The most polite murder I've ever witnessed

Im starting to think Dan is one of the only folk in the industry who actually knows what they're talking about

"You can snakeoil a few of us for a while, but most of us can smell the bullshit" Could not be said any better, thanks for that! Keep making awesome audio content!

"The fault of the consumer and not the company" wow, great response, keep it up like that.

"...is the fault of the consumer and not the company" 🤡 Just take the L Harrison, you are digging a deeper hole for yourself.

You need to use the Harrison cable lifters to get the full experience, Dan. That much should've been obvious to you.

Actually laughed out loud at the repetition of “…a bog-standard EQ” Great video as usual.

Not thrilled with the tone of their response 😂

Brilliant! Calling out hype is more necessary now than ever in such a crowded space. Thanks, Dan!

"We're audio engineers not audiophiles. You can snake-oil a few of us for a while but most of us can smell bullshit." I'll have those words (paraphrased) carved on my grave.

Harrison Mixbus & Mixbus 32c is an open source DAW called ARDOUR, with branding and tape saturation/EQ's added to the "console" part of it. Ardour is a VERY powerful DAW which is available for Mac and Windows as well as Linux. The Waves Tracks Live DAW they put out a few years ago was based on Ardour as well.

Unrelated: ok, we have normal pitch and higher pitch Dan, but when are we getting the lower pitch one? 🤔

"Audiophiles" are really the worst kind of audio community. Some days ago I saw a facebook post where someone claimed they are going to go full analog now, because they heard some rhodes piano that sounded better than all rhodes plugins disregarding that rhodes pianos are not everything that makes music. In the comments section there was a guy who started talking about how analog summing can really help a mix to be warm and full. So I informed him that this has been debunked already and dropped a link to your analog-summing-shumming video. They replied and questioned your reputation. >>Why would we believe some random youtuber instead of the music producers who have made successful hits in the past?

Harsh but fair, which is why we love Dan. No B.S. here.

I was skeptical about the claims of Mixbus 32c when I was using it so I decided to test it for myself. Using ReaRoute, I routed a bunch of tracks out of Reaper and into individual 32c channels, then took the output of Mixbus and routed it back into Reaper again. I sent the same tracks inside of Reaper to a bus, added some delay to compensate for the round trip processing delay between Mixbus and Reaper and brought the two master busses up next to each other. If 32c was truly modelling their analog console then all the non-linearities you mention above should've been there. So even without any of the EQ or saturation engaged I shouldn't have been able to get the two busses to null - but they did. Perfectly. So. Unless you engage the saturation on the groups/busses in 32c it literally does absolutely nothing to the sound. Not a sausage. And considering the DAW portion of 32c was so bad compared to Reaper, that was pretty much the end of my relationship with 32c. Pretty disappointing.

That subtle slab toward audiophiles…😂

In certain areas, fooling customers is almost becoming a business model. Unfortunately, it's not getting any better. This is the right way! 👊 This is what they need. Defend yourselves guys, everyone as he can! 🔥

the up pitched reading voice is amazing! thanks for the video as always.

Dan... you are a legend. Your technical knowledge shines through in all of your videos and your delivery is accessible without skimping on the complexities and caveats of the subject matter. Thanks so much for putting in the time to make these videos with such care and I hope you continue to share your knowledge and talent. Always appreciated.

No one could have said and explained it better than you did. You're a great inspiration to us

I LOVE you so much Dan lol. Thanks for fighting for us ❤️

The "audio engineer, not audiophile" statement has to go on your t-shirts. In bold letters.👍🏻👍🏻 Thank you so much for being the lighthouse of truth for us! (by the way, before your video about this plugin was published I had not only received a snobby reply of Harrison but also had a discussion with a stupid Harrison customer who didn't want to believe that those filters are just standard RBJ-filters and he accused me of doing the null test wrong, even though I proved it by a video showing the perfect null with Reaper's ReaEQ. This was the moment when I decided to delete my Facebook account. The amount of silliness there was too much for me to swallow.)

Mixbus 32C is Ardour with a skeuomorphic body kit and a marketing department. Used it before switching to Reaper for live mixing. It's a functional DAW but doesn't do anything special unless you count curiously high resource usage as special.

Any day a DW Video is released, is a good day. Thank you for doing this. I've learned so much from your videos and they inspire me to learn even more.

