Mixcraft Vs Other DAWS

Support and feedback for Acoustica's Mixcraft audio mixing software.

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popbaby
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Mixcraft Vs Other DAWS

Post by popbaby »

I've been using Mixcraft professionally for about 10 years. I've lived with bugs and crashes and have been very proactive about updating/upgrading my software and PC. It's always been, "make sure this is updated." "Take this plugin out of your session..etc" It's never been, "Our software isn't compatible with XYZ."

I made the move to Studio One 5 out of frustration. I did not want to learn a new DAW and it's definitely put a dent in my workflow. That being said, there is NO comparison between the two when it comes to performance. I use significantly less resources in the same sessions as before. I thought it was my previous PC with older CPU, but I can run larger sessions at lower buffer settings, with no hiccups whatsoever. Exports are a breeze with not a single plugin or session crash. VST3 and VSTi's like Toontrack and Kontakt products have no issues and work seamlessly together. Melodyne integration isn't buggy or need to be bounced for fear of crashing. I could go on and on but you get the point.

I write this post in hopes that Mixcraft will get their stuff together in the future, and for those that might be looking for an alternative. I haven't completely given up on the DAW just yet, and while customer support has always been prompt, the solutions were never effective. PLEASE make your software more stable, and you'll have customers willing to pay for your next iteration.
FluMusic
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Re: Mixcraft Vs Other DAWS

Post by FluMusic »

I haven't been using a daw very long, but Mixcraft is all I've used. I'm curious also to try new ones, but honestly I haven't experienced anything yet that makes me need or really want to switch. I'm curious mostly for workflow, piano roll options, visuals etc to try new daws...but I haven't experienced any issues with vsts. Everything runs smooth and quick for me. Only rarely do I experience crashes. Everything feels intuitive and I can quickly get down and do what I want.

But...would you say Studio One is most closely related to Mixcraft? What made you choose that daw? If I did switch or try a new one, I'd want something visually and workably similar to Mixcraft, because I do love it's simplicity in design.
popbaby
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Re: Mixcraft Vs Other DAWS

Post by popbaby »

I've used cubase and reaper for a bit. Ultimately, you can somewhat change the GUI and setup of most Daws. That being said, I don't think you're going to come up with something exactly like mixcraft. I, like you, enjoy the simplicity of mixcraft and as a songwriter and producer it helps with my creative output. I've honestly just scratched the surface with studio One as I've only been using it for a little over a month now. I've been producing and mixing a song that I've been sending off to a client and the process has been so much easier to make any changes. If you have no issues with a mixcraft thus far then I don't see a reason necessarily to change. That being said, I know I'm not the only one that has these issues and decided to jump shark.
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Acoustica Greg
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Re: Mixcraft Vs Other DAWS

Post by Acoustica Greg »

Hi,

Your last log file showed a crash in Melodyne.

Greg
Mixcraft - The Musician's DAW
Check out our tutorial videos on YouTube: Mixcraft 10 University 101
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Mr.Mxyzptlk
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Re: Mixcraft Vs Other DAWS

Post by Mr.Mxyzptlk »

I'd never used a DAW before until I bought Mixcraft. I downloaded the trial, opened it up and without reading the instructions banged out a semi decent tune in about 2 days.

I did the same with Studio One 5 months ago and even now I stare at it and don't know where to start. I know people swear by it and it probably is an excellent product but I just get a mental block when I open it up. It's just so counterintuitive to what I'm used to and I don't feel like investing the time to learn how to use it. Yet I was able to navigate Mixcraft immediately with no prior experience.

I'm hoping Mixcraft 10 will be everything it needs to be. I hope they release it soon too cause others are showing off their new toys with NI Komplete 14 and Studio One 6 released just this week.
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MikeDVI
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Re: Mixcraft Vs Other DAWS

Post by MikeDVI »

I don't know. It's the old Ford vs Chevy debate to me. The headlight switch might be different, but if the lights turn on, I am good!

Getting lost in the other DAW's that I have tried (and friends have) seems like a waste of my time, time that can be spent more productively earning the rent around here. That said, for what I use a studio for MX serves me all too well with headroom to spare.

My .02, your results may vary.

Mike
MX10.5 Pro Studio B 586. Presonus 1818vsl AI, Dell XPS 8930 Core I9-9900 3.10 GHz, Windows 10 Pro 64-bit, 64-GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 2060, 1 and 2 TB SSD’s + 1 and 2 TB spinner sata’s, cookies and coffee.
Barth
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Re: Mixcraft Vs Other DAWS

Post by Barth »

When you come from Mixcraft, all the other DAW's seem more complicated.

