour 2.0-ongoing or ardour 3.0.
this is prob a little dumb to ask but… anybody knows if ardours income from MB2 was raised too? (i hope so…)
i’m not worried at all for paying for a good DAW for Linux, in fact i’m planning on Recording/Editing next month using A3 (preferring Alpha 4+ versions than A2 for editing even with the bugs, stacked layering is a huuuuge + for me) and Mixing/Mastering using MB2… and i still think 220$ is way under the price other well known DAWs, i can only guess that there’ll be better MB versions with much evolving in the upcoming years and price rising too of course but i think of this as paying in parts the develope and evolve of that very very helpful - easy and intuitive editing - great native plugins sounding and great overall music production DAW we all want for Linux… may that be Ardour or another MB version.
probably when that DAW arrives we would only have to pay 150$ for the upgrade… ??? who knows but … hope you get the idea…
now for MB Linux users, how is it been for you Mastering on MB, any useful info, planning on buy it as soon as i can afford it (next week … lol) and im planning on using it for the next recording on my studio.
Why do I hear clicks every now and then when I open a window, select a menu or even move the mouse around the desktop while music is being fed to ardour in standby record mode?
It sounds like you have a system configuration issue, which would apply to either Ardour or Mixbus(You know you posted in a Mixbus thread right?). I assume you are on Linux? Do you have proper realtime scheduling set up and enabled in Jack?
SeabladeHey Seablade!..I’m using Mac OSX Snow Leopard 10.6. Yes I know this is a mixbus thread! I’m using mixbus 2.0.
What is your buffer setting and what are your DSP measurements reading?
SeabladeStill loving Mixbus 2 but there are some serious issues that keep me from going the whole way with this program (apart from my own operator errors…)
Recording - I get xruns and glitches recording only a few tracks, that I DON’T get in Logic or Pro Tools. Using a Macbook Pro - and I don’t want to get into looking “under the hood” at Jack etc, that’s why I went from 20 years plus on a PC to MAC, Audio Units works for me. I love mixing in Mixbus, but having to import loads of audio files just because I cannot rely on it live is no good. One DAW from beginning to end is how it should be, as it works with Logic.
File handling - look at a region, now try and find the audio file it belongs to, quickly…when I highlight a region can it not highlight its respective audio file? Makes taking audio in and out to other apps very time consuming at the moment.
Markers - I do a lot of classical recording and editing, and need to fly in patches and edits into technically challenging and complex music - in Logic I can fly around the place with markers, edit on the fly, including whilst recording etc. In Mixbus this is far from simple or intuitive - we need double click on marker to edit title, and in fact when creating a marker surely it should auto pop-up for writing a name? No-one here really has any use for “mark 1”, “mark 2” etc do they?
Still on markers, I want to be able to create a marker form the region as in Logic, again on the fly, and name immediately - is this possible? Also I don’t see my “created single range” markers anywhere but in the locations window, they do not show up on the timeline and whilst they’re fabulous for multiple file export for CDs they’d be even more fab if they showed up as regions in the timeline.
Plugins - should, when added, open their window - whenever I add a plugin I need to double click to open the window and choose or modify patch - no-one adds a plugin without this second stage surely, so open plugin as soon as inserted please.
For now then…
Simon
hallo,
for naming the markers:
menu->options->misc options->name new markers
that works here…
for ‘create single range’ you have to make the ranges field in the rulers visible.
for that, right click in the rulers area (the grey bars with tempo, meter, loop/punch etc.) and un/check what you donot/need.
i agree wuth you that ‘open plugin as soon as inserted’ could be a usefull option.
cheers,
doc
hallo,
for naming the markers:
menu->options->misc options->name new markers
that works here…
for ‘create single range’ you have to make the ranges field in the rulers visible.
for that, right click in the rulers area (the grey bars with tempo, meter, loop/punch etc.) and un/check what you donot/need.
i agree wuth you that ‘open plugin as soon as inserted’ could be a usefull option.
cheers,
doc
Show range markers - operator error on my part! Actually I seem to recall in an earlier version these did not show up, they do now so thanks for that.
But for naming convention - it makes no difference what the default setting is - I’m naming markers by song title, movement, take number etc and as I say it’s a question of naming on the fly as I enter them whilst the session is in progress - a conductor will shout to me - Top of page 32, or Bar 84 etc etc, that’s not programmable and at the moment I’d have to write a note to myself as I added the marker.
Thanks for your comments, this is good stuff! I have addressed your comments below:
Recording xruns and glitches:
That’s not normal operation. Stable realtime operation depends heavily on the buffer size, I/O, and how realtime-capable your system is. I’d suggest increasing the buffer size as a start. And this doesn’t take any messing with JACK, really … just change the buffer size in the Audio Setup tab when you launch Mixbus. If Logic, etc, works, then I’d expect Mixbus to work on the same system. just make sure you are using equivalent buffer sizes.
