Please help me understand the routing of the group section on my Topaz.....please

[Dwayne C]

Don't get me wrong y'all, I know the board pretty well at this point but I've never understood the 'fx 1 return can be sent to groups 1&2 with the push of a button'. What am I missing? There are no controls for it. Just send to the group? What would be a practical application for this?

Here's a link where you can scroll down to the group section to see what I mean. It relates to the Stereo fx return blurb.......

Damn, I feel stupid.

http://thesoundtracsguy.com/site/brochure_pdfs/disk2_pdfs/topaz8.pdf

 

[rob aylestone]

Handy when FX1, say, was for a drum reverb, where by routing it back to a group being used for the stereo drum balance you can add in the reverb as a stereo on top of the dry signal - that said, I don't think I ever did thgat very much when I had one of these from 1994 to about 2004.

 

[Dwayne C]

That was exactly the application I had in mind but how is the mix between wet and dry signal dealt with? What happens to the master fx level and pan? Does that now solely control the send to the group? Are other tracks that were going direct to L/R with the fx now cut off?

I'm about to rewire for a bunch of mixing and want to have the best possible use of resources. Sorry if I'm being a PITA.

 

[radardoug]

Handy when FX1, say, was for a drum reverb, where by routing it back to a group being used for the stereo drum balance you can add in the reverb as a stereo on top of the dry signal - that said, I don't think I ever did thgat very much when I had one of these from 1994 to about 2004.

You have the desk in front of you, why dont you try it and find out?
The logical thing is that it would remove the send to the stereo bus. And the gain control will control the return level.

 

[Dwayne C]

Won't be in front of me for a few hours....unfortunately.

 

[Farview]

You can either send the fx1 to group 1&2 or the LR or both.

With the drum reverb scenario, dont think of it as adjusting the wet/dry ratio. Think of it as adding the reverb to the drums. The reverb volume will be adjusted by the fx return.

There are any number of ways this could be useful. Personally, I like to compress the crap out of the drum bus with the reverb in the bus too. Same thing with guitar solos and delay...

 

[Dwayne C]

You can either send the fx1 to group 1&2 or the LR or both.

There are any number of ways this could be useful. Personally, I like to compress the crap out of the drum bus with the reverb in the bus too. Same thing with guitar solos and delay...

So......what you are telling me is that the fx arrive to the group before the inserts? Therefore you will be compressing the actual reverb in addition to the source signal? Or......you'd be adding reverb to the delay tails on the guitar instead of just the source signal?

 

[Farview]

Yes, the FX returns happen before the group inserts. You would be compressing the the drums and the reverb.

The guitar thing was a completely separate use from the drums. I compress the guitar solos with the delay return (sometimes) so that the delays get pushed back when the guitar is actually playing and then get brought up when the guitar stops. It lets you have a lot of delay, without the delay stomping all over the guitar. I do this by sending a guitar solo to a group, and the delay return to the same group and compress.

You can also just bring the effects outputs back to open channels, then you can EQ the effects and send them where ever you want.

 

[Dwayne C]

I love the guitar solo application. I have a number of songs with 2 of us doing lead work, sometimes in tandem, and that technique would work wonders cleaning up the mix. Thanks. You'll be hearing that in a week or so........

A couple more questions if I may......

Re: drum reverb. Are you keeping the individual drums dry until they get to the group, or is there subtle reverb going on at 2 points?

Re: Compression. Same thing. For example, is the kick being compressed on track 1 and at the group?

 

[Farview]

The reverb is being sent from the sends of the individual tracks, so thee can be different amounts of reverb on the snare, toms and kick (I almost never add reverb to the kick).

The reverb output is then sent to the same group as the rest of the drums, so it can be compressed with the drums.

I nearly always compress the individual drum tracks AND the drum bus/group. The compression on the individual tracks helps me shape the sound of each drum and the compressor on the group/bus helps me glue the kit together.

Unfortunately, in the analog world, you will need a physical compressor for each channel you want to compress. So if you want to compress kick, snare (top and bottom), 3 toms, overheads and the drum bus, you will need 10 channels of compression.

 

[Dwayne C]

Thanks for the quick primer, Jay. I'll be putting it all to practice this evening.

The circumstances on these mixes are a bit different. The drums are a 2-track stereo final mix. Nothing I can do about it, so I'm planning on EQing and using gold ole NYC(ompression) on them. I tried it out after the recomendations a couple weeks ago (maybe you?) and it worked wonders.........but means starting from scratch, which I'm fine with because I upgraded from a TCM300 and LexiMX400 to a TCM2000 and TC D-Two in that time. Lot's of fiddling and learning to do.

I actually have 10 channels of decent compression so I should be able to compress a good number of elements and still compress a couple busses. We shall see.

One last thought. The Topaz has L & R buttons to assign each group before going on the path. If I want to maintain stereo imaging, should Group 1 only be assigned L and Group 2 only right? I feel like having both pushed may be more than necessary....? Almost like a merge to mono or something.

 

[Farview]

Since those are mono groups, for stereo, you would need to use two of them. One just for left and one just for right. (group 1: drums left, group 2: drums right)

But, if you are using a group for something mono, like bass, you would press both left and right on that group, so it will just end up right in the center.