It took Harrison one year to come up with that answer? Wow if that is any indication of the rest of their work or ethics, I'll never once stop to think about getting Mixbus ever again. *Getting hyped for Dan basically saying: I could take a closer look at the rest of your software-lineup aswell*

This put a huge smile on my face. Love it.

BOOM!!! Weird how some companies really just DONT seem to give a shit about honesty. Nice work as always. Thank you .

I've had Harrison DAW for like 15 years (it was on sale for like 10-20 bucks, and I was new to mixing). I've used it like 2 or 3 times in all that time. So it's good to know I wasn't wasting my time learning how to use it when the company calls out its customers like that.

Now I know that company exists, thank You Dan, and it’ll be avoided by me in the future.

When I want to learn something, you're my go to guy. Thanks Dan, I know no one who has more knowledge in sound than you.

It would be interesting to see an analysis of Mixbus. One thing I do like about Mixbus is the integrated mixer channel controls. I get really fed-up opening and closing plugin windows all the time or accidentally tweaking the wrong channel's plugin.

Damn i love this dude

Considering that Acustica has Harrison pre's sampled and they do make an audible difference, this is a very poor response from the company.

I got into a long beef with the Harrison rep on one of their videos. It made me so mad to see them snootily talk down to me and everyone else for not believing in magic.

Savage, no nonsense response. Gotta love Dan!

By the way, Dan, I pulled up Wavesfactory Spectre (which you gracefully introduced in the official demo video). Great place for parallel filters! Personally I have experimented with the plug-in 100% wet as a send for a low mid band bell ‘wet’. Then send any instrument to it do get more body. A little can go a long way! Cheers for the content.

I fell for the DAW a few years back. Was almost completely incompatible with 3rd party plug-ins. Had a lengthy customer care exchange, who gave me the impression that all their other customers were happily working with plug-ins daily. At one point they gave up and referred me to the Ardour developers. Lost only 40 bucks, but I learned my lesson.

What else can we say apart from... “ANALOG.. WIV DA SOUND OF DIGITAL.... ITS THA F*CKING FUTURE!!“ - Steve the salesman

that rep should have been wiser than to have commented on your video 😂 Keep doing what you do Dan.

Truth is always bitter and hard to accept for most people. Don't give a damn about how they try to bring you down. You make great knowledgeable videos. We are here for your support. Don't stop making tutorial videos. Peace & Love from Nepal. 🇳🇵

This is gold. WE

Why does a company do that to itself? It's not getting easier if you can't take a step back, after you've been called out. I just found your channel recently, a week ago or so and honestly wondered why. Great content!

Using the actual term "fault of the consumer" is an odd strategy to be sure... I have mixbuss (have only used it on a small handful of projects so far, mainly for the auto phase alignment to check optimal ways to flip the phases of groups of tracks) and investigated the "true analog summing" which as far as I can tell just consists of built in subtle "tape saturation" which basically just shaves off peaks a tiny tad.

I'd love to see what you think to mixbus because I mainly use ardour (the open source project on which it is based) but do use mixbus too and I really do think that it sounds really good - as projects that I record in ardour and then open in mixbus just instantly sound better - and I'd love to know if it's just a psychosomatic thing or it there is something going on.

I have a Harrison 950MX console. Love it to bits. It's an abject lesson in minimalist design I would argue. I've not tried Harrisons' digital products so I can't comment but I can recommend the 950 console. The rest of their analogue gear is equally impressive. Especially the 8 channel filter rack unit.

There are some good developers/companies, but the "analog" plugin industry as a whole is a hustle.

This was an absolutely pleasure to watch.

mixbus 32c does have a sound and a feel or vibe, whatever quantifiable thing that makes it sound like a thing. essentially, a really well made template for ardour with built in plugins that you can find elsewhere, or go a bit further and use a old tape deck off ebay with a multichannel output soundcard. I often think, how many people have had access to those large format desks, experience with them to emotionally lock into the tone? same with other emulation of hardware, hard to know if its actually sounding or feeling like it if you have never used it. tbh in the virtual digital domain, i like my plugins doing crazy stuff, for all the bread and butter kinda eq, dynamics, tubes, channel strips etc, its worth just investing in something like a series 500 module rack and using that, custom setup, tinker around with a box of joy. that way the dressed up bits of code can float around on the internet hard drives and do well if it does.