I have tried many DAW's, some very famous, and they have many features, many utilities, but in my opinion they do not have the order, clarity and ease of use of Mixcraft.

Although they also have tools which for me are basics and that I miss in Mixcraft, such as being able to silence notes in piano roll. Hopefully they will incorporate it in version 10.
FluMusic
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Re: Mixcraft Vs Other DAWS

Post by FluMusic »

Barth wrote: Mon Oct 03, 2022 11:42 am Although they also have tools which for me are basics and that I miss in Mixcraft, such as being able to silence notes in piano roll. Hopefully they will incorporate it in version 10.
Yeah this would be a nice and obvious feature to add. I always drag the notes velocity to zero for the notes I don't want to hear, but sometimes, depending on the instrument and plugin, you'll still hear them.
sparella
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Re: Mixcraft Vs Other DAWS

Post by sparella »

@popbaby Yep, 100%. I also started using MC over 10 years ago. My opinion now is that Mixcraft is fine for beginners only. As my mixing sessions became larger and more complex in recent years, the things you're referring to started slowing me down greatly. When EZDrummer3 came out as VST3 only and the initial Acoustica response was basically "we'll support it in 8 months when the new version launches (and of course you pay for upgrade)", I immediately began shopping for a new DAW and then dove into learning the one I decided on. (The flurry of negative customer responses convinced Acoustica to change their stance soon thereafter, but I was already trying out the competition by that point.)

MC is certainly easier to use and learn, but the benefits of the new DAW were worth the cost and learning curve. As you mention, large sessions are no longer a strain on CPU, renders never have artifacts nor fail, IK T-Racks plugins don't crash the DAW, frozen tracks don't randomly play back as silence, and like you said I could go on. Oh, and not Acoustica's doing, but I was able to use all the same Toneboosters plugins that came with Pro Studio because they are free now. That reduced the learning curve a bit.

I agree that support is prompt and professional, and that is appreciated, but they can't improve stability, and customers don't get paid for their time troubleshooting the software. "Improve stability" is such a vague request that it might be useless, but it really does describe the category of reasons that we veteran repeat customers have one foot out of the door.
popbaby
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Re: Mixcraft Vs Other DAWS

Post by popbaby »

@sparella I see posts like ours less frequently both on social media and this forum. I was a lot more active here in previous years and pretty much gave up trying to find answers to my questions. It has me wondering whether or not MC has become more stable or have people continue to graduate to other DAWS? When I told other producers/mixers I use mixcraft they looked at me confused, thinking it was some sort of kitchen appliance.
Ultimately, I could care less whether or not people knew the software I was using as long as it got the job done and unfortunately that's not the case.

I don't think there's a right or wrong answer, or a one box fits all solution for everyone out there. I'm just throwing in my own two cents at this point, in hopes that it might be able to save someone from serious frustration.

Case in point, Greg's response to my post was that I had a melodyne crash in the last file that I sent him. I'm not trying to call anybody out here, but I haven't had one crash using melodyne essential with Studio One. That, and a myriad of my other issues do not stem from melodyne but other crashes associated with plugins and such.

To your point, why is it that when I load the same or larger sessions in studio One that I use significantly less resources at lower buffer sizes? MC would explode under the same circumstances. Let alone the fact that I could never use Kontakt, ez drummer, and ez Bass within the same session without them not syncing up properly. The drag and drop features (ie audio tracker/band mate) within the toontrack products do not work within the context of mixcraft either.

I don't really use many of the tone boosters or stock plugins within mixcraft and maybe that's part of the problem. However, Waves, slate, fabfilter, Valhalla, soundtoys, etc are industry standards. If feel like I shouldn't have to give up using these plugins because my DAW doesn't support them properly for whatever reason.

I feel like I'm beating a dead horse at this point and I'm not here to try to convince people who love MC that it's inferior. I've used it for many years and would still like to be able to, but unfortunately as of right now it's just not in the cards for me.
Barth
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Re: Mixcraft Vs Other DAWS

Post by Barth »

FluMusic wrote: Mon Oct 03, 2022 6:03 pm
I always drag the notes velocity to zero for the notes I don't want to hear, but sometimes, depending on the instrument and plugin, you'll still hear them.

