Few things are as essential to music making as the experience of a live show. So it’s about time someone took some risks to see if there’s a better way to run live sound. Line 6′s new StageScape M20d is important because it does just that – it finally says the mixer as you know it doesn’t have to be sacred, and tries to build a better one. Traditionalists might be skeptical – and with good reason, as we see if this idea works in practice – but it features some bold ideas worth considering.

Centered on a touchscreen interface, the StageScape mixer eschews traditional channel strips in favor of images and virtual touch controls. Want to tweak your vocalist’s sound? Instead of remembering which channel she’s on, tap the picture of the singer. StageScape brings up an elaborate array of processing options, all performed behind the scenes by Line 6′s DSP tech. You can even store in internal memory twenty seconds of a band playing, then adjust multitrack audio after the fact until it’s right, wandering around a venue using an iPad as a remote control. From processing to preset settings, control to sound experience, StageScape is completely and totally digital. It even “knows” what kind of input you’re using when you plug in the jack.

The solution is radically different than what we’ve seen before. It’s likely to scare away some users, and we’ll have to see how it works in practice. But coupled with some sophisticated sonic capabilities, it just might win over new users and adventurous live sound vets. Here’s a first look, after CDM got to meet with Line 6 at the product’s unveiling.

A Better Mousetrap

For the most part, all mixers are designed with the same basic assumptions in mind. To connect multiple microphones and instruments, the mixer presents a series of columns that represent “channels,” and lines up parameters for each of those channels. To amplify and treat the sound of a singer, then, you connect the vocal microphone to a channel number, then adjust the settings for that particular channel. The challenge is, you are restricted to the knobs and faders on physical hardware, so anything you do is limited to a fixed number of controls – and you have to remember the abstraction of which instrumentalist is associated with which channel. Just writing this out seems redundant and obvious; we’re so used to the arrangement that it’s hard to even think about it. But if you do think about it, there is a layer of abstraction between what you’re doing and the way you’d think about the actual musical ensemble.

Adding a touchscreen interface means these kinds of abstractions don’t have to be there, but most software simply recreates the same setup. It may be easier to label channels once you have a display, but otherwise digital mixers have generally replicated the same setup. And even software has generally aped the lineup of channel strips, rather than design a visual metaphor more closely tied to how we think.

StageScape tosses all of that out the window.

It starts from the moment you plug in a cable. I/O jacks on the back, featuring combo Neutrik connectors, “know” what sort of cable you’ve connected. So, for instance, plug in an XLR, and the mixer guesses you’ve got a mic. Add a 1/4″ line jack, and it works out you’ve connected something that’s line level or instrumental. (I’m still researching just how much the auto-sensing considers, but it at the very least knows which connection you used.) The feature works with both input and output, and sets paramters like channel gain, EQ, effects and routing.

Live sound has already benefited from going digital. Having hung out front-of-house with the rival Avid Venue system, I can already tell you live sound engineers adore the change. Let’s assume you have a lineup of three bands. Already, the ability to label channels for those three different ensembles, set levels, and then store presets for instant-recall of settings for each is huge. In fact, I’d wager almost everyone reading this has been in a live situation – front-of-house, onstage, or both – where the show didn’t sound right because some setting from soundcheck was lost in translation. Digital presets are already a breakthrough.

What’s different with StageScape – apart from the fact that it’s far cheaper than something like Venue – is that the whole process is instantly focused on players, and it’s visual. Got a singer? You place a picture of the singer on a virtual stage on the screen, dragging their position in place with your finger. Got a guitarist? Drag a picture of a guitar. (Note that this view is called Perform Mode – you can also see more traditional views if that’s more convenient.)

The same graphical workflow applies to tweaking sound. X/Y pads take a bunch of DSP functions and label them in everyday English, so instead of adjusting a bunch of EQs and dynamic controls, you drag to settings like “punch” or “bright.” Line 6 emphasized that this will help folks who lack audio engineering backgrounds, but it might be useful to experienced users, too. Dynamics, equalization, and effects are also available as a separate, traditional “Deep Edit” view. Multiband compression and multi-point parametric EQ naturally benefit from touchscreen interfaces, since you can manipulate these graphical views directly. But you can also create your own X/Y presets, so when you need to make quick adjustments, you can quickly navigate favorite settings.

Of Touchscreens and iPads

It’s worth noting that the interface on the SoundScape mixer isn’t an iPad. Various vendors at the NAMM show last week had iPad dock solutions, but there’s an advantage to using a custom touchscreen. What’s wonderful about capacitive touchscreens (like the iPad and iPhone) is the instant response you get from a feathery touch. What’s terrible about capacitive touchscreens is that a feathery touch can quickly screw up your settings in a live show. That’s bad.

Line 6 joins a number of other music products in instead using a resistive screen. This technology requires some pressure before it senses your finger, which makes accidental touches less likely. It’s also less susceptible to, for instance, sweaty fingers.

Instead of making the iPad the main interface, Line 6 employs Apple’s tablet as a remote control. There, it makes far more sense than locked into a dock. You can wander around a venue and control the SoundScape mixing settings, hearing how they sound in different spots. (Especially useful: those 20 seconds of multitrack recording can be looped, as Line 6 showed off in a press conference featuring Colbie Cailet. It’s a simple thing to pull off, but so badly needed in live sound, it was met with enthusiastic cheers by the gathered crowd.) You do need an optional USB WiFi adapter to enable this functionality.

You’re also not without physical controls. Endless encoders, color-coded to match on-screen controls, provide physical, hands-on control. I don’t think anyone is going to like this arrangement quite as well as motorized faders (or faders, generally), but it does mean you get tangible control. (It’s also not hard to imagine Line 6 offering a motorized fader module if this box is a hit. In fact, I’d very much love to see a USB input on there, unless I missed one.)

Recording and Sound Processing

In addition to being a mixer, the SoundScape M20d is a multi-track recording device, so it can capture the same performance it’s mixing – perfect for preparing downloads of a live show. It records 24-bit lossless WAV to SD card or a connected USB drive or computer.

You also get various effects – no surprise with a Line 6 product – including:

• Parametric EQ
• Multi-band compression
• Feedback suppression
• Studio reverb
• Delays
• Vocal doubling

These in turn are bundled into channel effects.

