Are busses absolutely nessisary

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4140

New member
So far I've been doing my effects track by track... Recently I've discovered busses (something I've should have discovered a long time ago I guess) , from what I understand, instead of putting say, a reverb on every vocal take, u just group all the vocals to a new buss track and use one instance of reverb for all of them. Is there any advantages to this sonically or is it mainly used to keep cpu low? My songs usually only have 4-6 elements to them so cpu isn't a problem....
 
Not necessary but it can make sense.
There's the processing power, as you mentioned, but also the idea that, often, people want to use the same reverb for several things.
If you want everything to be in the same 'space', a bus can make that easier.

There's no sonic advantage in that it doesn't 'sound better' to use a bus, but it can be very useful to be able to affect or volume control tracks as a group.

I make a point of grouping anything that makes sense, in case I want to listen to, or alter, those tracks as a group.
 
I am kind of a 'Group channel' slut. lol!

The best part of having a group channel other than using the same effect on multiple tracks, is that when you get to 150 plus tracks, you can mix basically as 'stems' for final mix. For me in Cubase once I have tracking done, the drums/guitars/bass/effects etc., can be set/shown on one side of the mixer. That makes it way easier than trying to find each track by scrolling through them.

It more of a workflow thing for me.

If your projects only involve a small amount of tracks, then may not be so necessary for either CPU efficiency or workflow. But sometimes you really want one exact effect on multiple tracks. Sometimes it has a more 'glued together' sound.

It all about experimenting and finding what works for you.


Welcome to the forum BTW! :)
 
You missed the other and just as 'typical route- An Aux send on each track, and the 'bus gathers them -and that bus being to an FX bus.
Each track gets its own wet/dry mix (level) while the FX bus fader is a 'global' level of the FX into the main mix.
There's a few up and down sides to the workflow methods in ether approach.
 
The bus (from aux sends) makes the most sense - to me - for reverb, as it puts all the tracks in the same 'space', and if you need 'more reverb' overall, it's one fader control. Want to change the IR, tail, whatever, it's one place, not on every individual track.
 
Typically I would have a bus for:

Drums (so I can adjust the whole drum volume as one)
Guitars (if there are several guitar tracks)
Vocals (so I can comp several takes through the same eq, comp, reverb using mute or volume instead of cut and paste)

Alan.
 
Then of course any non-linear effects will act completely different on individual tracks than on a bus. Sometimes you want to control the dynamics of, say, the kick drum to make it more consistent within itself, but then sometimes you also want to control the dynamics of the mix of the kick with the snare, so that when they hit together they're not quite so much louder.
 
ashcat_lt said:
Then of course any non-linear effects will act completely different on individual tracks than on a bus. Sometimes you want to control the dynamics of, say, the kick drum to make it more consistent within itself, but then sometimes you also want to control the dynamics of the mix of the kick with the snare, so that when they hit together they're not quite so much louder.
Click to expand...

If I'm reading you right, I still do that but within the bus, I only use the principle of a single volume for the drums as a quick adjustment for overall volume, I may still adjust the kick and snare volume if dropping the overall drum volume looses the impact of the snare.

Alan.
 
witzendoz said:
If I'm reading you right, I still do that but within the bus, I only use the principle of a single volume for the drums as a quick adjustment for overall volume, I may still adjust the kick and snare volume if dropping the overall drum volume looses the impact of the snare.

Alan.
Click to expand...
Damn day job keeps getting in the way of my trying to type coherent statements!

What I was trying to say is that you might put a compressor on the kick and/or snare tracks themselves, but then still want a compressor on the drum bus. They react differently, and you kind of need to figure out when to use which and why.


Likewise, most of the time you don't want to send multiple guitars to the same overdriven amp sim on a bus or whatever. I have found reasons to do it, but they were relatively unusual circumstances.
 
Thanks for the replies, everyone. Yeah, I plan on giving it a shot. Setting it up looks a little intimidating tho. So I create a new track, name it buss and on a my similar tracks say, vocals, I click on the send on each one of them and choose 'buss' right?
 
ashcat_lt said:
Damn day job keeps getting in the way of my trying to type coherent statements!

What I was trying to say is that you might put a compressor on the kick and/or snare tracks themselves, but then still want a compressor on the drum bus. They react differently, and you kind of need to figure out when to use which and why.


Likewise, most of the time you don't want to send multiple guitars to the same overdriven amp sim on a bus or whatever. I have found reasons to do it, but they were relatively unusual circumstances.
Click to expand...

LOL I get what you are saying, I do sometimes set up a compressed bus and a non compressed bus fro drums in parallel, but I did not want to confuse the OP.

Alan.
 
Sending two things to one reverb does (can) sound different than having multiple instances.

For example, if you send a vocal harmony to one reverb, the reverb will be reacting to the individual notes AND the beat frequencies. If each part of the harmony had it's own reverb, each one would only react to the note that it is being fed. (As if you had three people singing in three different identical rooms.
 
4140 said:
Thanks for the replies, everyone. Yeah, I plan on giving it a shot. Setting it up looks a little intimidating tho. So I create a new track, name it buss and on a my similar tracks say, vocals, I click on the send on each one of them and choose 'buss' right?
Click to expand...

The Harrison Mixbus DAW is kinda showcasing buss use, but there will be plenty of buss use videos. I don't have tracks to buss send, really, but i WILL USE IT IN mIXBUSS;
Grouping and Bussing in Mixbus (v3,4) - YouTube
 
4140 said:
Setting it up looks a little intimidating tho. So I create a new track, name it buss and on a my similar tracks say, vocals, I click on the send on each one of them and choose 'buss' right?
Click to expand...
Did you say what DAW you're in? Reaper has universal tracks, so this is one way to do it. Other DAWs are more restrictive, so that you have specifically to create a buss or an aux or something weird that will work differently in a number of ways from every other track in your project.
 
ashcat_lt said:
Did you say what DAW you're in? Reaper has universal tracks, so this is one way to do it. Other DAWs are more restrictive, so that you have specifically to create a buss or an aux or something weird that will work differently in a number of ways from every other track in your project.
Click to expand...
:)
It's only 'weird (or became that) in the context when -along the path to unlimited flexibility which I understand, everything got called 'a track. :>)

I wonder then, do you still find it helpful to rename 'tracks like that something like 'bus or 'sub, or 'send, to keep things clear?
Thanks
 
It's just a way to keep your project cleaner. As you scale up in track count, at some point processing speed is going to become an issue. Plus, orrganizing the shared effects in busses is just neater and more efficient too, from a workflow perspective.
 
mixsit said:
:)
It's only 'weird (or became that) in the context when -along the path to unlimited flexibility which I understand, everything got called 'a track. :>)
Click to expand...
Yeah, some DAWs are stuck in a relatively rigid paradigm inherited from hardware. It almost makes sense from that perspective. It can be restrictive and/or require more messing around than necessary, though.

I wonder then, do you still find it helpful to rename 'tracks like that something like 'bus or 'sub, or 'send, to keep things clear?
Thanks
Click to expand...
I personally don't. I'll name the track for what it is. A drum submix bus will be called "drums" and usually actually be a folder. A reverb "aux" track will be called "verb"... I guess maybe if I expected somebody else to have to work with my project I might label a little differently, but when it's just for me, I'm lucky if anything gets named at all. :)
 
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