I don't understand busses and FX Sends. =(

[NSGUITAR]

Yeah.... You heard me. I said it. Seems like it's probably the most simple thing in recording..


What what are the advantages of sending shit through a bus, then an fx send than blah blah blah??


The most "bussing" I understand is one time, I recorded a band who had 20 keyboard tracks, and I made another track named "Keyboard Bus", and I sent all of those keyboard tracks to that one track, so I could add the same compressor to all tracks..


But I always see people talking about "What about your master bus" and "what about your vocal bus fx thingy"... I need to be updated on this.


help?

 

[waltz mastering]

Simply put, Bussing sends single or combines multiple signals to a single alternate destination. When you want to send one or more signals from one location to one another location/track/source, you must send them through a buss that feeds that location unless it is a direct patch.


ie:
- Headphone Cue Mix
- Master Buss
- EFX
- Multi Mic Sub Mix / Stems
etc.

 

[TheWinterSnow]

Busses are just combining more than one track into another separate track. This can be used for effects that you want applied to multiple tracks with those settings (ie: same eq settings or reverb settings for multiple tracks) or for acting as a master volume for those selected tracks, for example, you have all your drums sent to one bus and you have realized that the volumes of all the drums are good, but the entire drum volume is too loud in the mix, so you can just bring down one fader until it is good rather than spend forever bringing every single track down in volume.

Sends are similar, but the signal is split, the same signal of one track also goes to another buss (2 busses total) so that you can use parallel effects. Parallel effects are where you blend a dry track with a wet track manually. For example if you have a drum bus and every drum track has a send to another buss, you can the first buss as a dry and the second buss (where you put all the sends) buss as a wet, you place a reverb or other effect on the wet bus and now that buss acts as an effects volume for your drums.

At first the use of busses may seem more out of the way than helpful, but in terms of some types of compression or parallel effects, you will find that it has a better result, like it parallel effects, the mix stays punchy and doesn't wash out with effects because there is still the dry track, you keep the loudness and the dynamics but you get the effects in there as well.

Busses are very useful to make the same changes over many if not all the tracks, makes life easier once you get the hang of using them.

 

[paladin shredder]

here's an example of things you can use bus's for.

lets say you have drum and vocal tracks and you want to add reverb. you could put a separate reverb plugin on each drum and vocal track, but this would eat up more of your cpu.

a better way would be to put a reverb plugin on a bus/aux track and send your other tracks to that one. make sure the reverb is 100% wet (effect signal only) and the fader at unity gain (fader at zero).

Now you can use the same reverb for all of your tracks. If you need more or less reverb on a signal, just adjust how much of that channel you are sending to the bus/aux track. This helps keep everything sounding more consistent, and helps save cpu power. you can also do the same thing with delays.

edit: when you do this with compression, that is called parallel compression or new york compression. you are blending the uncompressed signal with a compressed signal.

 

[NSGUITAR]

Thanks you!


I guess I was using them sort of correctly then.


However.. In Reaper, when I send two tracks to a bus track, why does it make the over all mix louder? Once I send the tracks, shouldn't I only be hearing the sounds come out of the bus channel, since that's where I sent them?... I can hear the main tracks blending with the bus track.. Or is that how it's supposed to be?

 

[Ben Johnson]

If you send a signal to a bus (and don't mute the original track), both signals will be playing simultaneously (from the original signal and the bussed signal).

Also, make sure to pay attention to the bussing options (pre fader, post fader, and pre effects).

 

[waltz mastering]

In Reaper, when I send two tracks to a bus track, why does it make the over all mix louder? Once I send the tracks, shouldn't I only be hearing the sounds come out of the bus channel, since that's where I sent them?... I can hear the main tracks blending with the bus track.. Or is that how it's supposed to be?

You should be able select the way that you send the original signal through a buss.

You can assign a channels output as a buss output, or you can have the channel feed a buss fader output which gives you the option of pre and post fader. If you choose pre fader you can turn the original signal all the way down with out the channels fader affecting the level sent to the buss. If it's in post fader the original channel fader will affect the signals level sent to the buss.

 

[26]

^ maybe this is the right time to ask, why i can not route my snare fx reverb bus to the drum bus in cubase?
i absolutely can't figure out what i'm doing wrong.

 

[waltz mastering]

If the snare verb is being bussed out of the snare channel and then being returned via an aux, you should be able to assign that aux returns output to the drum buss input.

...if for now the aux's output is set to Output 1 & 2, you should be able to switch the output assignment on that aux return to "buss out" 1 & 2 (or whatever corresponding numbers your "drum" buss's input are set receive on)

 

[26]

Thank you, Tom. I will try again.
(At least this problem had a positive side in the workarounds I came up with.)