I/O

While it eschews the channel strip metaphor, the M20d is otherwise a conventional mixer under the hood:

• 12 digitally-controlled mic/line combo ins (using that auto-sensing feature mentioned earlier)
• 2 digital inputs from computer, USB, or SD
• Stereo line inputs
• 4 monitor outs, 2 mains, each with auto-sensing on balanced XLR

Line 6 also has something called L6 LINK, a multi-channel, digital networked format via an XLR plug that allows you to connect and intelligently-configure Line 6′s own speakers. At NAMM, they were showing off their own StageSource speakers and subwoofer. They sounded terrific, though I am a little sad there isn’t a standard protocol employed on the mixer that would allow you to choose vendors.

What it’s Not

As part of the “let’s put an iPad in everything” trend at NAMM (which included almost everything but a harpsichord dock for your iPad), Mackie launched the DL1608.

In fact, the DL1608 basically is the Line 6, conceptually speaking, but minus all the critical refinements I mentioned – made more obvious when you look at images of these two units side by side.

• It immediately reproduces a virtual mixer screen on the touchscreen, which has the effect of demonstrating … why physical faders make more sense when you’re trying to reproduce physical faders.
• Using an iPad as a primary touchscreen saves some scratch, but then your iPad is stuck in your mixer, you have a capacitive touchscreen that can be too touchy when used live, and you have annoying things like notifications popping up while you’re trying to mix.
• You don’t get a fully-integrated system.

Correction: Like the Line 6 offering, the Mackie supports multiple iPads (up to ten) via wireless connection. Also like the Line 6 kit, you need extra hardware to support that — in the case of the Mackie, you need a connected router. I’m not sure with either how the mixer handles multiple people controlling the same parameters / how it deals with conflicts.

So, sorry. If I’m going to save money, I’ll just buy one of Mackie’s (excellent) non-touchscreen mixers. I think we have to see how touchscreens work for mixer in general, but if I were to go touch, the Line 6 product looks both more practical and better-equipped to actually innovate with the concept.

Mackie DL1608
Via SHOCKLEE blog

They do have a cute video, at least.

Stay Tuned

No official pricing or availability has been announced, but early numbers I heard made this sound accessible. Update: Street appears to be US$2500. That’s steep for the same band who’s just starting out and has no one doing sound (especially if they want to buy the PA, too), but it’s quite reasonable for people looking for a digitally-automated mixer for a home studio or live – and even more so given the DSP and touchscreen and iPad remote control options packed into this product.

To me, the big question will be who actually uses StageScape. Line 6 kept talking about bands who lack their own live sound person. But while the idea of a band running their own sound is appealing, that means the same band who couldn’t afford a tech now are buying and lugging around this PA system – possible in some cases, but surely not in all. Someone, it seems, is sure to buy it: venues, perhaps, and certainly academic and institutional settings where its user-friendly features are doubly valuable.

Once in place, we’ll see whether the “magical” interface can really replace a traditional mixer. I can certainly see some live sound people very badly missing the ability to hover their hands over physical faders. Oddly, the folks who might appreciate this most are the people who do live sound, and find its preset storage, built-in processing, and seamless configuration appealing in the field. I look forward to when we get to try it out.

But I applaud Line 6 for rethinking the mixing interface itself. The company certainly has a track record – co-founders Marcus Ryle and Michel Doidic gave us ADAT and then single-handedly popularized digital DSP for guitarists. We’ll see now if this is their third grand acheivement in transforming the business. In the meantime, this could easily be, amidst an avalanche of new gear, the most daring and promising new music product announcement this year.

http://line6.com/stagescape

Universal Audio has long had a successful business selling hardware DSP effects, many of them carefully-modeling classic analog gear. These products use dedicated DSP hardware for number-crunching, requiring that you connect an extra box to your computer. UA has certainly had their loyalists, and for fans of the products, the dedicated gear is simply a convenient way to get all of these sound-processing goodies. But it’s fair to ask the question, as many producers have who read this site, what’s the advantage? Why not simply use native processing on your computer?

Apollo, UA’s new hardware, answers that question more emphatically. By integrating the processing prowess of the UA platform into a high-quality audio interface, you can now add UA effects live, as you record and mix, with extreme low latencies. UA reports latencies below a couple of milliseconds. That’s possible, theoretically, on a desktop computer, but not generally on a laptop and very often not with any real reliability. You can do it in a lab, but it’s not something typical users see.

So, in one box, you effectively get your whole studio: the audio interface, the DSP power, and real low-latency sound processing. It’s not the first audio interface with DSP, but it might be the most compelling case yet for why that combination make sense.

And here’s where things get interesting: via Thunderbolt, a single MacBook Air, costing just around $1000, could be your whole studio machine. And while Apollo runs a couple grand above that, that means the total price tag is stunningly low compared to what you’d pay just a short time ago.

UA briefed me earlier this week on the technology. Even as NAMM raves about iPads, you begin to see the real power of conventional computers. Steve Jobs once compared those computers to “trucks” – while quietly leading a company that profits on how cool trucks are, too. With an Air, adding only slightly to the weight of an iPad and at only twice the cost, you can connect to vastly greater native processing power, greater outboard processing power, and greater I/O. And now with Thunderbolt, you could connect a high-res display or two, a big, fast hard drive, and the audio interface, all without running out of power or impacting performance. (No, seriously – you can. The reason you haven’t seen this in action is that we haven’t had the hardware to show it off. Apollo will be a compelling case for that.)

All of this is academic until you actually have something to do with sound. So, UA is also expanding their developer platform to additional outside development; more on that soon.

Apollo isn’t for everyone; obviously, some people won’t like being tied to hardware, and native plug-ins do work for a lot of people. But it does solve problems for many potential producer customers by making something reliable, predictable, low-latency, extensible with lots of excellent processing tools, and all in one single-box solution.

Apollo will initially be Mac-only, but will come to Windows, too – and with more PCs supporting Thunderbolt in 2012, that means the MacBook is far from your only choice. So, you’ve got one add-on that’s your interface, your pres, and your mix/master/effect toolbox.

More specs:

• 18 x 24 FireWire/Thunderbolt-ready audio interface, 24-bit/192 kHz
• “Premium” mic pres – UA stresses that they’re also building on their mic pre reputation, and they claim the “lowest THD and highest dynamic range” in their class
• Dedicated front-panel controls: preamp gain, channel selection, mic pad, +48V phantom power, low cut, monitor level, and dual headphone controls.
• 4 digitally-controlled analog mic preamps, 8 balanced line inputs and outputs, dual front-panel JFET DIs, digitally-controlled analog monitor outputs, 8 channels of ADAT, 2 channels of S/PDIF, word clock I/O, FireWire 800 (standard), and a Thunderbolt expansion bay — making it a well-equipped centerpiece for the modern project studio.
• Core Audio drivers; ASIO coming, so you can use this with your DAW of choice
• Console application and plug-in for recalling all your interface and plug-in settings at once
• UAD-2 acceleration
• Analog emulation plug-ins from Ampex, Lexicon, Manley, Neve, Roland, SSL, Studer, etc.
• Thunderbolt will be available on a sold-separately Option Card; UA says it reduces latency and audio buffer sizes, improves high sample-rate performance, and allows greater UAD plug-in instances over FireWire.

