As I said, we play in different sandboxes. The toughest session I ever did with my little indie studio was one track.
A bluegrass band wanted to go full old-school, all of them around a single U87 in omni mode. I used gobos and an EL8 Distressor to make it work.
They were amazing. Super tight and balanced, moving in and out of mic range to mix themselves as they played. It was an education.
Now that I’m getting back into it, both for covers here and audition tracks for local bands, I still plan to keep to the minimalist approach. That’s just me, though.
ETA: to be completely fair, there was a pair of Beyer M160s as overheads, so let’s call it three tracks. The band was amazing, though, so I don’t remember if I used those at all.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand. If anyone has experience with the Harrison Mixbus plug-ins, I’d appreciate some guidance. There are a lot of bells and whistles.
I don’t have an experience with Harrison thing. Just a little side note, I am using SSL emulation as my mixer, so there’s SSL sound to the whole output. There’s quite a huge difference between project through regular DAW mixer and the SSL emulation. I will presume that Harrison does the same and it will sound noticeably different to a regular DAW mixer. I would really dig deep in to it, so I know that I actualy like the sound that it emulates.
I have SSL emulation as a button option on my Audio Interface (SSL2).
It’s kind of useless though because having SSL emulation in hardware but only for mic and bass tracks makes little sense. So I would need to get a SSL plugin for the rest if I wanted it, at which point the hardware becomes actually undesirable.
There is basically no case where I want to add color to tone before getting it in the DAW at this point.
That’s how Softube Console I am using works. Every track, send, master has a Console plugin on itself and by some kind of magic, these plugins together create really impressive illusion of mixing through an analog console. The whole sound is glued together and compressed, limited and colored and … it’s really noticeable, strong … however it’s still really transparent. … I guess that’s how people descibed SSL in the past.
It’s mindblowing that nowadays they have libraries of code, which if you pass a signal through the code, it works like you have sent the signal through a vacuum tube and so on.
Why did i even click on this thread??? The last thing I need right now is more software My goal THIS winter is to try all the stuff i bought LAST winter
If I ever did stuff that requires that many tracks, I’d probably switch to Ableton too. It’s rare for me to have more than 4 or 5 tracks in Reaper when I’m working on (learning) a cover, and by the time I finish, it’s down to 2 tracks; the backing track (bass removed) and my bass track.
You guys do some crazy stuff Me? I’m just a humble bass player.
Managing large numbers of tracks in Reaper is fine - that’s not generally an issue. In fact it’s easier in Reaper.
Well, cheaper anyway. You need to get Ableton Suite to get that many tracks in Ableton. Which means either you drop $800 on it or you Yarr Harr it, which is a marginal plan at best for something you depend on
Are there any other limitations with Live Lite? I have a couple licenses that I haven’t used, maybe I could give another look one day and see if I like it. I found it to be too complicated that last time I tried it, and gave up on it, but I really didn’t spend much time trying to learn it.
We always talk about Reaper and Ableton but I’m actually thinking of going back to Apple Logic Pro. I know it’s Mac only but I also think it’s one of the user-friendly daw out there. It’s also not expensive for what you get. Amazing value!
@Paul LPX is my primary DAW and the one I work the most with. There is a lot of very powerful plugins included with it, that most folks aren’t aware of. The workflow just sort of makes sense for me. I do use Ableton as well and others, but LPX is my go to.
MChorusMB, a really good multiband chorus, is on sale for half off right now, i.e. the price it should be, and it is outstanding - it’s my go-to chorus.
Plus if you don’t have any of their stuff, you also get all their free stuff when you buy anything, and it’s all good.
My goal THIS winter is to try all the stuff i bought LAST winter 
Me? I’m just a humble bass player.
