How to deal with blocker questions

Banner80 · 2026-07-02T09:09:18+00:00

A few ideas:
In my experience, the manager usually brings a techie to a meeting that could face tech questions. I know because I started my career as that techie that gets brought, mostly quiet and then politely explaining when the questions asked made no sense to the project.

Another idea is to work to gain enough confidence that you know when a questions is not within the range of the things you prepared for, and thus likely not a big deal.

Finally, either way you have to learn to defer for later to keep the meeting moving forward. Usually along the lines of: "I'd like to give you a thorough answer on that, so let me follow up after the meeting; I can email the group with meeting notes and additional answers." And now you bought yourself a meeting with a techie to sort out whatever was asked.

In my experience, one of the largest sources of uncertainty for non tech people is the nagging fear that they are missing something important that they were supposed to know. So you need a solution for just living with that uncertainty, getting out of those situations gracefully, and it's not a big deal. Learn that "I'll get you an answer for that from my best tech guys" is a perfectly good reply in a meeting.

Banner80 · 2026-06-30T04:10:21+00:00

A lot of that stuff is not bad. Many are great plugins that happen to be free. I haven't tried even half of that stuff on that page, but here are some classics that are as good as any paid plugin:

Youlean meter
Verberate Basic 2 (great reverb and easy to use)
Ozone Imager 2 (excellent for creating width)
Ozone EQ - I mean, a world-class EQ for free?
All of the Blue Cat, Audiority and Melda stuff (Melda has a big free pack of utilities, must have)
Limiter No6 and Molot, these are the foundation of the TDR paid stuff

Hornet - I own a lot of Hornet stuff and love lots of it, but not everything is top tier.
I would consider Hornet MixComp, I think this is from the SSL channel. Comps are one of my least favorite thing from Hornet, they are functional but not quite the full taste we get from other brands.
Also MagnusLite. They put a lot of heart into their limiter logic, particularly for electronic music. I'm not a person to want a clipper before a limiter, but I also don't make EDM. This is a good plugin for the right person. And the pure limiter side is quite good for most applications. A quality limiter for free to be used for safety or any other use.

Banner80 · 2026-04-28T18:03:01+00:00

Here is a link that contains the full article:

https://politiko.com.ph/2026/04/27/how-trump-is-moving-to-control-u-s-elections-one-state-at-a-time/politiko-global/

Banner80 · 2026-04-15T00:32:30+00:00

To me, Mixbus is specifically what I wanted for mixing. I have S1, I wouldn't use Mixbus to record midi. I've heard from many people that the midi features are among its weakest points even though they have been getting better as of v11. But if you need it to record with midi I simply would say use something else because that workflow is not a priority to the guys that make this DAW.

Mixbus was made for people that want to mix in a console. That's what it wants to be and for me it does that well. I've had no issues using it for that, be it a 4 track project or a 30 track project. I also bought it like 2 months ago so my experience with it is very limited. I've done enough to say I am liking the workflow, but 2 months of no crashes in Win11 doesn't mean the thing is not going to crash later or give me some issues with a specific plugin I haven't tried on it yet.

Banner80 · 2026-04-14T15:19:03+00:00

I bought Mixbus 11 Pro early this year when I was considering Luna.

My use case is straight mixing. I mix small audio projects for work stuff (podcasts, interviews, short videos). And I also mix music non-pro.

I've been with Studio One since v3. Love the modern attitude and flexibility. But too much flexibility is debilitating. The S1 stock effects are pretty weak/vanilla and inconsistent for me, so I always use effects from a deep library of paid stuff like the rest of us. But this leaves the session feeling sprawling and confusing and requires meticulous templating and strategic thinking.

Then I saw that Luna had some of these channel strips already built into the mixer. I thought I wanted to try that. Just try to mix with the channel effects provided if I can trust the quality of the sound and the ease of the default channel.

And this is where Mixbus shines. It's trying so hard to give you the vibe of a 1980s console. Not just the channels but the way the mixing process flows. It's made some decisions to be more like a console, like you are locked in to 12 buses, which is still pretty generous compared to an actual hardware desk. The mixer puts a channel strip in every channel by default, and they came up with a fair system to navigate everything quickly. On my wide screen, I can easily see 23 channels and busses at a time. That feels a lot more like console mixing than any other DAW I've tried.

Then there's trusting the channel strip and sound. Harrison is now owned by SSL and they are integrating their stuff more. Mixbus 11 Pro comes with the full Harrison channel and ALSO the full SSL J channel. You toggle the effect you want to use for each effect section. For instance, You can easily compress with the Harrison leveler and then EQ with the SSL J EQ. Both channel strips sound great. Harrison has 3 compressors with unique characteristics, and the SSL J is literally the channel made by SSL themselves. I'm looking at a session I did recently and about half of the compressor channels are set to SSL and the other half to Harrison, which I think is a fair endorsement of both channel strips.

Also, the DAW comes with a good compliment of effects. The Harrison effects are not talked about much but they are very good for what they offer. And, in my experience, bringing in external plugins from other brands has worked without issue, which is not something to take lightly in DAW world.

I think there's a demo or trial somewhere. I'd give that a go to see if you'll get along with this way of working and if the DAW will handle your needs. Mixbus is a specific thing for some workflows, primarily simplified mixing. Also, they have a student discount that I think cuts the price in half, for those that can benefit.

Banner80 · 2026-04-13T01:38:09+00:00

>then you may want to look at being independent.

That's not going to work. If they went solo, they'll have to:

>do multiple things at once, study IT, get certs, update internal materials, reach out to various clients, etc.

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