x bus mixers?

H

hoursonend

Member
Hi,

just a quick question: what does it mean to have a '12 channel, 4 bus mixer' for instance? what does the 'bus' thing mean?

Thanks :)
Stan.
 
Busses are for submixing, among other things. Sort of a mixer within a mixer. Say, for example, you're recording a live drumkit with 8 or 10 channels. When you go to mix, you could assign all of the drum channels to Busses 1 and 2 and pan them left and right. That way, if you want to bring down the overall level of the drumkit in your mix, you only have to adjust the two buss faders, rather than move the fader on each individual drum channel and risk losing the balance you've achieved. Another use is to send multiple channels to one track when recording. I'm sure this was far more useful when analog machines were the only option and track numbers were limited. You could put 3 mics on a guitar cab and send them all to a buss, and send that buss out to a track on your recorder.

There are other things you can use them for, but those are two of the most basic.
 
I suppose it depends on the console. My console has an output for each buss (its a 24 channel, 8 buss). I can assign X number of channels to any of the 8 busses. The buss, in turn, sends its signal to the the main mix (the one you control with the Left and Right faders), and also sends its signal to its own output for sending to an external unit (for tracking, like I mentioned before). I can then use the buss volume fader to control the overall volume of all the channels assigned to it without upsetting the balance between individual channels. So if I move the fader -3dB, each channel assigned to that buss would experience the same volume decrease.

Use this crappy analogy: think of it as an actual bus (like a school bus) just like the name says. Now you could have 10 parents each drive their child to school individually (AKA sending each of your 10 channels directly to the main mix), or they could all have their children ride the Bus, and let the Bus take them all there together. Its corny, but it might help you understand it a little better. I know for me I just one day had a revelation of how busses on a mixer worked, back when I was 16 or 17.

One thing to pay attention to is how the busses are assigned. Assigning a channel to a buss is done generally by pressing a switch (that usually says 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, etc) and then by panning. That is, if I press the 1-2 switch and then pan the channel all the way to the left, the signal will only show up on Buss 1. Panning hard right would send it to Buss 2. Panning somewhere in between would put it in both busses in proportion to how its panned. Now, on some consoles, the odd numbered busses go to the Left channel of the main mix, while the even numbered busses go to the Right channel, and the busses are considered to be stereo pairs. On other consoles (like mine) each buss has its own pan knob. So I could assign something to Buss 1 the way I desribed above, and then use Buss 1's panning control to position it in the main stereo mix.

I hope that makes some sense. Its a weird idea to grasp until you finally get it, at which point it seems like the most simple, logical thing in the world, and you'll want to kick yourself for not understanding it sooner. Good luck.
 
No problem...glad I could help. Perhaps someone else can come along and offer more insight as to other uses for them. I know I'd be all ears.
 
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