what is a bus?

[drummersteve]

ive been looking at different websites, and the subject of busses is confusing me. im not too sure of the main purpose of a bus! it seems from websites that it is like any old output on a mxing desks track, but with the amount of information given on them, it seems the presence of a bus is more important than just an output. feedback would be appreciated, cheers.
steve

 

[pdadda]

A bus is basically a grouping of several channels. For example, say you are playing live and you have 4 mics on a drum set (snare, kick, 2 oh's). If the guy at the mixing board suddenly wants to change the levels of drums, he can simply move one fader (controlling all 4 channels) rather than each one inidividually. This is very helpful live. You can use the same outboard unit if you put it after the bus. I do not use a mixer for recording, so I can't help you there. I use my MOTU828mkII with external pre's.

 

[Garry Sharp]

Yes, I found it confusing too, until a manual explained that a bus is just something that collects a lot of passengers and takes them to a destination. The analogy breaks down a bit because different busses in a mixer can take the same passengers to different destinations, but still helps.

Anything that sums up a bunch of different inputs and takes them somewhere is a bus. A lot of these things only make sense once you've got your hands on them and played with them for a while.

 

[The Green Hornet]

A GREYHOUND!

Sorry I couldn't resist.

But busses transport sounds to different places and I'm still learning how they work.

Green Hornet

 

[lpdeluxe]

A bus becomes particularly important when you want to record several instruments on different tracks. For example, a 2-bus board will only allow you to route your inputs to 2 outputs; a 4-bus board will handle 4, and so on. Some boards will allow you to bypass the buses and go "direct-out" up to whatever limit they have, but if you're going to add effects they gotta "be on the bus", meaning that there's no independent routing of them. In other words, you have to assign whatever effects to the same bus as the channel you want the effects on.

A buss is a kiss, remember.

 

[robin watson]

Soundcraft users please!

recently bought a 24-track Soundcraft 6000 desk (patchbay version) for use in my home studio. I am connecting to an Alesis HD24 multitrack machine. I would like to be able to use the desk's input channel strips (at LINE level) for mixing of tracks already recorded on the HD24.

Despite all (24) input strips on the Soundcraft desk having a MIC/LINE switch, there is no facility for 1/4" line connection on the rear panel (only 24 x XLRs). Connecting the line outputs of the HD24 to the desk's mic XLRs and engaging the LINE switches just mutes the strips, so it appears that line input must be achieved elsewhere. But where??

Actually, with gain turned minimum, I'm getting a pretty normal signal level, but I DO know that line level signals are not supposed to go into a MIC input because of impedance mismatching, etc.

I did try connecting the HD24 via the ELCOs on the back, but I wasn't able to route these signals to the 24 channel strips: instead they appeared at the 16 group outs.

PLEASE HELP!