I'm still pretty much in the beginner stages of understanding mixing and mastering. I don't have very good equipment, and I don't demo as much as I used to. I did download the FerricTDS for the last couple things I played around with and I agree with everyone that it does a pretty good job. I wish I understood saturation and mastering more in general, though. And for the life of me I don't understand buses, sends, and all that jazz. But that's really because I just haven't bothered with them.
Hey Jamin, What DAW are you using to do your mixing (Cubase, logic, reason, PT)? All DAWs have buses and sends but some call them by a slightly different name in many cases. For example, I use Cubase and they call buses "group channel tracks" whereas a track dedicated to an effect (reverb typically for instance) that would then be SENT to an audio track is called an "FX Track". If you give us your DAW someone might be able to point out a good tutorial to figure out those basics.
I'll give the explanation a shot, just because i'm feeling lucky haha.
So, overall a bus is really simple. All it is a single track (often in Stereo so that panning placement can be maintained, but can also be mono if you wish) that you can route other tracks to, and then manipulate them on ONE FADER. For example, If you have 2 guitar tracks that are the same, one left and one right, you can create a stereo bus and make the OUTPUT of each guitar track your new "GUITARS BUS". This way you can change the volume, compress, add an EQ, etc, to both signals at the same time. Also incredibly useful for drums so that after you have all the pieces in the right volume, you can turn up and down the whole kit very quickly.
In cubase, there is no limit to what can be routed to what bus. This means that bus 1 can be routed to bus 2, and bus 2 can be routed to bus 10, if that's what you need.
Now for sends, and a bit more tricky to explain. Your DAW might be much different from cubase (which is all i really know) so i hope this will translate for you. In cubase, you create an FX track that can be dedicated to one effect, like reverb. In all of the individual track options (in the mixer, like many DAWs), there is a place where you can choose that FX track (let's call it "vocal reverb") as a send. That send control has a volume control so you can choose how much of that reverb you want to effect the vocal sound. So what it does is take your vocal reverb (with the reverb plugin on that FX track (it might be called an AUX track for you)) and send the signal TO your vocals so that the vocals now have some reverb. Turning up the send increases the reverb, turning it down reduces it. This Vocal reverb can now be SENT to any track you wish so that you aren't running multiple version of the same plug in, but sharing the one with many pieces of audio.
So then, to me, a send would say "take my signal, and share it with whoever needs it".
I hope this helps... That was my first go at trying to explain that without having my DAW open to show someone. I promise they aren't that tough once you've figured it out in your DAW. Let us know what software you have and we might be able to help more!
