Another Question

[mrduval]

Im still trying to wrap my head on the BUS thing here, so i can say mix all my drums the way i want then send them all to BUS 1 then run effects on the whole drum kit? I just dont get exactly what the BUS does i guess. Cant someone explain or point me in the direction of something to read. I have the PRO TOOLS Power Book its got a lot of info but i still cant quit figure it out.

 

[Gandalf]

A bus is a sub-mix, i.e. a mix of only the signals you send to that bus. It enables you to apply effects, EQ etc to the whole group of signals at once. For example, you can mix your dums to a bus and stick a compressor on the bus, then you are compressing the whole drum mix.

 

[knightfly]

Good answer, Gandalf; also, be sure (on most boards) NOT to route your individual drum tracks to a submix bus AND the Stereo bus - if you do, you'll have your drum submix going to the mixer output TWO ways, which will make it louder as well as having two differently processed versions of the same thing showing up at the output - this can/will cause phase cancellations, etc, making things pretty muddy/crappy sounding (not to mention confusing - "I just turned down the drum submix, but it's still too loud in the monitors - WTF??!?")

IOW, if you're gonna use a submix for drums, vox, whatever - send the individual tracks ONLY to that sub (Sub 1, left, Sub 2, right for example) and then, in your MASTER section of the board assign Sub 1 and Sub 2 to Left and Right Stereo mix ONLY.

Also, be sure to ONLY assign any processor outputs used for your submix to ONLY that submix - otherwise, you'll get "phantom" reverb in your main mix that might be louder than your actual tracks - this means you'll need a SEPARATE reverb for subs. One way around that problem would be to keep the individual tracks in your sub mix DRY, and only assign the BUS OUT to your main (or only) reverb unit's input, returning the output of that 'verb to STEREO MIX.

HTH... Steve

 

[mrduval]

Ok I think I got it.. Say I record drums on 8 inputs I would then send the output of each to bus 1 start a new track and make its Input track 1. Then the fader for that track is a master fader for the drums as a whole. And the same could be said for after mixing a whole song down routing it all to a bus and that bus being a master fader for the song. Does this seem right or am I still missing it.

 

[Gandalf]

I haven't used pro tools so I can't give any advice on that but on Cubase the bus (or group as it's called in cubase) has it's own channel (volume, pan, eq etc). So you could for instance, record the drums to 8 tracks and then during mix down create a group for the drums and assign all 8 tracks to that group. You can then get the drum mix sounding right, and when you mix it in with everything else, you can use the volume on the group to bring the whole drum mix volume up or down within the mix. You can also stick effects on the group (verb, comp) and apply it to the whole drum mix.

 

[mikemorgan]

Track 1 (output bus 1)
Track 2 (output bus 1)
Track 3 (output bus 1)
Track 4 (output bus 1)

Track 5 (output bus 2)
Track 6 (output bus 2)
Track 7 (output bus 2)
Track 8 (output bus 2)

Bus 1 (output to stereo main)
Bus 2 (output to stereo main)

Stereo Main (output to soundcard or speakers)

This configuration gives you four tracks each sent to bus 1 and bus 2.
You can use comp/reverb/delay/eq across the bus by routing an FX device from the send an return of the bus.

Look at a bus as a place to gather your channels together before they go to the master fader. You can choose to process them or not at that point, even if you used other processing at each channel.