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
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