Opusonix is a new online platform designed for project management, sharing mixes, and gathering feedback. There are many of these sorts of apps and subscription services these days, all with a variety of features that go far beyond where we started with services like Dropbox or Google Drive. I have personally been using one called Fidbak for years, because the subscription is cheap, it sounds good, and it functions in the simple way that I need it to. But since I started using it a few years ago competitors have come to market, so I was looking forward to taking Opusonix for a spin to see what new ideas have been implemented since then.
Opusonix is extremely feature-rich, to the point that I found it super overwhelming at first, particularly on the project management side. I don’t have any sort of corporate background, so I haven’t ever used the type of project management software that I feel like this workflow is based on – namely, apps and sites designed to optimize sharing ideas and files in large teams. I ignored most of that functionality in my real-world use of Opusonix. It doesn’t work with the way my brain is organized, and I’m not usually getting mix feedback from a large team. Even if it’s a band with four or five people and a manager giving feedback, I always ask that they consolidate their notes before sending so I don’t get a bunch of conflicting opinions. But I can see how it might be helpful with a band or a label wanting feedback from a variety of people at once.
Inside each project, you can upload or drag and drop mixes for review. If you’ve designated it an album project, each mix has its own page to drop iterations of that mix, and it lives in its own notes and comments ecosystem. If it’s a single-track project, then the platform foregoes that extra layer. Within each track page, there’s a sidebar to the right where you can open windows for group chat, editing info, comment transcripts, project information, recent activity, and inviting collaborators or sending them updates. All of that is really cool, but again, in real-world use for me, none of that came into play. People just preferred to email me comments, or we FaceTimed and went over things. It’s really hard to get people to adopt a new platform, even if it’s exciting.
In the main part of the track page, the waveform of each version of the mix you’ve uploaded is displayed on a timeline. You can change the background color of this waveform and toggle on and off track information like format, bit depth, average loudness, etc. You can also leave both text and recorded audio comments at whatever timestamp you want on the track's timeline. That is always a super useful feature if you can get clients to use it. I find it so much more helpful than someone’s abstract explanation of where a problem is in a song. You can also quickly star your favorite mix so that everyone on the team knows what your pick is. One of my favorite features of Opusonix is that you can have mixes level-matched and then A/B them. I can’t overstress how useful that is. Quickly being able to reality check yourself or a client who has been listening to a super loud rough mix or demo vs. a pre-mastered mix is a godsend. Another small thing that I really appreciated was how quickly files uploaded to the track page.
So, how did Opusonix fare in real-world use? My first experience using it with a client was actually really disappointing. I sent the first mix of a full album project that we had been working on together for months, and it didn’t play back from her phone correctly at all. Super glitchy, low volume, etc. I was really frustrated, so I reached out to the developer. They were extremely apologetic, and – to my delight – immediately addressed the problem. This interaction with the lead developer led to a series of correspondences in which I was able to give feedback and suggest tweaks about various things that I thought could be improved. All of them were addressed quickly by the very friendly and open-minded lead developer.
Over the two months that I used Opusonix, it has improved tremendously – not just from the suggestions that I made, but from others as well. Among other things, they have streamlined the way it looks and functions on a phone and added a less cluttered, more straightforward Audio Review Mode for clients like mine, who just want to review and comment on a track and don’t need all of those project management capabilities, while still keeping those features available for producers and engineers who might need more in-depth collaboration options. Although there are lots of competitors in this space, I believe you would be hard pressed to find a team as responsive as the Opusonix team is to feedback. Imagine trying to email Dropbox to request a change. Good luck. Even though I found a lot of the features to be superfluous for my specific workflow and client base, the things that I thought were great about Opusonix excelled, and I truly appreciated the collaborative, open-minded approach that they take to help develop and grow this platform.