Effects on bus and many tracks problem

[Nightcrawler]

Hey guys! I guess this is gonna be a really dumb question...
Well, although using Sonar 8 for nearly a year and making some progress with recording and mixing i am still not quite sure about the role of the bus.
Currently i've been inserting all the audio effects and processing onto track itself, which has been working well until now. Now that i have 15+ tracks in my project i can definitely hear the audio dropouts during the playback.
I noticed that for example all 4 of my guitar tracks have the same compressor with same settings on them. However there are still track-specific effects and settings. So i thought the bus might be a solution to my problem or at least partial one.
Is it a common practice to send like 4 tracks output to a single bus, insert effects on it and have the bus out to the soundcard?
If it is not, then how can my issue be solved?
How the whole concept of bus is supposed to work?
Thanks it advance, i find this forum extremely helpful!!!

 

[Massive Master]

With additive effects, the obvious answer is an effects buss (a.k.a. aux send). With insert effects (such as compression) it's another story to some extent -- A compressor is going to react the signal fed into it. It's going to react totally differently to an individual signal than it will to a sum of signals. Not that groups aren't compressed -- It's very common. But it depends on what you're trying to compress and when.

 

[kcearl]

I uses busses or aux sends for most effects except compression, and ones that are going to be specific to a certain track like EQ...buts having three types of reverb makes sense to have on aux sends and to put the drum reverb on the drum bus....

If individual tracks need slightly longer delay or bursts of reverb then you just automate it on that track itself...

I was like you at first, Ive only been at this for just over a year, but soon found myself running out of CPU power...now projects can run into thirty plus tracks and a dual processor PC is not going to handle individual effects on each track..


also when you have your instruments bussed, and at the right levels within that bus, it makes mixing so much easier...bringing down all the guitars at once say, rather than individually and losing the balance.....eventually it just becomes tidier and improves the speed of your workflow

 

[mixsit]

...Is it a common practice to send like 4 tracks output to a single bus, insert effects on it and have the bus out to the soundcard?...

Any bus is simply a collect and control point for signals. An effects bus collects your aux sends making a split of and parallel path of the tracks paths.
In your example it might help to think of these as a sub group, in that the name then distinguishes it as a series path that collects and controls the originals.
But in almost all cases they all feed the master bus, and only it is routed to the sound card. (..Sometimes we'll run into folks that for what ever reason aren't using a master bus and have all their busses going to the sound card. It will work but you loose your metering and final control right within the project.

 

[Dr. Varney]

Without going very much into depth, I would suggest appyling compression to the master track only. I can appreciate the case for applying seperate compression to drums early on in the mix but I would think compressing each and every instrument individually is over doing it. I'm all too aware how easy it is to fall in love with a particular effect and want to pour it over anything that moves or squeeks but I think that was just a sign of my immaturity when I first started.

If the machine is slowing down due to the sheer amount of effect generators present then you could do what I do - bounce the tracks to WAV and mix each on the way out with a touch of compression (only if absolutely needed). Import these ('compressed') 'stems' into a fresh project and then apply very light master compression just to smooth and even things out.

I've not been doing this as long as most here but if there's one valuable lesson I've learned through trial and error - is that less is more - especially with complex signal processing.

You can always makes copies, so as to keep the original stems uncompressed, thus providing you with comparrisons and a 'restore point' for each sound.

Before you even reach for the VST folder... the question you should always be asking yourself:
"Am I grabbing this effect because the sound really needs it, or out of habit?"

Dr. V

 

[oretez]

Without going very much into depth, I would suggest appyling compression to the master track only.

Dr. V

a standard dynamics (e.g. compression) process places a very light load on the CPU. With current computers having individual standard (some of the emulation plugs impose a much higher CPU load) compression algorithms on each of 24 tracks should not pose any significant strain.

If an individual track can benefit from compression, which many can, not merely percussion . . . and compressing drums is an entirely different thread, then compressing the master bus only will be, generally speaking, counter productive.

Time based Fx, particularly healthy 'verb algorithms, will tend to strain to stall a CPU . . . a lot of calculations for a healthy reverb. If you are only contemplating 'buses' to improve CPU performance, looking at destructive editing of the individual wavs, and/or 'locking' (freezing, terminology differs among different DAW apps) tracks might well get you 'there' (better playback experience) quicker then altering an arrangement to use AuX sends

Ultimately learning to use the flexible routing digital mixing apps (DAW) bring to the mixing process can lend to the efficiency, flexibility and even creativity of mixing/recording process. The first thing to think about is that any Fx applied to a summed bus, whether an 'Aux' or master, while it more or less applies same parameters it works on the mix of the material not individual tracks. Even if you are using the same parameters, applying reverb (or compression) to individual tracks then summing, does not achieve exactly the same effect as summing and applying reverb (or compression or EQ or distorsion or . . . )

And like most things there is no magic formula (like 'compression on master bus only') to suggestion when to use an insert, when to use a bus. It depends on composition, arrangement, performance, recording, and ultimately on what the goal of the project might be. Even if one starts with some very pleasant trad chamber music if a 'Futurist' (Art of Noise) outcome is the target the choice not only of which processes (Fx) what where and when they are applied might be quite different.

As a very (perhaps very, very) general rule it is far more common to apply initial dynamics processes on inserts, and time base processes (reverb et. al.) to clusters, busses.

(though certainly open to wide range of application and interpretation I, too, tend to subscribe to the 'less is more' approach. It is just that sometimes 15 iterations of a guitar track (some recorded discretely, some merely duplicated, all with some insert Fx, most routed to an Aux subgroup (via bus)) is 'less')

 

[bouldersoundguy]

Without going very much into depth, I would suggest appyling compression to the master track only. I can appreciate the case for applying seperate compression to drums early on in the mix but I would think compressing each and every instrument individually is over doing it. I'm all too aware how easy it is to fall in love with a particular effect and want to pour it over anything that moves or squeeks but I think that was just a sign of my immaturity when I first started.

Thing is, compressing individual tracks sounds different than compressing a mix (sub or main). Compressing a mix with many dynamic elements has a ducking effect. When one element has a peak and triggers the gain reduction it affects all the other elements in the mix.

I start building a mix with no processing applied. Then I listen for any dynamic or tonal imbalances and apply processing as and where needed. It's unlikely that I won't end up with compressors inserted on nearly every channel, but the amount of compression varies from almost none to quite a bit, with a trend toward the lesser end of the scale.

I also use bus compression. I sometimes compress the vocal bus a little. This helps when strong backing vocals come in and build up the overall vocal level. I've also used this to subtly duck an instrument under the vocals. There's also parallel compression, which can be read about elsewhere.

But the important thing here is that there is no default compression decision. You must listen, analyze, experiment and repeat until it's right.

 

[mixsit]

Thing is, compressing individual tracks sounds different than compressing a mix (sub or main). Compressing a mix with many dynamic elements has a ducking effect. When one element has a peak and triggers the gain reduction it affects all the other elements in the mix.

I start building a mix with no processing applied. Then I listen for any dynamic or tonal imbalances and apply processing as and where needed. It's unlikely that I won't end up with compressors inserted on nearly every channel, but the amount of compression varies from almost none to quite a bit, with a trend toward the lesser end of the scale.

I also use bus compression. I sometimes compress the vocal bus a little. This helps when strong backing vocals come in and build up the overall vocal level. I've also used this to subtly duck an instrument under the vocals. There's also parallel compression, which can be read about elsewhere.

But the important thing here is that there is no default compression decision. You must listen, analyze, experiment and repeat until it's right.

I was goning to come back with something like this but.. Done!