I absolutely love this channel

Hey Dan! I'd be really interested to hear your opinion on the lindell Neve channel. Maybe even in comparison to the Arturia one. Have been reading some interesting discussions online about the two. Some people hate on the arturia one, because it doesn't seem to add as many harmonics when looked at in PluginDoctor. It sounds so sweet though! And when I use my Warm Audio Neve clone as a plugin insert it doesn't appear to be this powerful saturator. Even though there surely are harmonics being added(?). Might some of the Analog Channel Strip Gain knobs be overpowered? What are your thoughts? Thanks for your videos, they truly are amazing!

OUR channel strips are not bound by physics

If the channel and group really did emulate the desk exactly and really did perform this way it would be amazing

About MixBus, I was a user. In order to work with ambisonics I needed multiple outputs…. Now after I got to Reaper hardly go to another DAW. We are in 22 and they still stuck in only stereo out.

Your intuition is correct. Their DAW is Ardour with custom pieces. I've used it quite a bit for mixing as it forced certain workflows, but the recent updates are trying way too hard to align with Ableton or Bitwig.

Have to change the channel name to "Dan Worral" because Harisson took the L.

Hello Dan, i am a big fan of your content and am extremely surprised by the amount and quality of knowledge you give to us on your channel. You have and i sincerely hope that you will keep giving us that in the future as well. Things that would have taken 10-15 years for me to know and understand and i am not sure that even after that much time i would have understood. So thanks a lot! I would like to ask you a question as a beginner in audio engineering field. What are your thoughts on routing for all the plugins set in an order such as eq, compressor, etc on individual channels while mixing a whole song and the difference it makes in the sound if the order is shuffled. Can you please make a video on this? Even a short one would help us a lot! (Sorry if i am not able to explain my question in a good way)

Everything changes over time (including Companies). Remember when B.C. Rich made high priced and high quality instruments?

Hello Dan, I have followed your videos and I find them quite illustrative. I have done the tests with the eq of the DAW, it has a different behavior than the plugin, the equalizers and the compressor add harmonics To the signal, in effect, they are not transparent at all, while the equalizer of the plugin is transparent. I hope one day you can try it and debunk the myths of audio And of marketing. I send you a big hug and we look forward to more videos.

No sense in beating around the bush there Dan, upfront, and in-your-face rebuke!!

And this is why I trust Dan Worrall with my musical life! Sorting the men from the boys... The original video was enough to put me off, but the Harrison reply has sealed their own death. Thanks Dan for yet another eloquent disembowelment.

Mixbus is a rebranded Ardour, and Ardour is a GREAT free software DAW.

Is there a way to review the linear splineEQ by Photosounder? I hope that you could make its lazy-bone developer finally introduce m/s separate processing and a bell to audition an isolated part of a spectrum. Pity, that some developers do not make a final step to finish good products.

You mess with the bull, you get the horns

Harrison should market the work flow of their DAW without any added mystique, because that is the difference between it and most others. For someone used to the signal flow of a mixing desk, it's very intuitive and fast to get a mix going. I started on it, even though I've moved on since.

Glenn Fricker has at one point tried the Harrison Mixbus DAW. I can’t remember anything about it but it might be worth a revisit now

FWIW: Admiral Bumblebee did a fairly technical review of the EQ in Mixbus 32C back in 2017 (I'd post the link, but I don't think YT will allow it). Evidently, from his review, the DAW's EQ behaves much as you describe here in regard to lacking saturation. On the other hand, he was impressed with how they handled cramping (the review has a nice discussion of this). His overall reaction to it was rather different from yours (here he is using "emulation" as a contrast to more realistic component-based "simulation"): "Mixbus 32c, despite some of the marketing claims otherwise, is a Digital Emulation of the 32c channel strip. The designers of Mixbus 32c’s channel had the goal of creating the original 32c console’s designer’s intentions when designing the EQ. Each component in the original was not simulated and combined to create a whole… that is extremely computationally expensive and impractical. "The original designers of the 32c tried their best to avoid saturation, noise, crosstalk and other analog annoyances. The goal of the Mixbus 32c developers was to emulate the design goals of the original 32c channel. To this end it is a success. "However one does have to wonder if some of those unavoidable analog side-effects were part of the charm of the original? I guess you can always add your own noise and saturation if you want ;)" He also reviewed the whole DAW, and had very good customer interactions with Harrison: "Let’s first talk about the most important asset of any software: the people. The folks behind Mixbus and Ardour are fantastic. I’ve worked with (and for) a variety of developers that make audio products, particularly DAWs, and largely they are all great people that love what they do. The people behind Mixbus and Ardour though, have been the most reasonable folks I’ve encountered. ... When speaking with the Mixbus folks, they’re more willing to explain the tradeoffs in the design and acknowledge their weaknesses. This signals to me a huge willingness to improve and embrace the user. Not one time in talking to any other company (of nearly every major DAW developer) has someone said to me, of something that’s not a bug, 'You know what, I think we can do better.' That was until I spoke with the Mixbus team.... Along with their willingness to approach their product with a genuine honesty, their support is fantastic." I wonder if that staff reply was an outlier. Or maybe the company has changed since 2017. I have the basic Mixbus, and have used it occasionally for small home studio projects. I've really enjoyed using it, mainly because of the workflow, which feels like working with a console and a multitrack recorder. I don't have the experience to comment on whether it has a particularly unique "sound." The Admiral did report in his review that the 2017 Mixbus had twice the latency of Ardour (which it is based on). That suggests it's doing some processing all the time that Ardour isn't. It would be good to see measurements. -Tom

