What's with the freakin' busses!!?

[mprediger]

Ok guys,

This may be a really stupid question, but I'll ask anyway. Whenever I track in Sonar, I typically send each track to the A bus and add reverb to that bus. I read a post where someone send that they adjust the sends to the bus to adjust reverb levels. Now, if you were to put the send on a given track to -inf, would that track still be heard in the mixdown? I just need some clarification on how Sonar treats these busses and where they are in the signal chain....thanks.

Michael

 

[Porter]

Here we go... hopefully I've got this right myself.

There are two set's of different busses.

Main Buss: in summary, groups all the tracks together and is the 'final output' from the program.

Aux Buss: used to groups tracks together to apply effects, ie say you have 5 tracks of harmony vocals which you want to put the same reverb onto. Instead of inserting that effects on each track, you insert it into the Aux Buss and then send the tracks to that bus. You have pre & post faders.. pre faders will send it to the aux buss befored the fader, so in you control how much volume is sent to the aux buss from the send. Using post faders, you send the signal after the fader, so the effect will follow the action of the fader.

I did a quick search and this was the first link I found: Click here

Hope this helps you,

Porter

 

[mprediger]

Porter,

Yeah, that makes sense. I see now the Aux busses in Sonar. Never really paid too much attention to them before, but I can see how that's a better way to apply global effects. But I'm still a little foggy as to how you change the settings to the main bus. I mean, can you alter the amount of signal going to the main bus in Sonar? Or is that the main volume control that does that? I guess I should probably get a good book on Sonar, that would probably clear up a lot of these stupid questions. Thanks for your help.

Michael

 

[dachay2tnr]

The volume control for each track determines how much signal goes to the VMain.

If you put an effect directly on the VMain, there is no way to control the wet/dry ratio for each track. You can control the overall wet/dry ratio if the effect itself has that control built into it, but it will be applied equally for each track.

OTOH, if you use an Aux Bus, you can control (vary) the wet/dry for each track by varying the Send level from each track.

As for signal routing, I believe there is a diagram in the Sonar manual. In essence it goes Track -> VMain. If you enable an Aux Bus, then the track signal will be split with a portion (dry) going directly to the VMain and another portion (wet) going Track -> Aux Bux -> VMain.

You also, as Porter pointed out, have the option to set the Aux Bux as pre or post fader. Setting it post-fader means the Track's fader will control the volume level of both the wet and dry signal eminating from that track. Normally that is how I would suggest you set it up, unless you are going for some effect that uses a 100% wet signal.

 

[mprediger]

I just found the signal path diagram in the Sonar manual, not sure how I missed that the first time...perhaps because I tend to not really read them!

I see exactly what you guys are saying. I've been applying reverb all wrong...I should have been putting it on Aux 1 but I've been putting it on VMain A instead....this info should take me one step further to getting a nice mix.

Thanks for all your help guys....you da men!

Michael