Is "bus processing" a superfluous term

[Farview]

One of the problems with talking about this on line is that the words "group", "sub", "sub group" and "buss" get tossed around interchangeably. Which would be awesome if all the DAW's used the specific words to mean the same thing, which they don't.

In the analog world, any point that you can mix signals together is a buss. Aux buss, FX buss, sub group buss, main buss, headphone mix buss, etc... Since I started out in the analog world, I set up my sessions as if I were on an analog board (albeit, one that i can reconfigure at will)

My channels are sent to group busses (sub busses) according to their instrument group. For example, all the tracks that are drums go to the drum group buss, all the overheads and cymbals go to the overhead group buss, all the vocals go to the vocal group buss, etc...

Now, I process each individual track to get them to sound like they belong together and are balanced within the context of their group of instruments. Then I go to the group busses and do the processing necessary to get the groups to fit together as a mix. Without the processing at the group buss, if I wanted the guitars a little brighter (for example), I would have to go to each of 12 guitar tracks and EQ them brighter, being careful not to upset the balance between the individual tracks.

Master buss processing isn't mastering. The master buss is also called the main buss, mix buss, output buss, etc... It's just processing you do to the entire mix.

 

[Chili]

(PS pardon my pedantic side, but it's "bus," not "buss" )

Bus or Buss. Either way is acceptable. To me, a Bus is a vehicle for transporting a lot of people around town. A Buss is a vehicle for transporting my train wreck of a song around analog gear or software.

 

[Farview]

Both work. They are used interchangeably. It might depend on what side of the pond you come from, but I'm not sure why they both get used.

 

[gecko zzed]

Well, no. (?)

In Reaper you have tracks.

Those tracks can be Folders which hold other tracks and can (usually do) also work as a group bus might. I think this is what you're calling a Group, but it's really just a track, and if somebody goes to search the user guide or the actions list for the word "group", this is not what they'll find.

Likewise, there's not really anything called a Bus in Reaper. Well, that MIDI bus thing, but I think that's poorly named. What you're calling a bus is just another track that you've got receiving audio from other tracks. There is nothing different about it just because you call it a bus, and you don't have to tell Reaper to create it as a bus. It's just a track like any other.

It is, in fact, completely possible to have a track with its own audio item set up as a folder ("group") with the audio from its children mixing into it and a bunch of receives from other tracks ("bus") mixing in there too. Then you could put some effects on that one track and they would process the whole mess. Don't know why you'd want to, but you could.

This might sound nitpicky, but I'm mentioning it for a couple of Reasons:

1) This is significantly different from most other DAWs out there. In fact, it's one of the selling points of Reaper. Last time I used Sonar or Cubase, if I wanted a bus that I could route other tracks to, I had to tell it to make a bus, which was different from a track in a number of ways. They both have folder systems, but IIRC correctly, they are just for organization and display and have nothing to do with audio routing or mixing.

B) This is the noob section, and I just know somebody's gonna open up Realer and start looking around for this Group you've mentioned, and they're not going to find it.

This is all true. It was Geoff Francis (the guy who writes the Reaper manuals and who lives not far from me) who explained this to me impressively about ten years ago. The trouble is, I have trouble explaining the concept to others, and end up using terms such as groups and busses.

 

[mjbphotos]

All true - its all semantics. I call a track a 'bus' if I've sent other track signals to it for processing (reverb bus, typically). A call it a 'group' (reaper says 'folder') if I have a bunch of tracks tied into/below it - changing anythign on the 'group' track affects all tracks below it.

 

[gecko zzed]

its all semantics.

I'm not sure it is all semantics. My understanding is that the internal architecture of Reaper is significantly different to other DAWs, and that's what makes it so freely configurable.

 

[joey2000]

The master bus is a stereo track that contains the total summation of all of your individual tracks in a single project. It's basically the main stereo output of your project. So if you apply any FX to the master bus, it is being applied to the summed signal of all of your project's tracks. When you render a project, usually you render into a single stereo file (WAV or MP3 or whatever). What you end up with is essentially identical to your master bus in your project. It's just a summed total of everything that was fed into it.

The process of mastering is a different matter. I think that your impression of mastering is pretty accurate, but I think that you're getting the term "master bus" mixed up with the concept of "mastering". The master bus is just a thing, the top-level stereo track of a project. Mastering is a process, whose aim is to unify songs to make them belong together on a single album.

Yep you got it, thank you for clearing that up

Master buss processing isn't mastering. The master buss is also called the main buss, mix buss, output buss, etc... It's just processing you do to the entire mix.

? Thanks for the post but mastering IS processing you do to the entire mix, so based on that, yes, they sound the same.

Bus or Buss. Either way is acceptable.

It is if you want to spell it wrong. In fact, there is no such word as "buss" in modern English. To each their own; I doubt any of us will lose sleep on it!

 

[mjbphotos]

I'm not sure it is all semantics. My understanding is that the internal architecture of Reaper is significantly different to other DAWs, and that's what makes it so freely configurable.

I meant the naming - 'bus', 'group', 'folder', etc.

 

[Farview]

Thanks for the post but mastering IS processing you do to the entire mix, so based on that, yes, they sound the same.

