But when your sound is going through analog mixing console (this is what mixbus is simulating) it has to be changed, no?
Ok, sure…
Mixbus is obviously intended to somehow emulate/recreate the characteristic “sound” of a big analogue mixing console (whatever that is), so they are presumably (?) applying some kind of extra processing that colours or “enhances” the mix when sending tracks through the channel strips, applying EQ, applying compression, etc.
According to Wikipedia Mixbus is/was based on the open source Ardour DAW, but I sure can’t recall Ardour ever hyping up such “analogue” features… I think it’s always just been a pretty typical DAW, no?
Mixbus has obviously tweaked the code to fit their needs, but I have no idea if they actually attempt to simulate the flow of electrons through an accurate model of the original hardware circuits, or if it’s just a few cheap tricks to give things a bit of grit/fuzz and a slightly analogue-ish sound, or who the heck knows really…
Anyway…
Even if Mixbus is attempting to do some special audio voodoo magic and produce an “authentic” analogue mixing console sound, I would still expect it to give me clean/transparent output which sounds identical to my input, assuming that I did not touch any channel strip features or other DSP processing. What I put in should be what I get out, assuming no additional processing is applied.
Otherwise, are they claiming that simply playing my dumb samples through Mixbus “unaffected” will somehow produce amazing “analogue” results that will instantly sound better than everything else on the market? I don’t think they are claiming anything quite like that, since that’s a bit too much like snake oil bullshit imho.
I’m not even sure what such a claim would sound like… My sample + the magic “character” of their fancy analogue circuits and some pseudo-electronics massaging my frequencies into a better shape?
I dunno… Silly stuff. People are easily distracted by a pretty GUI and some fancy buzzwords
( Edit: Just to be clear, I’m not talking shit about Mixbus here, I have no personal experience with it but I’m sure it’s a fine tool… I’m just having a bit of fun on the topic of the typical marketing hype that tends to surround audio software, haha. )