Of course, because Thunderbolt also connects to FireWire devices, you don’t lose your FireWire investment. The only bad news is that you only get Thunderbolt here as an Option Card; I imagine we’ll eventually see UA ship Thunderbolt connections standard.

There are both two-core and four-core versions, powered by Analog Devices SHARC processors, running an estimated street of US$1999 and $2499, respectively. Apollo’s Thunderbolt Option Card will be shipping in the first half of 2012, with pricing TBD.

www.uaudio.com/apollo

Videos are available on the UA blog: http://www.uaudio.com/blog/apollo-intro-video

Windows 7 summer; 10.6 and 10.7 Mac OS X when it ships.

Software Images

I like to do six impossible things before breakfast. You?

This is either the first death knell for the traditional desktop DAW, or an ill-fated attempt to squeeze a desktop DAW onto a tablet. Or, more likely, it’s somewhere in between.

Auria isn’t the first multitrack production studio for a mobile platform, but without question, it’s the first to look and function in the way you’d expect only a computer Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) to work. The track count is the first banner feature, but perhaps what will turn heads most is actually the support for conventional plug-ins.

Updated: You know, I’m writing about this thing based on their description, but it’s worth adding that the track counts (with these kinds of plug-ins), multi-track recording, and even plug-ins were previously believed to be impossible by many developers. That makes this an … interesting announcement. Happily, we’ve just gotten updates from the developer explaining those questions — see below.

Just a few of the bullets that might cause more than a little surprise:

• 48 mono/stereo, 24-bit/44.1kHz tracks, with recording for up to 24 tracks (you’ll obviously need a USB audio interface that can do that – see notes below)
• 64-bit, double precision mix architecture (something even Pro Tools only just acquired)
• Full delay compensation
• “Vintage-inspired” channel strips, with a desktop-like UI and VU/RMS switching
• Plug-in support (Out of the gate, PSPaudioware, Overloud, Fab Filter and Drumagog all work. You need to do custom wrapping of plug-ins for this host; standard plug-ins won’t work. The format is based on VST, but it’s not VST in the traditional sense in that they have to be custom-wrapped for sale through the app. See developer notes below.)
• Dropbox, SoundCloud, AAF, MP3 export
• Advanced channel strips, EQ, expansion/compression and dynamic controls ready to go
• Convolution reverb. (Really.)
• AAF import/export, making one definite application using this as a satellite for your desktop DAW (more on that notion below)

Update: I should say, and this is vitally important, the software isn’t shipping yet. No one has seen it in action. And that means all of this is hypothetical until we see whether this works at all. But see some notes from the developers that answers some skepticism. (This wasn’t just skepticism coming from me or end users – I heard from a number of puzzled developers who work on iOS apps!)

As impressive as all of this is technically, I’m not sure there’s a strong case for why you’d need such a thing on an iPad, other than “because you can.” But that raises the question of how you might actually use it. One obvious application for me is having a portable multitrack recording rig on which you can instantly add effects. It’s easy to imagine taking this to a concert gig, recording multiple tracks, then mastering a live show on the back of a tour bus. Then again, there’s nothing really stopping you from doing the same with a computer.

The main thing for me is to get hands on with this and see how this desktop-style UI adapts to an iPad – whether it feels newly mobile and touchable and usable on the go, or whether it feels like someone crammed your desktop DAW onto a different device. It’ll also be intriguing to see how plug-in counts work in practice on mobile hardware. And you do have to consider, cool as the plug-in support it, that you may miss some desktop plug-ins.

I’m eager to see someone review it, but that for me comes back to the question – how will you use it? And what is the real advantage of doing what you’ve done on a computer with an iPad?

My bet remains this: I still think the whole beauty of mobile devices is, for most, as a satellite, a complement to your desktop setup. And you have to consider how affordable something like a MacBook Air is – complete with Thunderbolt, something I don’t expect (as Intel tech) on an iPad any time soon. But that makes a touchable tablet as an inexpensive tool to orbit your studio really appealing, and I see some features here that could make this work in just this way.

(In fairness, I’d ask the same question of any new DAW entry – even on desktop.)

http://auriaapp.com/Products/auria

I believe Synthtopia gets the nod for this:
Auria Brings 48-Track Recording & VST Support To iPad – Are You Ready For The iPad To Replace Your Studio?

Wait, your whole studio? I think you still want monitors and mics and things, right? (Sorry, had to point that out…)

Not due until this spring, so we have some time to work out how to review it.

And yes, the most important question here is, is this actually possible or impossible?

Developer Responds

Rim from Wavemachine Labs answers questions I – and many developers – had about the app. I’m going to promote these from comments, as they’re important, and will add more as we hear it. (And yes, it’s actually quite good news to hear that they do have this working.)

CDM: How do you get 24-track audio recording on an iPad?
Rim: iOS5 supports USB Class 2 devices. We’ve got Auria recording with 18 input interfaces (the largest available right now). We’ve tested over 20 audio interfaces from various manufacturers and will be posting a list of compatible devices on or site when we released the app.

Although there are no 24-input USB interfaces out there, I’m ready for them in the code, and there’s enough resources to handle them.

Q.: How can you have “plug-ins” in an app on iOS, given Apple’s rules?
Apple won’t allow users to add anything to an app, like a plug-in for example. All add-ons to an iOS app must be statically linked into the app when it’s released. Auria supports real VST plug-ins which have been linked into the app. Users can then purchase these through the in-app store. If you’re a developer and would like info on how to port your plug-ins to iOS, drop me a line (rim at drumagog). Auria supports the official VST SDK (2.4), and we also have a custom JUCE library available for developers.

Q.: How much can you really do with an iPad versus a computer? Many of us would have imagined that doing this much was impossible.