No, mastering is the process of making a production master. If that isn't what you are doing, you aren't mastering.

Since the dawn of modern recording, people have routinely added compression on the master buss (a compressor is built into the master buss section on some high end consoles) to glue the mix together. It never had anything to do with the mastering process, it's part of making the mix what it should be.

 

[bouldersoundguy]

Both work. They are used interchangeably. It might depend on what side of the pond you come from, but I'm not sure why they both get used.

Bus, the kind you ride or the kind your signal rides, comes from omnibus. Either way it connects multiple things by a shared route. It has one s unless it's Buss, which is a brand of fuse. You could conceivably have a Buss brand bus fuse.

 

[Massive Master]

? Thanks for the post but mastering IS processing you do to the entire mix, so based on that, yes, they sound the same.

And then...

No, mastering is the process of making a production master. If that isn't what you are doing, you aren't mastering.

Since the dawn of modern recording, people have routinely added compression on the master buss (a compressor is built into the master buss section on some high end consoles) to glue the mix together. It never had anything to do with the mastering process, it's part of making the mix what it should be.

Just reposting because some don't make the distinction. Adding to that -- Mastering is creating the production master usually from a collection of finished mixes. Mixing is taking the individual sources and manipulating them individually to do what best serves that mix. Mastering is taking that collection of mixes and individually manipulating them to do what best serves the collection as a whole.

Whether those manipulations are corrective or artistic, whether they best serve a particular mix or not (what's best for a particular mix may be at odds with how that mix fits into the completed project).

In any case, it's got nothing at all to do with buss processing at the mix level...

 

[joey2000]

No, mastering is the process of making a production master.

...to the entire mix. I think we're getting tangled in words and in violent agreement.

 

[Farview]

Maybe...

Adding compression to the mix buss to glue things together or make the mix pump a certain way is not something a mastering engineer would do, but it is part of the mix process. Some people decide to put reverb on the whole mix, that has nothing to do with mastering, nor is it anything a mastering engineer would normally do.

Some of it is intent. If you are mixing and putting something across the entire mix, you are still mixing. If you are mastering, you are mastering. It is two different processes with two different purposes and intentions.

 

[ashcat_lt]

Though a lot of what I do is just one-off things - singles, live shows, etc. In those cases I often forgo the seperate mix/master stages or at least don't bother to render in between, and just stick all my "mastering" crap right on the Master bus.

 

[joey2000]

Adding compression to the mix buss to glue things together or make the mix pump a certain way is not something a mastering engineer would do, but it is part of the mix process. Some people decide to put reverb on the whole mix, that has nothing to do with mastering, nor is it anything a mastering engineer would normally do.

Not that this makes it right, but based on what I've heard and read generally, that's incorrect. Mastering by definition is doing something similar to the tracks as a whole (presumably, the intended album). Mixing is tweaking individual pieces/parts of a given song.

If you are mastering, you are mastering.

Well that clears it right up.

 

[bouldersoundguy]

Not that this makes it right, but based on what I've heard and read generally, that's incorrect. Mastering by definition is doing something similar to the tracks as a whole (presumably, the intended album). Mixing is tweaking individual pieces/parts of a given song.

It's all kind of arbitrary, but for the most part anything done during mixing, including adding processing to the master bus, is mixing. When the mix engineer is done with it and passes it to the mastering engineer then whatever is done is mastering. The difference between mixing and mastering is more about who is doing it than what is being done.

 

[Farview]

Not that this makes it right, but based on what I've heard and read generally, that's incorrect. Mastering by definition is doing something similar to the tracks as a whole (presumably, the intended album). Mixing is tweaking individual pieces/parts of a given song.

When you put it into the historical context where the words derived from, it will make a little more sense.

Mixing was when you played the multi-track tape through the mixer and outboard gear and recorded it onto a 2-track deck. Sometimes you would put compression and/or EQ on the mix buss to make the song work the way it should. The resulting 2-track stereo tape was the master.

Mastering was when you took the 2-track master and processed and transferred it to the lathe to cut the disc.

Anything up to the point the song was deposited on the 2-track tape was mixing. Everything after that was the process of creating a production master, which is mastering.


Everyone is getting confused because both things can be done in the same box and at the same time. But it doesn't change what's happening.


BTW, this is the same general reason why newbs don't understand signal flow as easily as we used to when we actually had to physically plug on piece of equipment into the next.

 

[gecko zzed]

Everyone is getting confused because both things can be done in the same box and at the same time. But it doesn't change what's happening.

That's at the heart of it.

In the past, tracking, mixing and mastering were three distinct and separate activities: they followed each other sequentially and linearly.

These days, you can do all three virtually at once: you can be tracking someone's vocal while monitoring in the context of a mix that is passing through compression and other stuff on the output.

 

[BroKen_H]

We're so spoiled!

 

[Farview]

We're so spoiled!

Oh, I don't know. There was something incredibly straight-forward about using discrete pieces of equipment. You couldn't help but know exactly what's going on.

Even as a newb, it was pretty obvious how it all worked and why gain staging is important. Now that everything is in one magic box, there is nothing to help you visualize signal flow.