New user - first impressions

[Jens]

Hello @ll,

this is my first post/thread here.

I yesterday purchased Mixcraft Pro and when having a first look at it stumbled upon a few roadblocks and peculiarities I wish to inquire upon:

- no way to permanently undock the mixer? Whenever I close the undocked window it's being sent to the dock again,
which is really absolutely not what I want. Is there a way to permanently undock the mixer which I am overlooking?

- no way to keep Mixcraft from scanning VST2? It automatically found my VST2 folders and scanned them and whenever I remove them,
Mixcraft puts these paths right back in, so even after an immediate re-scan all the VST2 are being present in the Plugin Manager again.

- on a similar note: I can't seem to find a way to get rid of docked tabs such as the Store. //edit: found it - it's gone

- this is the most crucial one to me:

I had the impression Mixcraft would offer a take/comping feature (and no surprise there at version 10.5 and twenty years of development, right? :-p) but didn't manage to find the neccessary functions:

a) I can't seem to hide the take-lanes, which if true would be an absolute showstopper to me in and of itself to be frank

b) I can't seem to find a way to split all takes at once - a split only seems to affect one specific take/lane

c) also there seems to be no auto-muting function or anything of that sort at all


- I can't seem to find a way to decrease the width of the track-headers to make the volume faders/meters disappear.

- no Hotkey-macros?

- no way to dock the Transport Panel in the Details Area?



That's about it for the moment. Otherwise Mixcraft looks really nice and seems to be quite powerful.

[jwarv]

Hi,

I'll take one. To undock permanently, click the little padlock on the top right corner. However I don't know if that will remain upon shutdown and restart.

[Jens]

Hi,

I'll take one. To undock permanently, click the little padlock on the top right corner. However I don't know if that will remain upon shutdown and restart.

Thanks - however I tried this already - unfortunately all it seems to do is to prevent automatic docking should the mixer window hover over the Details Area.

Once I close the mixer it's right back there though, no matter this padlock's status.


Edit: I now managed to basically solve it by assigning my typical mixer-shortcut (m) to "Dock or Undock Details" - not absolutely perfect (because I might still need to switch tabs then) but I guess close enough.

[TrevsAudio]

Hi,

I'll take one. To undock permanently, click the little padlock on the top right corner. However I don't know if that will remain upon shutdown and restart.

In Hotkeys>View there is 'show/hide details area' - I assigned a key 'H'' for 'hide' which toggles fine.

VST Folders: In Prefs>Plugins there is 'edit vst folders' - you can add or remove locations.

3b Place cursor where you want to split, then lasso the clips you want, then Ctrl T to split them all.

[Jens]

VST Folders: In Prefs>Plugins there is 'edit vst folders' - you can add or remove locations.

Yes, as I mentioned I already tried removing them - but alas, Mixcraft invariably automatically keeps re-adding them.
Heck, I even treid to manually empty the XMLs which then caused a re-scan at the next programm-start.
(I guess I'll haver to attempt to carefully edit the XMLs - but even this probably won't work.)

By the look of it Mixcraft is extremely determined to force-feed VST2s upon its user.

3b Place cursor where you want to split, then lasso the clips you want, then Ctrl T to split them all.

Thanks - unfortunately this is still quite the pita if one uses more than a handful of takes.

[CactusMusicBC]

It almost sounds like you are coming from CbB like me.

What you'll soon learn when you switch daw's is that the workflow you used in the other Daw will have to Change. Every daw will approach tasks differently. At first we get mad because it seems the new Daw is a bad design or that it's missing important features you got used to in the other Daw. But look at it this way. If your first Daw had been Mixcraft and you switched to CbB you' would then think the same thing. It takes time to sort things out. Especially advanced features and workflows.

I'll give Mixcraft first prize for how easy it was to get started with. I finished a simple song in a few hours.

For me the more I use Mixcraft the more things I discover it can do that at first I thought it didn't. This forum will be your best friend as well as take some time each day to watch a video or two. At least Mixcraft has proper videos.

[Jens]

It almost sounds like you are coming from CbB like me.

What you'll soon learn when you switch daw's is that the workflow you used in the other Daw will have to Change. Every daw will approach tasks differently. At first we get mad because it seems the new Daw is a bad design or that it's missing important features you got used to in the other Daw. But look at it this way. If your first Daw had been Mixcraft and you switched to CbB you' would then think the same thing. It takes time to sort things out. Especially advanced features and workflows.