I’ve spent the better part of a year of making 48 tracks and plug-ins happen It does work, even on the current hardware. If you’re going to be at NAMM. please stop by and see it work… You can have a 48-track project (with perhaps half of these tracks stereo), and have 24 tracks of channelstrips open, an instance of Drumagog on one track, and use about 70% of the CPU/ 50% of the disk resources. There’s also a track freeze function. We used assembler for lost of the heavy lifting and a lot of experience (I designed a very early touch screen based DAW in the late 80s).

Here’s a software release I don’t think most observers saw coming: Roland has new software for computers and iPads that lets you edit visually. The underlying VariPhrase technology is familiar from other Roland products, though combined here with something Roland calls V-Remastering.

The upshot is this: you begin with a heat map-like visual of a sound’s spectrum, then pull on components of a mix, isolating the volume levels of different parts of a track. Think visual mash-ups and karaoke tracks, as well as clean-up.

What can you do once you have those components? Isolate components, adjust their mix, and add effects and noise cancel.

Once isolated, you can also change pitch, time, and formant independently. You don’t get note-by-note control in the same way that you do with Celemony’s Melodyne product, but you do get independent pitch and time. (I’m not yet clear on whether that’s also in the iPad version.)

There’s also a simplified iPad version called R-MIX Tab, a new move for Roland’s software lineup. As you can see in the screenshots, you can’t do as much with the iPad edition, but it still looks relatively capable. Oh, and that “Tab” name implies that maybe Roland is at least considering tablet tech running Android and Windows 8.

Pricing and availability information were not yet available; TBD. I’ll be interested to see how this works, and how people use it. Roland has a slew of announcements; more on the others by tomorrow.

http://www.rolandconnect.com/product.php?p=r-mix

Zoom’s R8 promises to be everything you’d ever want to take with you on the go in one device. If they’ve pulled it off, it could be more invaluable in your backpack than even your computer. The R8 is a little bit of everything: stereo recording, multitrack editing, a 2×2 audio interface, an 8-voice sampler (complete with little pads), a drum machine (seriously), an effects box with modeling, a guitar tuner, a metronome, and a MIDI control surface. The big surprise: all of this is compact and lightweight and runs without a wall wart – USB power or batteries will do the trick.

I could talk dimensions, but I like Zoom’s way of describing it: “small enough to fit in a guitar case.”

Basic specs:
Recording and editing. Up to 24-bit, 48kHz recording of two simultaneous tracks. Mix up to eight tracks. Undo/redo. And if you forget your mic, there’s a built-in stereo mic, as we’ve seen on previous Zoom project gear. Record on SD for up to 32GB of space.

Onboard I/O. It’s simple, but significant for something this small: you get two balanced combo XLR – 1/4″ jacks for inputs, phantom power, and one channel has a Hi-Z switch for guitars and the like. Output is on two 1/4″ jacks.

Audio interface and control surface. The I/O and faders and knobs don’t go to waste when you’re connected to a computer via USB; you get 2×2 audio operation, plus a MIDI control surface. (I’m not sure if that’s class-compliant for iOS / Android / Linux, but I’ll find out.) Both the mixing and transport functions are active with your DAW on the control surface side.

Sampler, “rhythm machine.” Sample, loop, time-stretch, and trim samples which you can trigger along with track playback for quick composition. It’s no rival for a full sampler – sampler controls have to compete with mixing and editing controls, and it appears functions like slicing aren’t included – but getting this on a budget mobile project studio is pretty nice. You also get a 10-kit drum machine (or “rhythm machine,” as they prefer to call it), with step sequencer and phrase variations. The drum kit doesn’t appear to function with recorded samples, but … again, come on, your Portastudio didn’t do this, at least not without a separate drum machine plugged in.

Insert and send-return effects and amp models. 146 effect types are included, as well. You can use them to add a quick amp model and effects as you record your guitar, or add them live when the box is functioning as an audio interface.

Utilities. Guitar tuner. Metronome. There’s also Windows and Mac support, USB 2.0-speed file transfer of your WAV files from your sessions, and a footswitch input with optional footswitch accessory. Pop in four AA batteries, and you can run for up to five hours, say Zoom. There’s also a copy of Cubase LE included.

Full specs and features are up on the Zoom Japan site:
http://www.zoom.co.jp/products/r8/features/

Questions for Zoom? Want to see a review – and if so, any requests for how it’s conducted? Let us know.

We’ve been watching Harrison Mixbus, a DAW and mixing, editing, and recording workstation, as it has matured. In a crowded world of similar tools, this tool, powered by the open source Ardour DAW, nonetheless sets itself apart. Robust, console-style mixing meets modeled Harrison DSP and extensive editing options, appealing enough that many Mixbus users employ it as a mixing front end even with other tools. On Linux, it finally makes the open source Ardour more palatable, but on the Mac, too, it’s winning some converts. Finding an inexpensive DAW from a leading, ultra-high-end console maker – let alone one that plays well with free software – continues to be a pleasant surprise.

Mixbus 2.0 adds a great deal of additional functionality. As expected, that also includes a price hike; the software will cost US$219. That’s still awfully low given the quality of mixing and track processing effects you get; similar channel strips alone could cost as much or significantly more, and wouldn’t be integrated in a host in the way they are in Mixbus. And you get a far more fleshed-out tool with the upgrade.

New in this release – mixing:

• Mix bus sends, the signature and namesake of the tool, are doubled to eight from four.
• Map plugins controls directly on the mixer strip – that I don’t think I’ve ever seen in a host before, actually.
• Improved views: More controls in the main Mix window. Narrow mixer strips, hide/show mix buses. Consolidated plugins, sends, inserts, faders.
• Phase correlation meter, for checking how stereo mixes will bounce to mono.
• Polarity (phase) buttons for every mixer strip.

Editing:

• Crossfade, layering, and automation editing improved.
• Ripple edits in Ardour, at long last.
• Transparent regions during drag operations for easier edits, and a “Smart Object” mode that requires less tool mode switching.

The upgrade also expands upon previously rather lean documentation, improves installation, adds key bindings, improves the UI and menus, enhances range selection, improves realtime automation recording, and enhances various other features which Harrison says were user-requested.

The images here make this a bit clearer:

I’ll be evaluating the new version on both Mac and Linux. Stay tuned – and let us know if you have any questions (or if users out there have any tips).