Please review the Harrison Mixbus! I’ve heard so many people say good things about the character and vintage sound and whatnot, now I have to know!!!

Thank you very much, I started to chuckle when I played around with it after about 2 min I was like Um ok no thanks. Like I need one more plugin I won't use. This plug-in is no better than a stock strip of a DAW. Now I worked on a 32C for close to 4 years off and on at a buddy place and this in no way to my recollection behaves anything or sounds like the 32cv and not that the 32C was anything to get excited about, it came out of a TV studio in the midwest and was suitable for TV I guess, But I never ventured to mix on that console.

BOOOOM!!! got served, that was a great watch

Well, that's gonna leave a mark (yikes). I'm mixing in Harrison Mixbus right now. After using Pro Tools before it was the "industry standard" and with the subscription drama I stumbled across HMB. I like having a dedicated channel strip, with EQ, compression, phase buttons, input gain controls and definitely the phase optimization feature as well as the reset the mixer function that I found in the manual just yesterday already set up. It's less expensive than Pro Tools and Reaper just ain't doing it for me at this time. When are you going to try Mixbus because I'll be waiting. Antelope also has the Harrison EQ for their interfaces. I wonder how that holds up?

Thank you sir!

Their DAW is actually solid, there are 7 different points per channel at which you can set gain staging which leads to ease of use for best sound quality. …but I definitely don’t use the onboard EQ. I use Softube and such for EQ. Harrison Mixbus plus 3rd party plugins sounds great.

I’ve got cramp watching this

Dan "W" Worrall dropping another banger as per

Well, that's disappointing. I had my eye on the baby Harrison, among other small consoles, for a project. That is definitely off the list now!

Honestly, if you want that style of EQ, your best option is probably HARQULES by Analog Obsession, which (1) doesn't cramp at Nyquist, (2) doesn't produce a perfect null with dry signal, even with the EQ set completely flat-though it gets pretty close so the non-linearities are very subtle, and (3) is donationware

thanks for the video, Dan In addition to the fact that it is obvious from afar that the advertising is lying through its teeth, one thing I don't like about this company is that if you buy any product you are not allowed to sell it afterwards. As a rule I refuse to buy any product with such restrictive conditions.

Every other youtuber would use that reply as a chance for another video with dramatic statements, screaming, laughing, clickbait titles and most of all - relentlessly lashing out at the developers. Dan, I already said it but I'll say it again - I really appreciate you for doing the exact opposite. You express yourself calmly and in a respectable manner towards everyone involved. That's something that many other youtubers just don't do, and I don't watch them for that reason (among others). Other videos would be like "This is the worst company everyone should stop buying from these scammers!!" while this one gives me the vibe of "I'm not mad, just disappointed".

I actually use the DAW, and it works as intended, with saturation being the result of extreme settings in regards to the gain/trim of channels and mixbusses, as well as the modeled compressors. This seems like the channel strip either A. unintentionally bypassed all of the modelling and they haven't realized it, or B. some employee thinks they're being slick and didn't properly do the job they were paid to do, and nobody has noticed, or possibly C. this was the intent, to trick and defraud, the whole time. I really hope it's not option C.