Well, actually I am coming from energyXT, Tracktion, Sonar, Cubendo, StudioOne, Reaper, Samplitude, Reason and Bitwig (plus some others).

So I certainly can adapt - but either there's a proper comping-feature or there isn't. After all one can't get used to something that doesn't exist.

[cactus-head]

Hello,

There is no comping feature - in that there aren't specific workflows designed for composite vocal line creation. There are lanes and takes but you have to manually manage the clips to splice them together. You can punch in and out too.

You cannot hide lanes.

There is auto mute: If the recording mode is set to Takes, then the previous take gets auto muted.

You can't make the volume and meters disappear on the track headers

As far as keeping the mixer undocked, if you save a project with it undocked, then when you open the project, whatever state you saved the project in will be restored. If you want a default setup, create a template with instruments, Mixer settings, effects etc, save it and set it as the default start option.

I'm not at a mixcraft computer so I can't confirm where the option is to set the default startup state but i believe somewhere under preferences

[Jens]

Hello,

There is no comping feature - in that there aren't specific workflows designed for composite vocal line creation. There are lanes and takes but you have to manually manage the clips to splice them together. You can punch in and out too.

You cannot hide lanes.

There is auto mute: If the recording mode is set to Takes, then the previous take gets auto muted.

I meant auto-mute as in you unmute a snippet on one lane and the same section in all other lanes gets automatically muted.

It's a bit of a shame - none of the other things I mentioned are acctually show-stoppers, however lack of comping actually is - haveing to do things manually is a huge pita and not being able to hide lanes I actually find a somewhat bizarre omission to be brutally honest.

I said shame because I actually really like a lot about the rest of Mixcraft - it's a very promising DAW in my opinion - very streamlined - with what appears to me like a rather minimal, no-nonsense kind of approach if I may say so - yet rather powerful nonetheless.


Maybe there's a chance they might add comping&hiding lanes in V11?

[cactus-head]

Hi,

The VSTs included with Mixcraft that are stored in the Mixcraft VST directory will always load as part of the program.

3rd party VSTs can be ignored by unchecking "Load 3rd party VST plugins" under preferences > plugins

You can edit the directories but if you hit the Auto-scan For VST/VSTi Directories button, that is an option to scan FOR directories that have plugins in them and Mixcraft will find as many directories as it can on the computer.

[Jens]

Hi,

The VSTs included with Mixcraft that are stored in the Mixcraft VST directory will always load as part of the program.

I didn't refer to these - I can of course easily remove them if need be...

3rd party VSTs can be ignored by unchecking "Load 3rd party VST plugins" under preferences > plugins

I absolutely DO want to use 3rd party plugins - I literally spent thousands on them...

You can edit the directories but if you hit the Auto-scan For VST/VSTi Directories button, that is an option to scan FOR directories that have plugins in them and Mixcraft will find as many directories as it can on the computer.

I never clicked this.


As mentioned before (did I really word it that badly?), all I want is for Mixcraft to ignore my VST2-folders, which I never added in the first place and which yet seems to be impossible to achieve.

[Acoustica Greg]

Hi,

Go into Plug-Ins preferences, click Edit VST/VST3 Folders, and remove the pathnames you want to ignore.

For any remaining VST2 plugins you want to ignore, you could select Plug-In Manager from the File menu and disable plugins that don't please you.

Greg

[Jens]

Go into Plug-Ins preferences, click Edit VST/VST3 Folders, and remove the pathnames you want to ignore.

That's what I did, but as I said: whenever I do so Mixcraft is putting them back in - and again: I never even told Mixcraft to scan these folders (or to even just look for them to begin with) in the first place.

For any remaining VST2 plugins you want to ignore, you could select Plug-In Manager from the File menu and disable plugins that don't please you.

It's a few hundred, so that's not an option for me.

[cactus-head]

Greg,

Is the search recursive?

Jens,

Are your unwanted VSTs in subfolders where the parent folder is in the list?

[Acoustica Greg]

Hi,

What are a few examples of plugins you're concerned about? Please go into Mixcraft 10's general preferences, zip up your log files, and send in a support ticket with the log files attached.

Greg