Harrison Mixbus
Harrison Consoles

At first, it seemed like it might be just a blip: amidst generally declining sales of physical music, down sharply from their 1990s boom, vinyl sales were trending up. The reversal started with a slight uptick in 2007 – already noticeable as the CD had begun its collapse. That slight uptick has turned into a small boom. From a tiny 300,000 units in US sales in 1993, the vinyl record is projected to do some 3.6 million units in sales. Source:

Vinyl Projected to Grow More Than 25 Percent In 2011…

Let’s put some of this in perspective. Even with explosive growth, vinyl remains at the margins, representing 1.6% of physical sales in the US. In fact, part of the fetish around vinyl is evidenced by the fact that people would make this headline news – fans of the vinyl record are understandably eager to hear their format of choice is doing well. As a point of comparison, in the last 30 days, just one independent band website, Bandcamp, has done US$640,513 in profit for its members. That’s profit, not revenue, and it’s often going directly to artists.

You can also, via Digital Music News, compare to vinyl’s years as the dominant format, which makes this all look very niche:
The Vinyl Comeback, In Historical Perspective…. (Thanks, JP in comments.) That graph doesn’t show per-unit cost, and anecdotally, artists seem closer to the record release process than they once were.

That said, vinyl’s significance in the new world order is arguably more about its cultural meaning than its numbers. (Getting away from numbers – cough, digital – is the point.) Cutting a vinyl record today is about making a physical artefact of a release. It carries with it prestige. Its scarcity is part of its value, with exclusive 12″ releases again returning to the days when DJs were judged by the obscure gems in their collection, not the disposable digital hits.

And I can see any number of benefits to vinyl’s reemergence:

• Bringing tactile back. Records as objects are a pleasure; I’m the last person to argue there. There’s a ritual to putting on a record that changes how you feel about the music, versus the seemingly-infinite, ephemeral digital jukebox.
• Keeping vinyl DJing alive. At this point, it seems more about preserving the record and mixing rather than scratching, but vinyl remains essential for people DJing with turntables. Notably, unlike faking it with digital control vinyl, using actual records is also more reliable – a slight flaw or vibration won’t bring the whole mix to a standstill. (Analog most definitely fails more gracefully than digital.) That makes the presence of vinyl releases doubly important to getting to hear traditional DJ technique.
• Keeping the cutters, and players, in business. The demand for vinyl records, whatever may motivate it, means everything from turntable repair to disk lathe shops remain healthy.
• The sound is unique. I’m leaving perhaps the most significant point for last. The sound of vinyl does remain unique, precisely because of some of its limitations, and I don’t think any amount of fetishization would please some of its consumers if it didn’t sound good.

When I spoke to Anika earlier this year, she brought up the economic point, too – that vinyl keeps things physical, and supports artists. Now, financially, it may be a tenuous point – look at those Bandcamp numbers – but “support” for artists is more than financials alone. And viewed in a larger effort to express the value of music in tangible form, vinyl makes sense.

Vinyl, incidentally, doesn’t have a monopoly on tangible music. Even digital has made various plays on the concept – one of the most unique being Ghostly International’s effort last year to produce “totems” for Matthew Dear, physical objects that represented the spirit of the intangible music.

Sound, above all, is cited as the primary rationalization for vinyl’s resurgence, but that’s where I feel a bit more conflicted:

• Mastering digital for vinyl isn’t the same as a “direct-to-analog” process. Here’s where things get weird. Remember in the early days of CDs, seeing the letters “DDD” and hearing about fully digital signal flow? Now, we have an oddly inverted situation. People are making music almost entirely inside computers, with software like Ableton Live, doing a digital master, and then printing the whole thing to … vinyl. There’s nothing to say that can’t work, but it seems to me a potential mismatch of source material and recording medium. (More on that in a moment.)
• Psuedo-science, go! Let’s face it: there’s plenty of voodoo around “digital,” and plenty of voodoo around “analog.” In the digital domain, the faux science tends to manifest itself as unsupported claims about the value of absurdly-high bit rates and sample rates, or, if you’re really unlucky, gold-plated digital interconnects. In analog, you’ll routinely hear people claim that analog captures “more” sound, because digital leaves “gaps” between samples, missing that both are constrained first and foremost by the transducers. Analog or digital, these are based on misunderstandings about fundamental characteristics of how sound is reproduced and heard from recording media. I think it’d be unfortunate if the genuine value of vinyl and the unique characteristics of its sound were obscured by claims about recording that simply aren’t true.

Vinyl itself is surely not to blame here; it should just raise some questions. Presumably, not all digitally-produced music really fits vinyl as a medium. And the right way to make that fit work is to really listen and apply some scientific understanding of the process.

Vinyl is that it is a unique medium, one with imperfect recording characteristics. That means whatever the source, you do need to mix differently, which makes a recent piece in Electronic Musician very admirable, indeed. (Disclosure: I have never mixed and mastered for vinyl, so I can only look upon this as an enthusiastic listener and interested observer. I welcome feedback from those out there who are more qualified to investigate the questions I’m asking.)

Learn Mixing | Tips for Mixing for Vinyl [Electronic Musician]

Gino Robair, one of my favorite EM writers over the years, goes through some detail about preparing mixes for vinyl as the delivery medium. Part of what you’ll find is a reminder of why engineers were excited about digital in the first place: there’s a greater ability in digital recordings to capture certain details of the high and low end that would distort in an analog recording. So long as you go into the reality of these limitations with your eyes (or make that ears) open, it can be a good experience as a producer, and for your listeners.

This raises still more scientific and perceptual questions, though. I’m not entirely convinced – I haven’t seen evidence in either direction – that it’s in any way necessary to use a 24-bit, 96kHz master for a vinyl release. (Gino points to the example of Arcade Fire using that as the master.) It certainly can’t hurt, especially in the era of cheap storage. But as in direct-digital delivery, the question is whether you really gain from the higher-resolution file. The only way to know for sure would be to do lab-style experimentation and find out, and as readers have lamented on this site before, there’s not a whole lot of that going on.

Vinyl’s good; vinyl’s unique. (So, too, are cassette tapes and other media with which music producers have been re-discovering of late.) It just means that any claims about vinyl’s resurgence should be scaled against the growth of other distribution outlets, and that we should ask honest questions about sound, not just accept either digital or analog claims of “quality” without evaluation.

So, I purposely raise the points above more as a question than a statement. I’m curious to hear from people who are producing and consuming vinyl records, in terms of what they’ve found satisfying and what they’ve found disappointing. (I mean that, in particular, in regards to certain releases – I’m sure some are better than others.)

And I also wonder whether it’s possible to begin to appreciate digital recording with foresight as much as it is vinyl with hindsight. How can we make the most of the format we have today? How can we understand it, in virtual form, as physical object?