File handling - look at a region, now try and find the audio file it belongs to, quickly:
You can right-click on a region and “export” it with the file format, name, and location of your choice. You can also export ranges if you don’t want the whole file. That’s what I’d suggest. But clearly this is important to you. At your request, we have added the ability to highlight the respective audio file when it is selected in the editor; this will be available in the next release. However it is not clear to me how this will help you export the file any faster than the previously mentioned method. Perhaps another step is needed?
Markers:
as nowhikey said, you should enable “menu->options->misc options->name new markers”. Transport->Markers->Add Mark from Playhead". By default this is mapped to the keypad “Enter” key (the one on the number pad). If that isn’t working for you, you can remap it like this: go to Windows->Keygindings->Editor. Find the item called “Add Mark From Playhead”, and click the key you want to map to that function. (this is handled much more elegantly in Linux, by the way … you simply pull down the menu and click the key you want to assign while pointing at the menu item … too bad OSX doesn’t allow this)
Still on markers:
Right-click on the region, and choose “Add single range” … the name dialog will pop up automatically if you have the “name new markers” option turned on. This function is found under the “Range” menu and can be bound to a key. It sounds like we should develop a Logic keymap, similar to the ProTool-ish and Cubase-ish keymaps that we have created already.
Plugins:
I believe this has been implemented in the past and then turned back off due to preference and/or unexpected operation. I will look into it.
Best Regards,
Ben Loftis
Harrison Consoles
@ BenLoftis - thanks for your ever helpful responses Ben.
Xruns - I generally have my buffers set at 256, this works for everything, Logic 9, Pro Tools 9, Cubase 6, but maybe I’ll have to experiment in raising this to allow for MB needing a a bit more. Funny thing is it’s not consistent - and it’s only ever happened on location sessions. Using the same interfaces though so I need to look into this. Mixbus in the studio never has this problem.
File handling - The export function works as it should and I have no problems with that. I wasn’t clear enough earlier, it’s not really about exporting from MB - there are times when I would for example want to choose a batch of audio files to send to a client in a Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase etc session. The easiest way to do this would be to identify the audio files, go to Finder and copy these to another directory for their session, rather than exporting or bouncing. If I have to do this in Logic I simply rename all the region parent files into a convention that is easy - so if I highlight the region in the session timeline, it lights up in the audio bin and I can easily rename the whole audio file to suit the clients needs, for example “Clarinet take 1, spaced pair take one” etc, then I can grab these files into one directory to send the client.
Right-click on the region, and choose “Add single range” … the name dialog will pop up automatically if you have the “name new markers” option turned on.>>
Good, that works, found the option to name. But I should bind to a key - it’s a big part of what I do when I’m editing a session, naming sections and takes that are good etc. And whoopee! Name new markers also allows me to name the markers entered via the Return key (which does work for me, sorry if that was confusing) immediately, that’s great. I would still like double-click or centre mouse click for renaming markers though, rather than right click, drop down menu, select etc…
I still have a problem with sample rate changes though - cannot load MB if I’ve run a session in Logic at 96 - Jack refuses to allow MB to run, and I have to reboot the macbook completely to enable a session in 44 to be opened in MB. Tried re-setting audio engine etc, only thing that works is a complete reboot. Am I missing something?
Thanks again Ben, you always find a solution - sorry if some of my problems are classic RTFM jobs - I’m not great at ploughing through the exhaustive menus and submenus in Mixbus as you can tell. I can tell you that on Thursday last I edited a complex modern classical piece which I’d recorded several weeks ago and not looked at since, with the client sitting here, and put together some very tasty crossfade edits from different takes that impressed the hell out of the client. Funny thing was, I was unsure about whether to quickly throw all the files into Logic as I knew I’d be under pressure with the composer sitting there - but in the end (and partly due to the difficulty identifying all the relevant takes quickly!) there wasn’t time, and Mixbus came through for me. The fade handles are so very useful - something that really bugs me about Logic’s clumsy fade handling.
So, another feature request (no doubt you’l point me to the menu where it already exists) would be - double click on fade to edit the slope etc of the fade, as per Pro Tools.
Cheers
Simon
Right-click on the fade to choose from several slopes 
-Ben
If I knew how to do a wry smiley I would…
Thanks, love it.
Simon
@scardanelli: regarding file handling … one issue with the design that you’re alluding to is that regions do not correspond (necessarily) to files. this is true for at least two reasons: regions could be just a part of a file, and thus providing the file to someone else doesn’t really give them “the region” per se; secondly, a region could be composed of more than one file (all ardour/mixbus native files are non-interleaved mono files, regardless of the data format or header format). finally, ardour/mixbus doesn’t really an “audio bin” that corresponds to files either. its true that the top level nodes in the region list are almost always actual “whole files”, but the node itself may represent N different files of an N channel region.