Advantages to using the mixer?

For 3-400 bucks a second hand mackie mcu does quite a lot. Sure there are better surfaces, I guess, but over the many years I have been using mine, I have no reason to change except for deeper and better PT integration. As I have said before in this forum, I also use a secondary 15" touch screen monitor for plugin guis. I absolutely fly on this setup. If you are on Cubase 7, you are screwed because steinberg broke some integration having to do with software mixer/hardware mixer mirroring along with the end of view sets. Well, maybe I am screwed. C6.5 and my hardware zings right along with productivity and efficiency.

I would really like you to elaborate on your comment : " promise the ultimate in tactile operation but rarely deliver." That is a blanket statement that needs some explanation in order for me to understand where you are coming from. Your usage must be drastically different and I would love to understand how you work.

Every software promises the same thing. It is all about adaptation, personal integration and using the features something has to your advantage.

Hey Lenny,

I just work faster and more precise dumping things onto a surface and mixing without visual feedback. I used to be so intrenched in the visual feedback when I first moved to digital and I found when I stopped staring at the screen I worked a lot faster and I liked the results better.

I know you use a lot of VSTis, right?, and If I did I would me on the screen much more than I am. Most plugin parameter rides I do on a touch screen.

You are absolutely right though. I don’t have time to tweak for endless hours when I am under time constraints. If I recorded my own things I would probably devote more time. Even with the high level production work I do, I have to trim workflow fat to keep people happy.

A lot of this too depends on how someone works and I respect everyone’s workflow. That is why I asked if people who mouse mix had control surfaces too. I worked on consoles for years so I am partial to that style of stacking sends and effects on separate faders with also having different blends of group tracks of similar elements to ride through hooks and returns. What I love about Cubase 6.5 and earlier versions is the mixer view sets that can be saved. What I do is decide what instrument channels I want to spread over the 24 faders because I don’t like paging through banks of faders.

For instance, I will create a viewset that has lead tracks featuring viola and trumpet. If I hear the percussion feeding off that, I will add those tracks too. So now I have 24 faders of the audio channels send and effect returns. I will ride the song now in this set starting from a static “levels up” balance. I also create other sets that over lap to get the entire mix jiving together. The overlap tracks are usually total group tracks, like all the viola tracks including sends and effects so that can be interleaved with the next fader set, like in this case the trumpet and viola groups and fx with the vocals and the various vocal treatments that come in and out during the song because they share the same frequency domain.

Hopefully that makes sense. I feel like I am rambling now, but that is a snapshot of how I work. It is deeper too with individual effect parimeter rides too, but like I said, I do parameter rides on a touch screen most of the time using a stylus.

I don’t know about Nuage, but it seems every year there is some machine that is supposed to make life easier for engineers in the “tactile” department.

I guess what I am saying is I like MixConsole, because if touch is where it is headed I don’t need to worry about hardware.

I mix with my eyes and ears.

What could be better than using BOTH of those senses? I’ll tell you what … add the sense of smell into the mixing environment!

Do you want you mix to have a hint of minty freshness? Prefer a field (or near-field) of wildflowers? Maybe the essence of a cedar lined closet? Enter the UAD-3 Glade plug-in. Voila! Perfecto! I’m so looking forward to the future! It’s looking so bright, I gotta wear shades. :wink:

Sit in a control room with 5 band members, you get a sense of smell into the mixing environment alright :laughing:

Now you’re talkin’!!
Of course, then you’d need an olfactory mixer to tweak up just the right scent - further complicating the process. :confused:
And why not be able to embed that scent onto the final mix, to further enhance the ‘experience’!

Ya know, I think I’ve heard quite a few tunes that -did- have a certain stench. :mrgreen:

I keep 3 bars of deodorant in the bath. One is communal for all bands that need to use it and 2 are for sale. All upon suggestion from me and the other band members. :slight_smile: You would be surprised how many opt to use the communal one instead of buying their own. I learned early on from working in a tiny carpet covered studio that ya gotta keep a few sticks around.

Now farting, that is a different story. The fart comics get kicked out of the control room and I urge them to go take a dump in the woods. :laughing:

Yes, an olfactory mixer is esscential! Embedding scents in the final STEREO mix is also esscential! Imagine the possibilities! Roses panned hard left, Petunia’s panned hard right, fresh-baked almond cake 50% left, new-car smell 50% right, and Channel No#5 center. Add some depth-of-stage to it and the possibilities are endless.

Put Ray Kurzweil on it right away. :wink:

I’ve had olfactory feedback from hardware for years. Unfortunately the ‘electrical’ smell is almost always immediately followed by the failure of the device to process a signal. So, I’m kind of against the idea.

You’re supposed to keep the smoke inside the device. :wink:

Yeah, the magic smoke! I’ve always wondered where that super secret factory is that compresses the smoke and injects it into the little plastic blobs.

Fear is… walking into my studio and smelling that familiar odor of the little plastic blobs having released their smoke!!!

Running about looking for the culprit, being perplexed to not finding any evidence of damage anywhere.

Phoning my other engineer and quizzing him as to what may have happened, and realising it was actually the smell of TCP he’d been gargling with for a throat infection… :laughing:

That’s what I’d like to see. Someone actually doing it. I like the idea of using a control surface… just that when I had one I could never find a way to make it work efficiently and always found myself going back to mouse… :confused:

I wonder if anyone has a vid anywhere?

I’m a mouse dude… I have one motorised fader for tweaking, but otherwise it’s mouse all the way.

hehehe, I had a similar false alarm when the heater kicked on for the first time of the year a couple years ago. Something in the heater went poooof, but the blower carried the smell into the room. :laughing:

Is that a FaderPort, or CC121, or “Tranzport”?

Alphatrack…

I don’t know what you are going to see because for the most part, the monitor is going to be off after all the sound has been sculpted. What I will do is fire the rig on and show you the routings I do.

Stand by…

I thought you owned “big” studio :mrgreen:

A couple of examples. Different artists, same approach.

Better example