At the end of the day, “analog” is not real. (Hence the name.) A recording is an artificial and imperfect snapshot of an event that occurred in the past, frozen in time in an impossible way. It’s what is beautiful about recording, and what terrified, or at least confused, some of those who first heard it. It is a technology conceived as a precursor to email, as a kind of business memo. It has become to many what music is, rather than the reflection of musical performance. It has had a devastating impact on many forms of live performance, emptying bandstands and causing live players their livelihood before anyone became concerned about whether the record industry that was left would lose its financial well-being.

The “record,” whether it’s a cassette tape or a FLAC download, is strange and unnatural, with the ability to bring to life dead musicians and performances that never existed in one place.

And yes, we do really love it.

The competition for your audio interface dollar is pretty heated these days, but MOTU’s latest – the Audio Express – packs a pretty impressive feature set for something costing US$449 list. It’s both a 6×6 audio interface and a mixer, with standalone mixer functionality so you can mix signals from the front-panel knobs without a computer attached. It also has connectivity features generally seen only in pricier, physically-larger boxes. MOTU tells CDM the quality is equal to their higher-end offerings, and other rivals in the $500-800 range.

MOTU winds up on my short list as far as hardware that makes happy audio interface owners. For now, we’ll just have to look at the Audio Express “on paper.” That looks like this:

• 6×6 interface, 6×8 independent input/output channels.
• Use either FireWire (with bus power, generally only if you’re on a Mac) or USB2 (without bus power).
• Some nice monitoring options. Each output pair – main, line, S/PDIF, and phones – can have its own independent mix of six inputs, with or without your computer tracks. And naturally, that also lends itself to use by DJs and live electronic performers.
• Two mic/guitar combo jacks: Hi-Z 1/4″ guitar input or XLR mic input with phantom power, 20dB pad, etc. (Often only one is a guitar jack, especially at this price.)
• Balanced stereo inputs, balanced stereo outputs, 24-bit/96kHz S/PDIF digital.
• Trim on the volume inputs is digitally-controlled analog, for approximately 1dB adjustments.
• Front-panel mixing with LEDs for metering and dedicated volume knobs on each input.
• Time code support, low jitter.
• Connect your MIDI gear: sample-accurate MIDI on 1 in x 1 out.
• Connect your analog gear: DC-coupled TRS outputs for software like MOTU’s own Volta.
• Operate as a standalone mixer, no computer – just connect power.
• Plug-and-play USB2 operation, plus 32-bit and 64-bit native drivers for Mac and Windows.

You can also rack-mount it as a half-rack unit, although I like the ability to toss something this small into a backpack or messenger bag to head to the gig.

To me, just having dedicated front-panel input knobs, decent-enough I/O, and standalone mixing on a box with good timing and audio quality is pretty nice. I have to say, I think the Audio Express could fill an ideal niche as a mid-range audio interface – it’s a crowded field if you get cheaper or if you get more expensive, but there isn’t much in the $400-500 budget that competes well with this. And for that reason, I’ll try to get one in for review. As commenters suggest, the real question is whether you spend a little extra on the additional I/O on MOTU’s UltraLite. But the UltraLite doesn’t have those convenient front-panel mixing knobs, and I’m not sure everyone necessarily needs DSP effects. I think it depends on your needs, and we’ll have to see what street may be on the Audio Express.

MOTU Audio Express Product Page

Also, judging from those product shots, it’ll look great on my clean, white, mirrored lab table next to my MacBook Pro. Boy, am I glad I got that off the set of THX 1138.

The Internet, as the subject of one Oscar-nominated film, is full of short attention spans and flirts, social dysfunction and lust. But there’s another side of the Internet. Someone interested in finding expressive inspiration, in learning the craft of music and sound, can virtually apprentice themselves to artists and engineers they love. There may be no substitute for stepping into a studio with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, or sitting face to face as Greg Russell to talk mixing. But barring that, for the aspiring sound and musical creators of the future, you have immediate access to astounding hours of collected knowledge, to the same technologies that produce the films grabbing the Oscars, and even to simulated, augmented-reality dreams on your phone.

That revelation might not make a good movie, but it’s sure a great thing. And who knows, from Indiana to India, the next studio to craft a great score could be your own.

Rounding up some of the better resources on the Internet, I’m in particular indebted to a couple of great sources, particularly on the previously-unsung craft of mixing and sound. I don’t have a statuette to give them, but I will introduce them:

Designing Sound by Miguel Isaza and Jake Riehle is a fantastic, advertising-free blog dedicated entirely to the craft of sound design in film, television, games, and other media. I’m honored to host the site on Noisepages for CDM, and equally pleased to get to sit back and just read (and not write or edit) the content. This is a perfect opportunity to cull some of the sharp, savvy analysis and exclusive interviews from that site. You might find you have something to do during ad breaks on the Oscars, film lovers.

Soundworks Collection tells the story of sound production in extended-format, high quality videos. You can watch video about just about every major release. In fact, their collections may become to those of us who are sound enthusiasts as invaluable a companion to movie-watching as popcorn.

And from the world of paper, Mix Magazine has been doing loads of coverage on the production side in film.

Forgive me for not looking at the “Best Original Song” category this year; arpeggiators everywhere lament the absence of Daft Punk’s “Derezzed,” but what can you do? (I definitely didn’t envy Daft Punk the challenge of trying to live up to Wendy Carlos’ landmark original score.)

Original Musical Scores

‘The Social Network’
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross

I’ll come right out and say it: I think this is the film, out of this extraordinary bunch, that deserves the award. In a way, the score embodies the ideas of the film, emotionally and conceptually, more than the movie itself can. From the now oddly-famous small batch synth invention Swarmatron to air conditioners and pianos, Reznor and Ross concoct a sonic and compositional world. It’s relevant, topical, and now, like Facebook – but it may have greater lasting power.

Speaking of dreams and lost, The New York Times got to do what I imagine we all would love to do: step into the Reznor/Ross studio.

And long after the movie is forgotten, I expect this soundtrack will have a beloved spot on the playlists of many readers of this site.

Mashable Interviews Trent Reznor

As it happens, I wound up by coincidence in a conversation with Jeremy Peters, who does licensing for Ghostly International. His thoughts on why this score deserves special mention:

It was great to see them go a bit outside the box and hire Reznor, and I felt like it did what the score was meant to, which is tell the story that is not being told in the visuals and dialogue, and it did it really, really well, so my vote has to go to that score.

