Bouncing FX to Separate Tracks for Mixdowns

[Michael Mason]

So there's a million ways of applying effects... Some people run their FX directly on a track, some people bus tracks to an AUX channel with effects such as time based processing, some bounce FX down...

I'm working on a Dobro guitar track for a simple song based off a I-IV-V progression, the song is literally comprised of only those chords and minor variations. I have a main guitar track panned dead center with two more guitar tracks panned left and right adding flavor to the main track. The three tracks are routed through three AUX channels, Reverb, Chorus and Delay.

I set up two mono Audio tracks and recorded the output of all three FX channels (L to the first Audio track and R to the second) once I set up the sound the way I wanted it. This is mostly for transportability between DAWs, but I see other benefits to working this way as opposed to simply bouncing the entire project to an MP3.

My question is, and this is almost purely work flow, but do you guys have any tips when mixing the L-R FX back into my final mix down? I can already see that if the FX tracks end up mushing together instead of occupying their own dynamic space, I may have to re-route each separate FX channel to my mono L-R track setup, turning my 2 FX Audio track bounce down into 6, but that's not a huge deal.

[Watee-Said]

Hi Michael, bear with me as I'm not familiar with your software - what DAW are you using? I guess workflow is always a personal thing - for what it's worth, in your situation, I would parallel process each mono guitar track ( as I suspect you do) by bussing them to three stereo aux tracks. Then I would buss both the 3 stereo aux tracks and the original 3 guitar tracks to another stereo aux track called 'Master Stereo Mix'. By creating 3 individual send busses for each guitar track you can then vary the amount of each track that you send to each or some of the three stereo FX Aux tracks. ( sorry - you probably know all that) I would leave the original guitar tracks panned hard L - R and centre but would definitely pan the stereo FX aux tracks centrally so that you get the max stereo impact of each stereo FX. ( You do need stereo plug in FX to achieve that but again - I have hundreds - but the WAVES plug ins I use are by far the best. ) On the Stereo Master Aux Track, I normally only use a single plug in like a finaliser to bring everything up to a final mix quality finish. ( All the other FX and EQ have already been applied on an individual track basis before it reaches that stage.)

So in summary , 3 mono audio tracks for the guitars. three stereo aux tracks for the FX and one stereo aux track for the Master Track. Simply bus the signals around as described above. You talk about moving between DAWs. Not sure I understand why - are you planning to continue mixing on another DAW or just transferring your guitar tracks to someone elses? If it's just a case of transferring your master guitar track, i would do as above and then bounce your master stereo track down as a WAV file and not an MP3 ( if your DAW allows you to - I think most do) as MP3 is very compressed.

I would do all the dynamic tweaking on each aux track before returning it to the master stereo aux track. The better you achieve the dynamics on the source then the less you have to do at mastering stage on the consolidated mix. If you really want to generate panned reverb / chorus / compression, then you could just do that on each individual guitar track - I wouldn't parallel process. However you will effectively get a mono mix - even if you bounce it to a stereo track at the end.

Hope I haven't got the wrong end of the stick - I am quite old which is my only excuse if I have !!
Good luck - Brian

[2infamouz]

Hi Michael, bear with me as I'm not familiar with your software - what DAW are you using? I guess workflow is always a personal thing - for what it's worth, in your situation, I would parallel process each mono guitar track ( as I suspect you do) by bussing them to three stereo aux tracks. Then I would buss both the 3 stereo aux tracks and the original 3 guitar tracks to another stereo aux track called 'Master Stereo Mix'. By creating 3 individual send busses for each guitar track you can then vary the amount of each track that you send to each or some of the three stereo FX Aux tracks. ( sorry - you probably know all that) I would leave the original guitar tracks panned hard L - R and centre but would definitely pan the stereo FX aux tracks centrally so that you get the max stereo impact of each stereo FX. ( You do need stereo plug in FX to achieve that but again - I have hundreds - but the WAVES plug ins I use are by far the best. ) On the Stereo Master Aux Track, I normally only use a single plug in like a finaliser to bring everything up to a final mix quality finish. ( All the other FX and EQ have already been applied on an individual track basis before it reaches that stage.)

