Another Q you'll know the A to: busses

Sifunkle

Sifunkle

New member
You're probably all tired of me by now, but here's another Foolish Uninformed Newb Question (FUNQ). I've sort of picked up the gist of this from context, but the actual definitions I've read have mostly just confused me, so please make it nice and simple if possible:

What is a bus exactly? And how does it differ from a channel (and for that matter, 'what is a channel exactly?')?

From what I gather (this will prob be very simplistic, inaccurate and low detail), if I record a track, that goes on a channel (maybe you'd say the channel is the glass you poor the beer/track into).

Now (I'm a bit shaky here), a bus is like a channel where you've put a bunch of tracks (like a submix? maybe you put all your drums into one track, eg)? And once you've made a bus, you can no longer separate the individual tracks?

For instance, my audio interface has 'pairs' of channels (1/2, 3/4, etc). I usually just record a guitar or a mic or whatever into 1, and it gets sent down 1/2. I'm assuming 1/2 is actually a bus that combines whatever I record into 1 or 2 into the one thing. As in, if I simultaneously recorded into 1 and 2 it would be combined into one track. (sadly, I don't have the right combination of gear to actually try that out with the way my interface is arranged :()

And this brings me to my final (applied) question: I've heard that you often have an 'effects' bus (/accessory/auxiliary), and I'm not sure what this means exactly. Similar when I've been told "record only the effect to that track". Does that mean (let's say we're talking about guitar distortion, on doubled mono tracks), you might group the 2 clean guitar tracks into one bus, and the 2 distorted guitar tracks into another bus, and then you can just alter the ratio of the busses at the mixer to determine the level of crunch? Or does 'recording only the effect' mean something else (I don't see how it could, surely the effect will sound like absolutely nothing unless it's currently being applied to the guitar...)

Thanks in advance,

Si
 
This will probably be vaguely accurate, but I am sure someone will come and correct all my mistakes.

A channel, when used as a synonym for a track, is usually a single instrument recording. These are routed to the two master channels left and right. A buss is a channel that has other tracks routed to it, so you might route all your guitars to the guitar buss (instead of the master stereo out channels) - then you can add a reverb or something to that buss and affect all the guitars at once - that bus is then in turn routed to the master outs.

Buses allow you to create little mini mixes that all share the same processing like EQ and effects. You can still separate the individual tracks if you are in a DAW, it's not bouncing down tracks.

The 1/2 channels are just stereo in channels. They should create a stereo track in your DAW.
 
A channel is a signal path. An analog mixer with 8 channels has 8 independent main signal paths that can be mixed together.

A bus is any point where signals get combined. A submix group bus is used to combine selected channels into one signal (or a stereo pair of signals) that can be controlled in various ways before it gets to the main mix bus. An effects loop uses an aux output bus feeding signal to effects which return via an aux input channel.

A track is the recorded signal. With analog tape each instrument would be recorded on one of several of narrow parallel strips. In digital it's all the audio blocks on one row of your timeline that are controlled by one channel of the DAW.

Tracks are the source sounds that are adjusted by the channels, sent to aux buses, submixed on buses and finally mixed to the main bus from which you get a stereo signal.
 
DAWs have all sort of names for submix group buses etc. "Group track" is probably their term for it, though "group channel" or "group bus" would be better.

Group buses are great when you have logical groups of channels you want to control together. You can use a group bus for putting effects on a submix of channels. Normally a channel gets to the main mix bus by one path, either directly or through a group bus.
 
yeah it took me long enough to figure it out... i'm an idiot for missing that gem! I set up left and right busses for guitar and then a master bus for guitar alone. Am I on the right track?
 
gianelli280 said:
yeah it took me long enough to figure it out... i'm an idiot for missing that gem! I set up left and right busses for guitar and then a master bus for guitar alone. Am I on the right track?
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That doesn't sound quite right to me, but I don't know your DAW or its terminology. I'm not sure what you mean by "left and right buses". Normally I'd have just one master bus unless I were sending signal to additional outputs of my interface, like for surround mixing.
 
Oh, the song i'm working on has 2 guiars (3 takes each), so i grouped the 3 tracks together for each guitar. Then the master guitar bus has all 6 takes in stereo. I wanted to play around with left and right eq a little differently so i sorted it like this. am i making too much work for myself?
 
gianelli280 said:
Oh, the song i'm working on has 2 guiars (3 takes each), so i grouped the 3 tracks together for each guitar. Then the master guitar bus has all 6 takes in stereo. I wanted to play around with left and right eq a little differently so i sorted it like this. am i making too much work for myself?
Click to expand...

That actually makes some sense. If your "left and right buses" are for left and right guitars then there's some sense to it. Whether it's the best way to do it is hard to tell over the internet.
 
I like to think of it as "Lots of people can get on a bus and ride around, and a lot of tracks can be on a bus too and be shipped around."

Buuuuuut that's just me :D
 
guitaristic said:
I like to think of it as "Lots of people can get on a bus and ride around, and a lot of tracks can be on a bus too and be shipped around."

Buuuuuut that's just me :D
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Well, since both uses of bus probably come from the Latin word omnibus it's a good analogy.

By the way, Buss, with the double s, is a brand of fuses. Otherwise it's a single s.
 
what about a busser, as in busboy/girl? they clean up after you... having buses makes things "cleaner," right?... right? :D
 
gianelli280 said:
what about a busser, as in busboy/girl? they clean up after you... having buses makes things "cleaner," right?... right? :D
Click to expand...

They're collecting things into one place (dishes into a tub), which is essentially what a mix bus and a city bus do. I don't know if busboy has the same root.
 
Oh awesome responses, thanks everyone! I understand perfectly now :)

And gianelli280, special thanks to you for saving me the trouble of working out Cubase's take on it for myself ;)

Much appreciated everyone!
 
No problem. It took me a minute to set everything up but it was pretty self-explanatory. Let me know if you need any help on it.
 
Lots of good answers. Basically, the sub mix thing is how I think of it. The op had asked about an effects bus and here's what I know.

Suppose you want reverb. You can add to each channel as an effect and adjust the wet/dry to taste, or,

set up a bus with a reverb effect set at full wet. Then feed vocals to the bus, you now use the volume to add the amount of effect you want. Remember it's full wet reverb, so by using the volume fader, you can gently bring in as much effect as you want.
 
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