Harrison Mixbus is a digital audio workstation (DAW) available for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X systems, and Linux operating systems, first released in 2009.[1] It combines a modern DAW model with a traditional analog mixing workflow, incorporating Harrison's analog console modeling. Based on the open-source Ardour DAW, Mixbus is enhanced with proprietary DSP, offering features like analog-modeled EQ, compression, and summing on each channel strip. It also includes mix buses with tone controls and tape saturation, alongside a master bus equipped with a limiter and loudness monitoring tools. Mixbus is based on Ardour, the open-source DAW,[2] but is sold and marketed commercially by Harrison Audio Consoles.
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| Developer(s) | Harrison Audio Consoles, Ardour contributors |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 9 / May 2023 |
| Operating system | Mac OS X 10.4 - 10.6, Linux, Windows (XP Pro or newer) |
| Type | Digital audio workstation |
| Website | http://mixbus.harrisonconsoles.com/ |
Features of Mixbus
Mixbus has the features of Ardour, with additional functionality from proprietary DSP,[1] replicating the workflow, signal path, and sound of a Harrison console.
Each channel strip in Mixbus features analog modeled 3 bands EQ (including a high pass filter), compression (with 3 compressor types), panning, and summing.
It includes 8 stereo mixbuses featuring tone controls, tape saturation, and compression (including a sidechain compressor).
The master bus is similar to the mix buses but has the addition of a limiter, a K14 meter for loudness monitoring, and a stereo correlation meter.
Mixbus started as an audio-only workstation. In earlier versions, it also depended on the JACK audio server as its backend. Since version 3, Mixbus supports both audio and MIDI tracks, and it no longer depends on JACK, although JACK can still be used as one of its audio backends.