So in summary , 3 mono audio tracks for the guitars. three stereo aux tracks for the FX and one stereo aux track for the Master Track. Simply bus the signals around as described above. You talk about moving between DAWs. Not sure I understand why - are you planning to continue mixing on another DAW or just transferring your guitar tracks to someone elses? If it's just a case of transferring your master guitar track, i would do as above and then bounce your master stereo track down as a WAV file and not an MP3 ( if your DAW allows you to - I think most do) as MP3 is very compressed.

I would do all the dynamic tweaking on each aux track before returning it to the master stereo aux track. The better you achieve the dynamics on the source then the less you have to do at mastering stage on the consolidated mix. If you really want to generate panned reverb / chorus / compression, then you could just do that on each individual guitar track - I wouldn't parallel process. However you will effectively get a mono mix - even if you bounce it to a stereo track at the end.

Hope I haven't got the wrong end of the stick - I am quite old which is my only excuse if I have !!
Good luck - Brian

If you gain just one thing from what he said, make sure it's the part about wav vs. mp3. You do not want to mixdown to mp3 before the project is finished. Only use mp3 format to reduce file size and upload/share easier.

[Michael Mason]

Hi Michael, bear with me as I'm not familiar with your software - what DAW are you using? I guess workflow is always a personal thing - for what it's worth, in your situation, I would parallel process each mono guitar track ( as I suspect you do) by bussing them to three stereo aux tracks. Then I would buss both the 3 stereo aux tracks and the original 3 guitar tracks to another stereo aux track called 'Master Stereo Mix'. By creating 3 individual send busses for each guitar track you can then vary the amount of each track that you send to each or some of the three stereo FX Aux tracks. ( sorry - you probably know all that) I would leave the original guitar tracks panned hard L - R and centre but would definitely pan the stereo FX aux tracks centrally so that you get the max stereo impact of each stereo FX. ( You do need stereo plug in FX to achieve that but again - I have hundreds - but the WAVES plug ins I use are by far the best. ) On the Stereo Master Aux Track, I normally only use a single plug in like a finaliser to bring everything up to a final mix quality finish. ( All the other FX and EQ have already been applied on an individual track basis before it reaches that stage.)

So in summary , 3 mono audio tracks for the guitars. three stereo aux tracks for the FX and one stereo aux track for the Master Track. Simply bus the signals around as described above. You talk about moving between DAWs. Not sure I understand why - are you planning to continue mixing on another DAW or just transferring your guitar tracks to someone elses? If it's just a case of transferring your master guitar track, i would do as above and then bounce your master stereo track down as a WAV file and not an MP3 ( if your DAW allows you to - I think most do) as MP3 is very compressed.

I would do all the dynamic tweaking on each aux track before returning it to the master stereo aux track. The better you achieve the dynamics on the source then the less you have to do at mastering stage on the consolidated mix. If you really want to generate panned reverb / chorus / compression, then you could just do that on each individual guitar track - I wouldn't parallel process. However you will effectively get a mono mix - even if you bounce it to a stereo track at the end.

Hope I haven't got the wrong end of the stick - I am quite old which is my only excuse if I have !!
Good luck - Brian

Awesome info!

This particular song is being tracked in ProTools. I have 3 mono guitar tracks, being bussed into my 3 FX stereo AUX tracks. I then recorded the output of the AUX tracks to 2 mono tracks (L and R) and grouped them with the guitar tracks for a sub mix. Haven't touched it since I got to that point, still deciding how I want the vocals to sound over it. Will probably end up routing the guitar tracks (3) and the FX tracks (2) to a mono L and R and move on with the rest of the project for now.

The idea is to easily transport the WAV files between DAWs. I use ProTools, Logic, Audition if necessary... Sonar on occasion, too.

But awesome response! It seems we have a similar workflow. I don't have all the plugs though =(.

[Watee-Said]

No worries

Pro - Tools will do everything and more that you need. Personally I would always mix down to a final stereo master as you never know when you might get few nice stereo FX plug ins to use - but you should do as you think best for your project. Hope it works out.