Recently on the EDM Production discord that I help administrate, I held a Q&A with Fabien Schivre from Tokyo Dawn. Specifically we discussed Tokyo Dawn Labs.

Click through for the whole Q&A as I’ve transcribed it.

• Question and Answer with Fabien Schivre from Tokyo Dawn, Again!

Fabfilter makes amazing products with amazing GUIs. I think every modern music producer or engineer knows this by now.

I have found myself to being too reliant on their products though, so for my next 30 days I’m going to not use any Fabfilter products. When I’m done I’ll write a post explaining why I went back to Fabfilter or why I fell in love with something else.

Currently I have some ideas of what I will replace things with, but that will grow. Read more to find out my plans, and comment if you have any awesome suggestions!

Check out the conclusion here after reading this post!

Gain staging. It’s a popular phrase now. It was a popular phrase before, but it is now too. There was a short period in the late 80s, 90s and early 00’s where, as digital tookover, people forgot it was a thing.

Now we have a whole generation of musically-inclined people that are learning to work entirely digitally, and the necessity of gain staging has slipped by their grasp. It used to be an obvious skill, but now the benefits are a matter of workflow rather than a matter of basic operation.

I get asked about gain staging all the time, and while I generally try to avoid writing about things that are already explained elsewhere, I am going to tackle this one. Why? Because there’s one aspect of gain staging that matters to everyone, and almost nobody discusses it.

CONTROL CONTROL CONTROL CONTROL CONTROL CONTROL CONTROL

If you follow this blog then you’d know that I’ve been reviewing mixbus for “30 days” (more like 2.5 months).

You may also know that Mixbus is based upon Ardour, an open source DAW. I previously started a review with Ardour, and stopped due to some issues that made it not possible for me to work efficiently.

Clearly, as I’ve been using Mixbus 4.1/4.2, Ardour is up to the task of being used and I have been using it. According to my time sink logs I’ve spent about 60 hours in Ardour working on a project, and looking at the differences between the current version 5.12.

So I’m going to take a moment and give a very short review of Ardour and explain some differences from the Mixbus review I did. I won’t be covering all of the differences between Mixbus and Ardour, but I will cover what I feel is fairly important.

First check over the other posts I’ve written about Mixbus and Ardour.

• Cool things Part 1
• Cool things Part 2
• Cool things Part 3
• Cool things Part 4
• Mixbus: The mixer
• Mixbus EQ Revisited
• Review of Mixbus effects
• Review of Mixbus instruments and MIDI plugins
• Mixbus MIDI
• Mixbus Audio editing
• Ardour first impressions
• Cool Features in Ardour Part 1
• Giving up on Ardour

Here it is. After a number of posts going over some of the unique things about Mixbus, the final post in what was supposed to be a 30 day review.

First check over the other posts I’ve written and then after the break I’ll give a summary of my feelings about Mixbus.

• Cool things Part 1
• Cool things Part 2
• Cool things Part 3
• Cool things Part 4
• Mixbus: The mixer
• Mixbus EQ Revisited
• Review of Mixbus effects
• Review of Mixbus instruments and MIDI plugins
• Mixbus MIDI
• Mixbus Audio editing

Warning: No fancy pictures, just text today!

In this penultimate post regarding Mixbus, I’m going to cover some of the more useful or unique features of Audio editing.

Mixbus covers most of the basic editing functions that you’d expect in a DAW. Here I’m going to cover the more useful or unusual features.

In this third-to-last post of the mixbus review, I’m covering the MIDI editing capabilities.

I will say that I am not primarily a MIDI-based musician. I do work with MIDI and softsynths in my freetime, however my knowledge of the needs of a professional composer are not personally acquired.

Let’s get on to it.

NOTE THAT THIS REVIEW IS FOR VERSION 4.2

I’m taking a bit of a break this half-week before I finish my Mixbus 32c Review.

I have made some updates to the Reaper Script Showcase and the DAW Feature Chart. The DAW Feature chart has had a number of updates based on feedback from users. I’m not infallible! If you think I’ve made a mistak then please speak up.

I’ve also had some direct interaction with DAW Developers informing me of features that I may or may not know about, and some scores have been changed based on that feedback (betters and worse).

So meanwhile, check out those features and let me know what you think in the comments or via e-mail!

In this post I’ll be covering the instruments and midi effects included with Mixbus. The selection of instruments is rather limited, but there is quite some depth to the realtime midi manipulation. Let’s get started.

Spoiler - Overall rating Instruments:

Spoiler - Overall rating MIDI Plugins:

Here’s the part where I go a ridiculous amount of work trying and testing plugins. What follows is a short review of every effect plug-in included with Mixbus and the commercially available plug-ins from Harrison and the included x42 plugins that are installed with Mixbus.

THIS REVIEW DOES NOT CONSIDER THE MIXBUS MIXER I covered that elsewhere. Mixbus comes with quite a few things outside of the plugins, so be aware of that.

Spoiler - Overall rating Included Free:

Spoiler - Overall rating Paid Harrison:

Spoiler - Overall rating Paid x42: