Using group EQ and compression.

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ChristopherDawn

ChristopherDawn

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Is there any way to say, group guitars and use a single EQ or compression setting on both of them at the same time?

I was playing around with the AUX sends last night and I noticed that if you mute the AUX there is still the clean signal playing, so I'm assuming that using EQ or compression on the AUX sends wouldn't effect the track it's being sent from.

I think I'm thinking about subgroups, maybe? I know there's a way to group the panning, fader movements, mutes, etc, but I really just want to find a way to do group compression or EQ.

Anybody?
 
And since I'm asking questions I might as well ask this too:

What are the values in groups when choosing custom? The manual doesn't give any reference for values.

I want to say have two guitars, one panned 50% l and one 50% r. Now as I pan one OUT to 100% l I want the other to follow going to 100% r. I think set at 50% l and r ones at 0 and 48 and the other is at 0 and 150 or something? I'm incredibly confused as to how to set that up.
 
An Aux Bus is seperate tap off the track. As such, some of your signal will go directly through the track and remain completely dry, while a separate signal will be sent to the Bus where you are applying the effect. Ultimately these two signals are then blended back together at the Main. The mixture of the dry and wet signals - as determined by how you have set the send and return controls - determines how wet or how dry the final sound will be. This approach is usually used for an effect such as reverb. Compression or eq are generally meant to be applied to the ENTIRE signal.

Are you using Sonar 3.0? If so, you should be able to establish a subgrouping of the tracks by sending them to a separate SubMain. Then you can put the effect on the SubMain and the entire signal will be effected.

If you are not using Sonar 3.0, you have to use a bit of a workaround. One approach would be to create a new VMain. Assign this VMain to the same hardware outs that your existing Vmain is assigned to. Then route just the guitar tracks to this new Vmain and slap your effect on this new VMain.

The downside to this, is you will not have any meters that are showing you the volume of the entire mix. IOW, you could end up clipping without it showing on any of your meters.

Another approach would be to set your track's Bus send to Pre rather than Post. Patch your effect onto the Aux Bus, and then drop the track volume all the way down to infinity. This will remove all of the "dry" signal, and only use the signal that is being sent to the Bus. You'll need to use the track sends to control your volume however.

Neither approach is ideal, which is why they finally fixed this problem in Sonar 3. :)
 
I'm using Sonar 3.1.1.

Sub main? That's the far right group of faders, right? You can't put effects on those. I'm wrong somewhere. Haha.
 
I'm not yet using Sonar 3, so I can't talk you through it. However, I am sure you can put effects on them. That's the whole purpose - to create subgroupings of tracks so you can treat them as a "unit" for volume levels, panning, and effects.
 
Okay I'll look for it in the instruction manual when I get home.

Or hopefully someone else can chime in? :D
 
Dachay's right! insert effects on the subgroup, and route your audio tracks to that subgroup. Route subgroup to master out. That's it... :cool:

;)
Jaymz
 
Well see, my problem was I dind't know HOW to creat a subgroup. Haha. I went over to the Cakewalk forum and got tons of answers on how to do this, so I'm happy now (until I get home and none of it works or something, haha).
 
I see you got an answer to the question somewhere else. I struggled with this as well when I upgraded from 2.2xl to 3 Producer. The new routing is very versitile, but took me a bit to figure out. you can't just slap signal processor on the Vmain like you could in Sonar 2. Here's what I did in case anyone still wants to know

First there is a difference between setting up a Aux send and a Bus (I'm not 100% sure I'm using the right terms here - I'll check them when I get home to my computer). The Aux Send is great for effects like reverb where you want to blend a wet and dry signal. The Bus however is what you want use to make sub groups for EQ & compression.

What I figured out to do is to set up a Bus where the output is routed to your Main Out of your soundcard. Then each track you want in the subgroup, the out of that track will be routed to that Bus. You can also then set up an Aux Send for reverb and such in each track that routes to an Aux Bus which you will route the out to that Bus as well. It's really quite versitile.

Hmmm...maybe I've confused things. I'm doing this by memory. I'll make corrections when I get a chance to fiddle with it.
 
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