Peters also laments, as a person in the licensing business, that so many original songs “stick out like a sore thumb,” when better musical collaborations and licensing are possible. That makes it doubly nice to see fresh faces in the nominee category here.

More Swarmatron, for good measure:

‘Inception’
Hans Zimmer

It’s hard to say much about Zimmer’s stunning score for ‘Inception’ that hasn’t already been said. But it’s worth noting that, outside the film, a ground-breaking interactive app took the dream space into mobile, generative and reactive form. Built on open source technology at RjDj, Inception is the first app to use the libpd embeddable Pure Data library seen here previously. Aside from the musical achievement here, the technical advancement is that delivering interactive music to nearly any platform is no longer just a dream.

In fact, ‘Inception’ could be seen as interactive music’s first blockbuster, topping the charts on iOS. on iTunes

’127 Hours’
A.R. Rahman

Boy, it’s a tough year to compete in soundtracks – and a great year to listen. A.R. Rahman’s fluid, genre-crossing ambient soundtrack is as expansive as the film’s desert landscapes. And it’s another achievement for the connection between India’s titanic film industry and Hollywood’s. (Rahman also contributed “Slumdog Millionaire,” a process about which he spoke to Apple’s Joe Ceillini, since it was done entirely in Logic, from laptop to studio.) The first interview that follows is more specific to this film, but the second, Indian-produced interview I think is … well, better.

‘How to Train Your Dragon’
John Powell

So, the adult dialog was Scottish, the kids are American, and the music was Celtic, even as all the characters were Vikings. It was nonetheless a lovely score (though I’m sorry that last year’s animated ‘The Book of Kells,’ set in historical Ireland with Irish accents and Irish music, didn’t get more coverage, as far as Celtic scores). For more on this movie’s sound – even if Randy Thom didn’t need another nomination this year – see Designing Sound’s interview.

Composer John Powell himself comes from a Scottish background, and says he was influenced, too, by Nordic folk music. In an interview, he explains how he lent the film a lot of its character:

John Powell Goes Epic to Score ‘Dragon’ [The Wrap]

‘The King’s Speech’
Alexandre Desplat

Understated and elegant as the film it scores, Desplat (“Deathly Hallows”) has another beautiful soundtrack. The only bad news: he’s partly overshadowed by one Ludwig van Beethoven. (Desplat says that was originally a temp track. You try out-composing Beethoven.)

Interview by Scott Holleran

Sound Mixing, Sound Editing

‘Inception’
Sound Mixing: Lora Hirschberg, Gary A. Rizzo & Ed Novick
Sound Editing: Richard King

Known in particular for its use of Edith Piaf in the score, Inception is clearly our star here (and perhaps a shoe-in, as a result), a film that creates entirely different imagined worlds. Videos and interviews, via Designing Sound:

“Inception” – Exclusive Interview with Richard King

I feel it’s very important to get new sounds for each film. It’s so important to get the sounds which you feel and imagine could be there. There’s always a lot of manipulation afterward of course, but recording new raw material is so important. I’d love to record everything every time, but the most important thing is to find the sound which provides that feeling you’re looking for regardless of where it comes from.Richard King, to Designing Sound

Gary Rizzo Talks About “Inception”

Mix Magazine on the Sound of Inception

Bruce Tanis Answers Reader Questions (a foley and sound effects editor on Inception)

‘The King’s Speech’
Sound Mixing: Paul Hamblin, Martin Jensen & John Midgley

‘Salt’
Sound Mixing: Jeffrey J. Haboush, Greg P. Russell, Scott Millan & William Sarokin

Greg Russell has an astounding fourteenth nomination for ‘Salt.’

Interview: Greg P. Russell on “Salt” and Mark P. Stoeckinger on “Unstoppable”
More About the Sound of “SALT”

‘The Social Network’
Sound Mixing: Ren Klyce, David Parker, Michael Semanick & Mark Weingarten

Some of the grand achievements in sound may not be immediately noticeable – like making a loud club party scene where you can actually hear the dialog.

Ren Klyce Talks “The Social Network” Mix

‘True Grit’
Sound Mixing: Skip Lievsay, Craig Berkey, Greg Orloff & Peter F. Kurland
Sound Editing: Skip Lievsay & Craig Berkey

Skip Lievsay Talks “True Grit” Mix

‘Toy Story 3′
Sound Editing: Tom Myers & Michael Silvers

Toy Story 3 may have gone unnoticed by many this year, but it required major innovations in surround sound, making the interviews below must-read. (For the opposite, low-fidelity end of the spectrum, see the exclusive interview for a fascinating story about the “futz boxes” used to make the little snippets of dialog the toys produce.)

“TOY STORY 3″ – Exclusive Interview with Tom Myers, Michael Semanick, and Al Nelson

With Gary Rydstrom we continued the conceit that when the toys are interacting with humans, (when they are inanimate objects), they should sound smaller in scale compared to the human “real” world. But when they are interacting with each other, and walking and talking, they have a larger, almost human scale to their sounds.
Tom Myers to Designing Sound

Dolby Surround 7.1, Toy Story 3 and The Future of Sound In 3D Films

‘Tron: Legacy’
Sound Editing: Gwendolyn Yates Whittle & Addison Teague

More About the Sound of “TRON: Legacy”: Score and SFX Mix

More About the Sound of “TRON: Legacy”

‘Unstoppable’
Sound Editing: Mark P. Stoeckinger

Yes, even Vanity Fair cares about sound editing.

Vanity Fair: Mark Stoeckinger Talks Unstoppable’s Sound Editing

Harrison is a company with a rich legacy in high-end consoles. Mixbus, their software product, is something of an anomaly. Its analog tape saturation, EQ, filter, compression, and mixing should be sold a la carte for a few hundred bucks each, given the usual business model in this industry. The product should run on some proprietary DAW, and should definitely come with a hardware dongle. And it absolutely, positively shouldn’t run on Linux, because everyone knows you can’t sell a product for Linux.

Instead, Mixbus sells for an intro price for US$79.99. You get the whole package: an entire DAW, plus a software version of Harrison’s 32-series and MR-series consoles, with powerful DSP and mixing features baked in. There’s no dongle. The DAW is the open source Ardour. On the Mac, you get support for Audio Unit plug-ins and any Core Audio interface, plus the superb Mac port of JACK.

And now, in addition to Mac support, you can run the package on Linux, benefiting from native Linux technologies like JACK and LADSPA and (now) LV2 plug-ins. Harrison recommends an audio-based distribution, but two of them – Ubuntu Studio and (Fedora-based) CCRMA – make their packages available in standard Ubuntu and custom Fedora repositories, respectively, which means just about any recent, major distribution will work.