Yes, must be a sound that is not affected by volume changes, still will hear it even if the volume is set to zero. And if it's a sound that responds to volume changes, the problem when dragging the velocity notes to zero is that the velocity values ​​are lost. This is one of the advantages of being able to mute notes, no matter what kind of sound, everything selected is muted, and velocity values are not lost. Everything stays the same, just turn on or off.
cactus-head
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Re: Mixcraft Vs Other DAWS

Post by cactus-head »

It's interesting to me that some users have so many bad experiences with crashing, or failings of this and that when using Mixcraft. I know it's not helpful to say that I haven't experienced such issues, but I wonder what the difference is. I'm guessing it comes down to plugin compatability. Once something is working the way I need it, I generally don't change it or upgrade it. Also, the largest any of my individual projects have been in terms of tracks or time length is: 27 tracks and 13 minutes . Of course there are lots of factors besides the number of tracks or length, but maybe my projects are much simpler than the users that post about problems. And if they say their same project works well in a different DAW without consuming as many resources then that becomes an interesting focus to me.

Mixcraft may have some inherent memory management problems that lead to the failures of various plugins - which may ultimately crash the program. I have noticed something like this. With certain VSTi plugins I use, the more I playback a passage or a section, not even adding more to it, the more memory Mixcraft consumes and the CPU usage slowly creeps up. If I playback the section too much, even with pauses in between playings, eventually I'll get cracking and the CPU usage will spike. I have to deactivate or mute the VSTi to reign in the CPU usage. In the worst cases I have to save everything then reload the project. I like and use Mixcraft, but if I'm being objective there definately is something weird about the resource consumption going up when nothing new is being added. If I were to increase my plugin usage of FXs and instruments, I could imagine a project quickly becoming unmanageable without having to freeze tracks, mute instruments, etc. I think I've been spared for the most part because I don't have a ton of things going on in my projects effects or VST wise.
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Acoustica Greg
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Re: Mixcraft Vs Other DAWS

Post by Acoustica Greg »

Hi,

We test for memory leaks. Of course, I suppose a third-party plugin could have a memory leak.

Plugins are all separate programs, and they crash for a wide variety of reasons. Some of them can't handle really high or low sample rates, and that's why using a sample rate of 44100 Hz or 48000 Hz is best for stability. Sometimes the plugins are poorly coded. Sometimes the way their coded conflicts with the way Mixcraft is coded. There are just too many plugins and too many versions of plugins for us to test them all, and even if we did, new versions are being released all the time.

Other DAWs crash too. Just do a quick internet search for any DAW. You might not run into a crash right away, but chances are you eventually will.

The devil is always in the details, and that's why we ask for log files to try to figure out what's going on. Sometimes one plugin makes other plugins crash by passing bad data along, which makes it harder to figure out what's going on.

If there's something we can fix in Mixcraft, we'll generally try to fix it. But first, we have to identify what's going on. If a plugin is buggy, there's not much we can do about that.

Greg
Mixcraft - The Musician's DAW
Check out our tutorial videos on YouTube: Mixcraft 10 University 101
cactus-head
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Re: Mixcraft Vs Other DAWS

Post by cactus-head »

Don't get me wrong, I'm just going through my thoughts of why some users seem to have troubles, and I pretty much don't
popbaby
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Re: Mixcraft Vs Other DAWS

Post by popbaby »

cactus-head wrote: Sat Oct 08, 2022 11:27 am Don't get me wrong, I'm just going through my thoughts of why some users seem to have troubles, and I pretty much don't
Do you use 3rd party plugins, with sometimes 5+ on each track? Do you run sessions larger than 40 tracks, with Virtual Instruments like Kontakt, Toontrack, or Spitfire? My drum bus is usually a minimum of 10 channels alone. Do you like having the option of "mastering" a track in your mix session, let alone mixing into a master bus chain with compression, eq, tape emulation, etc?

If you answered no to most of those questions, it would make sense that you have little to no issues. Cause when I first started 10+ years ago and my goal was to lay down some simple demos, I didn't have nearly as many issues as I do now. If you answered yes, especially to the 3rd party plugins, than honestly I'm happy for you. I wish that was the case for me, but I've all but given up on trying to get this DAW to work for me. It's a shame cause there are a lot of things that I like about it, but as previously mentioned, I can run the same or larger sessions at a lower buffer size with zero issues.
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