How to properly Use Busses.

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BSharp810

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Can someone explain to me how busses work? Not the yellow ones that pick up school kids. Are busses kind of like Groups? I am using Reaper...could someone tell me how to make busses, and tell me the practical uses of them?
 
I don't know the specifics of Reaper, but a bus is any point where multiple signals get mixed into one signal (or two in the case of stereo). Generally there are two kinds of buses, submix group buses and effects buses. Group buses are for submixing groups of channels together for group processing (typically eq and compression). They are routed in series, meaning that the channels go through them to the main bus. Effects buses are for adding effects like reverbs and delays that can be shared by multiple channels. They are in parallel with the channels, meaning that signal is split off the main path of the channel to the effect bus and then mixed back into the main bus.
 
Im gonna harp in on this question, because buses were brought up in a question I asked recently, and I am unfamiliar with them. How are buses setup (i.e. do I make a whole new track and record into that and that is the bus, or do I use existing tracks?) And what counts as the "main bus" and how do you route them there? BTW Im using protools 9 if your familiar with their specifics...
 
I know PT8, which I bet isn't that different from PT9. You don't record to a bus, you assign or send channels (of previously recorded tracks) to buses. Best practice is to use sends for parallel effects buses and output assignment for submix group buses. In PT buses aren't predefined as either submix or effect, it's all in how you route things. In other DAWs buses are predefined as one or the other and the routing is set for their intended use. The "main bus" is the Master bus, where all the channels are finally combined into the stereo mix, and all channels are pre-assigned to it by default.
 
That master bus is also commonly refered to as the stereo out.

I'm working on cubase 5 and the great thing about busses there is the ability to route all my drum channels through one stereo slider, so once i've got a good mix for them I can bring the whole kit up and down with one move.

Also setting up fx channel tracks allows me to add tailored amounts of reverb and other effects without using a tonne of processing power on lots of individual effects.
 
That would be a great video if the audio wasn't something like 200ms behind the video.
 
I didn't even watch it.... :D

Here's a better one (sync-wise).

 
busses can do a lot of things. One of the most common is a reverb bus. In reaper it's super easy. The concept is you send everything you want to have the same reverb to one channel (by dragging the little I/O button on the original track and dragging it to the I/O button on the bus). You are going to have two signals in the end, one the dry unbussed track, and the second the reverb on the bus.

So, In reaper, just create a new track that will be the reverb bus and drag everything you want to have that reverb onto the bus. Second, you can adjust how much of the dry signal is going to the bus and consequently how much reverb a particular track has by turning up or down the amount sent to the bus. Then you just adjust the amount each dry signal is sent to the reverb.

Read chapter 4 in the Reaper manual, it explains it way better than I can. It's pretty cool, using folders and busses you can create groups and effects busses very easily. It is something you'll have to play with for a while to get right.

Oh, and a bus can be anything you want it to be (EQ, Compression, Reverb, etc.) Reverb is just the most common because it is often used for guitars, drums, and vocals.

And the reasons for a bus are 1) saves power because you are only using one instance of the effect rather than one for each track, and 2) it puts things in the same "space" because they have the exact same reverb.
 
Actually, a bus used for routing audio signals is not unlike the yellow bus on wheels.. a bus in the audio world is simply a tool to get signals together and drop them off somewhere else either all together or at different places.. yep.. just like the yellow one does... something I see here in some of the replies that might be confusing is the way you're referring to busses as certain types.. reverb bus, stereo bus, etc.. while that's not exactly inaccurate.. it might be confusing when explaining it to someone who doesn't have a clue what a bus is or how to use it...

it's easier to comprehend that a bus can be sent virtually anywhere to any effect or chain of effects.. you see the bus itself is not actually hosting any effects.. it's only taking the signal(s) to some other track that has effects on its own inserts. Usually this is done with an AUX track within most DAW's.

To simplify it a little let's look at an example.. from a track in your daw, you would use either a "send" going to an available bus, or you could route the output of your track to a bus.. we'll just say it's called "bus 1" .. in our example we'll use a send to route our signal to the bus.. so again, we select bus one as the destination for our send... Now.. we can make the input of any other channel on the board also "bus1." The signal being sent to bus 1 will now be sent on to the track (usually an aux track.) You could send bus 1 to just one track or many other tracks.. likewise you can route the outputs of multiple tracks to bus 1 that can then be sent to just 1 track giving you a "sub-mix." This allows you to group related tracks.. for example you can route all of the outputs of the vocals in a session to bus 1 and then use a stereo aux track to receive the signal from bus 1.. now you can control the level of all the vocals together on one fader in addition to individually.. very helpful if you need to turn all of the vocals down to reference them in the mix, without having to turn each one down by the same amount individually, keeping the levels relative in the mix.

Should you decide to send the output of a track to a bus... bare in mind that this means you are not splitting the signal out like using a send.. you're taking the output of the channel itself (which is normally routed to the master) and you're sending it to a bus instead of the master.. now the original track will not be heard.. only other channels with that bus selected as the input will then play that signal.. using a send means that the output of the original track/channel will still be routed out to the master where it is then heard in the mix blended in with any other channels that have received the signal via a bus from a send on the track/channel.

Alternatively you can use sends on a group of tracks to make a sub-mix. If you do this you will want to make all of your sends "pre-fader." To do this you match the send fader level of each track to the level of the channel fader.. once you have done that you can turn the original channel faders for each track all the way down.. from there you can receive the signal from the bus on a stereo aux track to control the level of the group as a whole..

So.. if a yellow bus could drop kids off at multiple locations simultaneously, they would actually then be exactly the same thing in principle! Hope my rambling is helpful to someone.. lol.. This is how it click for me to look at it.. maybe it will help others to look at it this way.. maybe not.. lol.. best of luck
 
Helped me that's for sure, I've only sorta got the hang of busses, I know it's a lot better to comprehend live sound-wise with an analog mixer and effects, since most of those involve daisy-chained effects and all that sort. But you broke the beans a little better as far as DAW goes
 
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