Working with an open source DAW, Ardour, has some practical benefits for users. Aside from benefiting from a mature, open source codebase, the fact that Ardour is free software means you can exchange multitrack projects with friends, even if they don’t own Mixbus or do their work in a different DAW. Ardour takes some time to learn – the interface is spartan, to be sure – but because it’s a free project, it refreshingly focuses on the basics rather than the feature creep that has tended to make the major commercial, proprietary DAWs a bit complex.

Mixbus is simply a joy to use, because it consolidates the user interface into an efficient, productive console, and has some terrific effects to boost. Features:

• “Knob per function” mixing.
• EQ, filter, compression, analog tape saturation, and Harrison’s summing model
• 4 mix bus sends on every channel, and channel strips that each feature filter, EQ, and compression.
• Tone controls, compression, sidechaining, and tape saturation on the mix buses (hence the name), and on the stereo master bus, too – meaning this works nicely for mastering.
• Plugin delay compensation for features like parallel compression.
• Metering with peak, peak hold, compressor gain reduction on each track and bus – again, bringing mastering and mixing into a nice interface.

All of this operates in an extremely lightweight system that runs comfortably on a fairly low-end laptop, without having to sacrifice audio fidelity. (As with any multitrack system, just make sure you have a capable hard disk; that’s what I find to be the most significant bottleneck.)

In short, it’s a brilliant tool for plug-in hosting, thanks to all the routing options, and for finally finishing tracks, thanks to mix- and master-friendly features. On the Mac, support for AU means your plug-ins come with you from another DAW when you want to finish your music. On Linux (and on the Mac), you can use JACK to route in everything from a Pure Data patch to a recording for conventional mixing.

On the Mac, it’s a no-brainer purchase that makes a fantastic tool in your arsenal for finishing music. On Linux, it could be the release that finally makes a Linux-based studio practical.

Version 1.5 also introduces some new features alongside the Linux release, including a key-mappable “play with pre-roll” Transport command and playhead edit range Transport snapping (huge time-savers), thinning for dynamic automation, and a Gain tool you can use to adjust curves in a region.

I spoke to Harrison about some of the details of what’s on offer here.

CDM: Can you describe what’s built into Mixbus’ console from a processing standpoint? What makes this console special? A lot is made of “summing,” but that’s – unless I’m missing something you’re doing – typically the least interesting part of DSP design in a mixer. So tell us what does make working with Mixbus different sonically?

There’s the obvious stuff…. the built-in EQs, compressors, tape saturation, and final limiter…. done by our in-house DSP guys. But I assume that’s not what you mean.

One fundamental difference in Mixbus is the fact that everything is always “in” … for example, when you turn on an EQ, that processing is already allocated so you won’t push your CPU over the edge while undertaking the art of “mixing”. This sounds trivial, but it has significant implications in the workflow, sound, and “immediacy” of the mixer. A second big difference is the fixed number of pre-allocated buses (both graphically and DSP-wise) which is quite different from the normal DAW mixer. This will become more apparent as we develop Mixbus further, in a way that is parallel with – but different than – Ardour and more traditional DAWs.

Summing is a hot-button topic, for sure. On some level, there will be a simple addition, just like there is an addition of voltages/current on the summing bus of an analog console. But nobody would say that 2 analog consoles sound the same. Similarly, there are design decisions to be made on digital mixers. For example, our EQs are implemented in 64-bit, and there is a dither stage in each channel. When multiple channels are summed together, you can handle this dither in different ways. The difference isn’t in the actual summing, but qualitative differences come from these signals when they are summed.

Ed.: That makes some sense – the summing stage itself, which is what people will often describe when comparing DAWs, shouldn’t theoretically be any different, but the way you handle changes in bit depth in various mixing stages prior to summing could make a big difference. I pushed Harrison on this partly because I’ve been having some heated discussions with developers and engineers about this topic, so we can go further into it if interested – but it’s good to know how Mixbus works, and I can confirm that mixing in the software is really a joy. -PK

Finally, there’s the rule that in digital it’s hard to “improve” the quality of sound, but there are a hell of a lot of ways to screw it up. Avoiding these landmines, or designing to accomodate them on a given platform, is something that comes from a lot of experience.

What’s the relationship of Mixbus to other Harrison products? How did they inform this design?

We designed the Mixbus mixer using the same people & process that we would apply to a hardware mixer. Every design has “tradeoffs” associated with it: features, bit depth, gain stages, dithering, oversampling, parameter ramping methods, etc etc. There’s also a lot of thought that gets put into the parameter ranges …. where should the EQ center frequencies be? How wide a range should they cover? These are things that we (a) think about much more frequently than the typical DAW developer and (b) have a very wide experience to draw from.

Aside from the fact that it’s already there, can you talk about some specific advantages of working with Ardour? Any tips you’ve personally found while working with it, from a workflow / usability standpoint?

Coming from the rarified world of high-end audio systems, we recognized a lot of the same qualities in Ardour. Some examples: “The things you do 1000 times a day are very easy to apply, while the things you do once per day don’t matter where they appear” …. “Anything that you do automatically, while really helpful in some cases, will be terribly wrong in other cases” ….. “first-time-user intuitiveness isn’t as important as long-term usability to a pro” ….. “customization on a truly deep level is important for enterprise-class facilities” …. stuff like that.

These are subtleties. How do you make a soundbyte out of the overall “gestalt” that Ardour/Mixbus has? It is the result of many iterations driven by real-world users. Sometimes it’s about going back-and-forth until finally settling on the “least evil” of evil compromises. It doesn’t make good ad copy

One huge point: Ardour (in many cases) is a superset of the features of workstations. For example, the AudioFile (a high end hardware DAW by AMS/Neve) had the feature of “transparent regions”… so you could stack multiple sounds on a single track. Ardour has a “transparent” flag for regions, so you can do this. An interesting point here is that the Ardour session file format could conceivably become the shared standard of nearly other DAW. Presumably we’ll be able to support nearly any workflow that a user wants, once we get the UI’s developed.

Mixbus users – or potential Mixbus users – we’d love to hear from you. If you’re using the tool now, let us know how it’s working for you. And if you’re considering using it, let us know what’d be helpful to you. I suspect a tutorial on setting everything up on Linux would be a good place to start; it’s powerful, but not immediately intuitive out of the box.

http://www.harrisonconsoles.com/