Best software mix buss

kayagum · Post by **kayagum** » Mon Dec 15, 2008 6:49 pm

So here's a straight up question: which DAW has the best sounding mix buss? As in mixing down to the final 2 track?

Any opinions welcome....

Nick Sevilla · Post by **Nick Sevilla** » Mon Dec 15, 2008 6:57 pm

kayagum wrote:So here's a straight up question: which DAW has the best sounding mix buss? As in mixing down to the final 2 track?

Any opinions welcome....

None of them. All of them.

I typically will mixdown ITB , but leave headroom, so as to accomplish 2 things, one, enough room for the mastering engineer, and two, avoiding inter sample clipping, by not reaching the top level.

Cheers

Jay Reynolds · Post by **Jay Reynolds** » Mon Dec 15, 2008 7:24 pm

I know I like neither Reason's nor Garageband's mix buss. Not sure after that...

chris harris · Post by **chris harris** » Mon Dec 15, 2008 8:11 pm

superaction80 wrote:I know I like neither Reason's nor Garageband's mix buss. Not sure after that...

I agree with that.

I also have never had a good ITB mixing experience with DP 5. I mostly use DP for projects that will be mixed on an analog board. But, the few times I've tried mixing inside DP have been unsatisfying.

I love mixing in Cubase. Bur, I've also mixed hundreds of songs in Cubase. It might just be a familiarity thing. It might just be the scale of the faders in the GUI. I don't know. It seems like the DP faders are a little shorter.

farview · Post by **farview** » Mon Dec 15, 2008 8:19 pm

I really like the Nuendo/Cubase mix buss.

0-it-hz · Post by **0-it-hz** » Mon Dec 15, 2008 10:49 pm

Yeah, I really like Nuendo... I can't be sure if it actually sounds better but it seems to sound better to me...However I still buss everything into 16 channels of my board for mixdown cause I like it like that.

Many people feel the Nuendo mix buss is superior, they certainly advertise it as god's gift to audio... maybe it's hype?

kayagum · Post by **kayagum** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 8:38 am

How about PT, Tracktion, Logic or Audition? Anyone?

audiogeek1 · Post by **audiogeek1** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 8:43 am

What software do you own? Make that sound the best it can. There has been no real study of Mix buses that I have seen. I use pro tools and it works.

Mike

Jay Reynolds · Post by **Jay Reynolds** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 8:52 am

I was on Cubase for years and recently switched to Logic and I don't notice a difference. This is a wholly unscientific and untested opinion.
Same goes for Ableton Live, though I only really print mixes in Live for reference purposes and I have yet to do a full-fledged mix with it.

kayagum · Post by **kayagum** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 11:36 am

audiogeek1 wrote:What software do you own? Make that sound the best it can. There has been no real study of Mix buses that I have seen. I use pro tools and it works.

Mike

Audition and Tracktion. Audition will always be a permanent tool for me just for some of the wav editing plugins like noise reduction. Tracktion came with my interface, and I'm still in the beginning stages of putting it through its paces.

Just seeing if I'm missing anything out there in DAW land.

firesine · Post by **firesine** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 11:56 am

kayagum wrote:How about PT, Tracktion, Logic or Audition? Anyone?

ProTools works, so does Logic. I think it has more to do with what you are sending to the buss than anything else.

Jeff White · Post by **Jeff White** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 11:56 am

I happen to love mixing in Digital Performer. To each their own.

Pan law is involved, aside from that most mix busses should sound the same. This has been hashed and rehashed over and over again here and at Gearslutz, with people over there trashing every program at some point as sounding like dog shit. They don't and people make great sounding records in Pro Tools LE, Logic, Digital Performer, Sonar, Cubase, etc every day.

The only time I heard a difference was mixing internally in Live 4 vs. DP4.61. And that was with warping on every track in Live eating the CPU in my G5. I learned to warp a track in live and rerecord it in digital Performer and mix in Digital Performer. So I use Live 5 more like a sampler than anything else. However, I'm sure that Live 7 or whatever is out now sound fine.

Also, in my travels, there is a huge difference between running 24 tracks of dry WAV files (or whatever) through any mix bus in a DAW or applying plug-ins across these tracks. I've been working in Digital Performer long enough to realize that there are some AU plug-ins that do not take high levels well at input. They will clip or distort. I'm talking about WAVES, IK Multimedia, etc. Even if you record hotter than the -15dBfs or whatever (aim for the middle), you can still insert a Trim plug-in set to -12dB before your insert effects chain that will totally help things and make this a non issue. And I sometimes insert another Trim post fx to bring thing up a bit. I do this all the time and believe me, my mixes sound much much better in 2008 than in 2005.

Jeff

roygbiv · Post by **roygbiv** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 12:42 pm

I've tried to hold off, but I'm compelled to make the obligatory Reaper plug.

Reaper uses 64 bit internal math processing. Apparently some other DAWs do/did not (although many/most may now).

I've read that some of the problems with "cloudy mixes" in the past was not enough processing headroom available when one tries to jam all the multiple tracks into the 2-mix buss.

Supposedly 64 bit internal processing removes this problem.

bickle · Post by **bickle** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 12:51 pm

I don't have much to compare to, but when I switched from Vegas (yeah, yeah) to Sonar a few years ago, the difference was HUGE. I think Sonar sounds awesome. And it does have the 64-bit internal business going on.

I also have never noticed much about the mixdown from Pro Tools LE in the last few years, and that's a compliment in my book.

studiodog · Post by **studiodog** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 1:16 pm

Check out Emu (Ensoniq) Paris ....

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