you would be just using it just for mixing/mastering/finalizing and not tracking or doing the whole project i suspect? it is a different matter if you try and use it as you would any other DAW, i mean a project from start to finish, in my experience it's more trouble than it is worth in that case, to many issues and crashes. i even find it to flaky and frustrating to use just for mixing stems etc, although your idea with restricting the plugins may well help, but if it can't run everything the same as my other DAW's and be as stable, then i really don't want to use it. i am finding i can get a very nice sound, an added edge using studio ones mix engine fx and the console shaper, a nice punchiness and liveliness and very nice edge on guitars etc, looking forward to more plugs being released for that.

I had a strange issue with Mixbus taking priority over my ASIO driver and not releasing it! OUCH! Sonar Platinum runs fine but if I jumped over to Mixbus to work on anything and went back over to Platinum, my drivers were gone from Platinum! Not even re-booting would bring them back online for Platinum! I had to uninstall the drivers, get online, download the Studio-Capture drivers, re-install before everything got back to normal. This issue seems to be related to either the Studio-Capture drivers and Platinum not getting along with Mixbus.
I finally just uninstalled Mixbus from that computer. It runs fine on my laptop with a Focusrite interface. No problems jumping back and forth between Sonar and Mixbus. Even Ben at the Harrison site tried to help but we could not resolve the issue.
I love the sound of Mixbus but for now it stays on my laptop until that issue goes away. Sonar has been and will be my platform of choice for many years.

Sid, you should just be able to hit Ctrl + Alt + Delete
and kill it in the Task Manager, and be able to 
get right back at it, rather then have to go through all that.

Still a pain.  Might want to check that the Asio Driver is set to 
Share as opposed to "take exclusive control" of the app

Version 3.3 is out.  Make sure you update. So far it seems even better for me. Looks like they have addressed some issues that can cause the program to crash.  I am getting very little of that behaviour these days.
 
I don't do complete projects from scratch in Mixbus just yet. The reason is not because I am trying to avoid even more possibilities of crashing etc it is more about what I am used to and how I like to work.  For me my main DAW gives me this.  And I finish many projects there and not come into Mixbus at all but also putting out the required stems then gives you the opportunity to do final stem mixes and mastering all in Mixbus instead.  And in some situations it is well worth it.
 
I find using their (Harrison) plug-ins especially in mastering stages compliments the plug-ins I am using in my main DAW which happens to be in this case Studio One.  It is good to get to know the EQ's and Dynamics on the tracks and buses in Mixbus too. 

I'm still not entirely sure how it works and what kind of workflow I should be using in conjunction with Sonar. I would like to continue using Sonar for tracking and arranging, of course. But I'm not sure how I should be setting things up in Mixbus. For example, I know there are only 8 mixbuses available in a project. That's clearly not enough for all your bussing requirements (i.e. effect returns etc). And I read in the manual that their "utility buses," which are limitless in number, don't have delay compensation. How would I deal with that, if I wanted to set up all my effects returns in Mixbus? Would it be better to print all of my effect returns in Sonar and then import them to Mixbus as normal tracks? But if I do that, I can't help thinking that I should be EQ-ing and compressing in Sonar too, so that the signal I'm sending to the effects returns is processed, rather than process the tracks in Mixbus and deal with the fact that the effect return stems I imported were printed from unprocessed tracks. If you get my drift 

Sharke,
 
8 buses for me will typically be:
 
1. Drums
2. Guitars (+ bass if desired)
3. Keys
4. Vocals
5. Room Verb
6. Plate Verb
7. Hall Verb
8. maybe Bass if not on 2.
 
Note 5/6/7 are max case but at least one bus would be a verb bus for sure.
 
I would bring tracks from SONAR somewhat EQ'd and compressed but not verb'd.
 
And of course I could still have an optional master bus "glue" reverb.


For me I've pretty much ruled out utility buses.
 
YMMV
 
 
 

bapu
Sharke,
 
8 buses for me will typically be:
 
1. Drums
2. Guitars (+ bass if desired)
3. Keys
4. Vocals
5. Room Verb
6. Plate Verb
7. Hall Verb
8. maybe Bass if not on 2.
 
Note 5/6/7 are max case but at least one bus would be a verb bus for sure.
 
I would bring tracks from SONAR somewhat EQ'd and compressed but not verb'd.
 
And of course I could still have an optional master bus "glue" reverb.


For me I've pretty much ruled out utility buses.
 
YMMV
 
 
 

do you ever route channels directly to the master out and only use buses for send-return stuff?
I figured with only 8 buses available you would have to follow more of a "console" approach and limit bus utilization to reverbs, room, FX, parallel compression ??? which is contrary to the way I work in Sonar where nothing goes directly to the master bus, everything is routed to at least one bus (which sometimes gives you up to 20 buses)

can we route a bus to another bus 
 
i like to have a bus :verse and another hook all going in a bus vocals !

Rob[atSound-Rehab]
do you ever route channels directly to the master out and only use buses for send-return stuff?

Nope, that would not be my desired workflow.
 
 

Zo
can we route a bus to another bus 
i like to have a bus :verse and another hook all going in a bus vocals !

In that case I would use what they call an aux bus (manually inserted into a project) that allows other tracks to be routed to them.
 
I've never looked into routing a bus to a bus. Not even sure if that can be done. And by bus I mean the fixed 8 buses in Mixbus. Of course you can create as many aux buses as you want but they are not the same as the 8 fixed buses in the EQ and FX and mojo.

Like any DAW you must get into their paradigm and not try to make Mixbus into another DAWs paradigm.

JMO.