Solo'ing a track within Aux bus mix

Joner Jones

Joner Jones

New member
When sending all of my drum tracks to a mix bus, which is routed to an aux track (for master volume and FX) how do I then solo an individual track within this set?

I have solo safe on every track so I can solo the drums as an entire instrument using the aux track. But when I click on the individual solo buttons, nothing happens, all tracks are still playing through the aux.

Pro Tools seems to make even the simplest tasks so unnecessarily complicated when compared with other software!
 
You've done it backwards.
Solo safe means that a track will still be heard when another track is, or other tracks are, set to solo.

If you solo-safe the aux track only you'll be able to audition individual elements of your kit.
 
The solo behavior in Pro Tools is idiotic, at least up to PT10. They way they do it is by simply muting everything but the soloed track, including muting any bus the track is assigned to. That's not how soloing works on a mixer or any other software I've used. There should be a dedicated solo bus that the soloed track gets assigned to, and which replaces the normal signal in the control room output.

I wish I could offer more help but I've never found a practical approach to soloing in PT, including the so called solo safe function.
 
Yeah, You're not wrong, BSG.

If you make a point of setting aux tracks to solo-safe when you create them, then it acts just like a real mixer would as far as I know.
Seems like something that should be set automatically though...Maybe there's a setting for it somewhere?
 
Steenamaroo said:
Yeah, You're not wrong, BSG.

If you make a point of setting aux tracks to solo-safe when you create them, then it acts just like a real mixer would as far as I know.
Seems like something that should be set automatically though...Maybe there's a setting for it somewhere?
Click to expand...

I don't have PT at home so I can't try it, but I know using solo safe doesn't make it work like it should. Try soloing a reverb aux track. It mutes all the tracks feeding the aux track. Avid's solution? Set all of your sends to pre fader. But then you're listening to a different mix going to the reverb, and it's stupidly inconvenient to switch back and forth.

On a console large enough to have solo buttons on the aux returns you just press the solo button and listen to the reverb. If you return effects to channels you can simply solo the channel and listen to the effect. Soloing doesn't mute channels, it switches the source of control room/headphone to the solo bus. It's such a simple thing to do with software and yet DigiDesign/Avid don't seem to grasp the concept.
 
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