How do busses work?

[scottn5388]

Hello everyone,

Say I have a bus with a stereo reverb effect on it and a hypothetical snare track. If I want reverb on the snare, I set the wet/dry setting on the effect to 100%, and send some of the snare signal to the bus. If both the track (with the dry snare track) and the bus are routed to the same output, one will hear a lovely combination of the two sounds. Yay.

Situation 1:

The send on the snare track is set to -10db and the return on the bus and the volume fader are at 0db.

Situation 2:

The send on the snare track is set to 0db, the return on the bus is set at -10db and the volume is at 0db.

Situation 3:

Send - 0db
Return - 0db
Volume - -10db

I am assuming that when I set a send level at -10db it would be the same as duplicating the track, turning it down 10db, placing the effect on it and blending it with the dry track. Is this correct?

If so, all of those situations should result in exactly the same sound?


So when people talk about putting compressors on busses, it seems silly to me to use sends and returns like this. Wouldn't it just add extra, compressed volume to the uncompressed track? Or when people mention this, are they actually rounting the entire track to a bus with a compressor on it. Right now, I usually have different compressors on all the tracks I want compression on. Disregarding CPU usage, are there any advantages to having multiple tracks running through a compressor as opposed to only the single track?

I have heard people talking about running a bass and kick drum through a compressor at the same time in hopes to have them groove a little better. Is this what they are refering to? Routing the entire kick and bass track through a bus with a compressor on it?

Another question....

Say I have a stereo reverb on a bus, and send some of that hypothetical snare track through it. Now say I pan the send 100%L (I can't think of a time when I would actually do this, but again, just hypothetical...I'm just trying to understand how it works). Why can I still hear reverberation in the right speaker very slighlty? Should I? Does that have more to do with how stereo tracks are panned?

I have read the section about busses in the SONAR manual (the software I am using), and it shows a schematic of how they are layed out. From what I gather, the pre/post setting just declares whether the audio is sent to the bus before or after the audio's volume is affected. I have played around with both settings for a while and still don't really understand what is happening. Would someone care to explain this briefly? When would you use pre over post or vice versa?

Thanks!

Cheers,
Scott

 

[pipelineaudio]

youll really need the routing diagrams of the devices in question to answer this 100%

 

[Robert D]

Hi,
On the compression question, you generally don't put compressors on busses, they are usually used on inserts. This is true both for real analog or digital consoles and virtual software mixers. But rule #1 is there are no rules, so you could do it. It was an old Motown trick to mix a compressed and dry track together, and it still sounds good today. You can do that by copying the track and inserting the compressor on the second track, but you could do it in the way you described. You may even want to put a compressor after or before another effect on a buss. You can also use busses as subgroups, and may want to have a compressor on the subgroup.

Dont know the other answers specific to Sonar.

Regards, RD

 

[PhiloBeddoe]

One of the biggest advantages of send effects is that they can be shared and the send/return level controls provide flexibility across channels. A common example of this is reverb. The send level on each channel allows you to send a different amount from each channel. For example, you may want to drown a snare in reverb but only have a little on guitar. Then if you decide there's too much reverb on everything, you can turn the return level down.

When people use compressors as sends, it's for effect rather than dynamics control. For example, sending a drum submix through an agressively set compressor is common. This serves to get a heavily compressed sound combined with the dynamic attack of the more lightly or even non-compressed drums. The send compressor will not help a kick drum that is dynamically all over the place become more consistent.

People use all kinds of different ideas for mixing kick and bass. One is to use the kick to duck the bass. That is, the bass will be compressed on all the kick hits.

I don't use Sonar, but basically these programs are designed based on mixing consoles so the idea of sends and returns is not new.

I wouldn't agonize over the architecture of the busses. If you read about a trick, try it out and enjoy!