The mixbus32c is a great daw, they are also contributing to Ardour as far as I know. The channel strips are the same as the plug-in but they have the buses with tape emulation built in that make the difference. Harrison did release that too, so you could in theory transform your own daw into mixbus32c just with those two plug-ins… ehm… if you really wanted I guess? Anyway, I stopped using Harrison stuff after this scam. When I reached out to them they even suggested to use the universal audio one if I wanted non -linearity, since they would be paid either way!

The Plugin Industry in a NUTSHELL!

Nicely done. And said.

Perfect answer ! 👌🏻

I've been using Harrison's Mixbus for over 10 years now, I do like it, what I don't like is this lack of seriousness, I definitely go to Mixbus to Mix, not to create, and I find it awesome for that, I thought I could bring my "mixbuses" to another DAW like this, but... I guess I was snake oiled haha, yeah it sucks, I do like most of their built in plugins, I see innovation, but after they started bringing out these AVA plugins... eghh... but now I'll take future products with a spoon of salt. I do recommend to try the AVA Bus though, is basically the compressor, the tape saturation and a simple EQ and limiter.

Thank you for speaking truth. Some things I am willing to forgive from plugin companies. Other things, not so much.

Nicely said Dan, I don't like this additute these companies have nowadays, and I see this everywhere, for instance. Some products are sold at such low prices you can see its nothing good, but if you buy it via the obvious road which is too expensive, you pay hundreds of euro's more. This is the result of alle these companies that want to exploit the market and flush it with bad products, and try to appeal to impulsive buying behaviour. The world today wants everything cheap and complains about it...

Lol. I actually do own Mixbus32C. To be honest - I cannot seriously judge the sound of that software (and most others), as I am just guy having some fun, and every time I visit my real producer friend and listen to some stuff in his studio, I realize how lacking my setup is, and how many things I miss (don't hear). In case of Mixbus32C the only difference I can see is the workflow, ie. - instead of having a modern, clean DAW (like Reaper which I use all the time), you have a simulation of analog mixing desk with very lacking (just MY opinion) editing options. I believe that Harrison took an existing open source DAW (Ardour), made some skins and tweaks, put on their logo and are hoping to use their past fame to sell their product to either nostalgic old gits who missed the audio digital revolution by about 30 years or are trying to bring the "flash" of the analogue consoles to the new digital generation. On the other hand it might be an ideal tool for someone just mixing, not doing the editing. As soon as there is editing involved or, God Almighty forbid, MIDI, Mixbus is awkward. Though, their fresh marketing campaigns do inform me, that now, with the new version, it is better that ever before, including better MIDI support. What I can say is that Harrison are pretty aggressive in the marketing department. The only ones that comes close in the email spamming department are Waves.

Soothe2... When?

Harrison just keeps shooting themselves in the foot again and again.

Their DAW is also snake oil fyi. The best console emulation in terms of sound that I've seen at least (obviously mixbus still has the workflow of a traditional console. But sound wise it doesn't actually emulate) Is actually free. It's called Airwindows Console. Dude who made it is a mad scientist and a gem for giving that shit away for free.

Thanks for this - it's really important that snake oil is called out. People part with their hard-earned cash becuase they feel they're getting something as advertised. This clearly isn't as advertised, and at best misleading. Does anybody else get slightly fatigued from the snake oil?

"trust is the only long term currency now" - Seth Godin. Such a short sighted, short term greedy outlook these guys have. Straight up lying to customers in forum discourse and scamming innocent customers. They have buried the Harrison name now, and this business is a small world. Only a matter of time before they bury the business too.

Thanks Dan for fighting the gaslighting people of the audio industry!

Hi dan! Can you do mixbuss 32c daw review?... I own mixbus 32c 7.2 and its the best daw layout wise for using it with midi controller, i use x touch universal.. And i myself did notice some iregularities on eq (freq not correct).. Also it would be great if they really emulate distortion of it, that is what analog eq is all about,, so far to fix that crap i need to use kazrog true iron plugin..

Someone's to be fired without a golden shake.

Instant classic!

Get’em Dan!

Great video. Great insight. Thank you for being so clear and relentless. But may I suggest you rethink having fusion guitar solos in the background? At least for me I can say: it does not help:-)

In that Harrison rep I smell a marketing guy who's learned just enough engineering-speak to be dangerous.

Damn, i was happy when this came out. You ve made me sad... But what about UAD version of eq, that i adore?