Solo a buss???

RFR

Well-known member
This has got me stumped.
Lets say i have 8 drum tracks. Set up aux input buss 1and 2. Drum tracks have their outs assigned to buss 1 and 2.
I can see it, I can hear it, I can mute it, I can bring the fader to nothing and hear nothing, etc.
Everything works, except I can't solo the drum buss.
Individual drum tracks solo fine, just not the buss.
Am i doing something wrong or is this just normal? If normal, it's stupid. One mught just want to hear bknd Voc, or drums, or......
Ps i looked all over before asking my stupid question
:D
 
It sounds like you're using the aux track as a mix bus. Probably the first thing to try is "solo safe" the bus. I think it's either command-click or control-click the solo button on the bus. Then use a control group to solo all the drums with one click.

But there's a problem with the way PT does soloing. It simply mutes everything but the soloed track, which is not how a mixing board works, and most other DAWs mimic the better scheme of a mixing board. On an analog console soloing works by tapping signal from the soloed track to a dedicated solo bus, and then switching the monitoring to that bus. That way all the other signal paths are not interrupted. The most irritating thing about PT's solo scheme is trying to solo an effects bus fed by post-fader sends. When you solo an effects bus it mutes all the tracks feeding it, which silences the bus.
 
+1. I generally solo safe any track which has it's master out to an aux track. It's not intuitive, but it's become habit.
 
+1. I generally solo safe any track which has it's master out to an aux track. It's not intuitive, but it's become habit.

But if you solo safe a track, doesn't it not mute when you solo another track? That kind of defeats the purpose of soloing. That's why I solo safe mix buses and use control groups to solo all the tracks feeding a given bus instead of soloing the bus itself.

What if all your tracks go to mix buses? If you solo safe all your tracks, soloing simply doesn't work. PT's solo scheme is truly idiotic, and people who have never used other software or a mixing board are clueless about it.
 
But if you solo safe a track, doesn't it not mute when you solo another track? That kind of defeats the purpose of soloing. That's why I solo safe mix buses and use control groups to solo all the tracks feeding a given bus instead of soloing the bus itself.
If you solo something outside of the aux it's no problem.
If you want to be able to solo individual components within your group, solo-safing the aux is better.
I generally aux small groups of tracks and want to hear them as a group so my way suits me but I'm probably the odd one out there.


What if all your tracks go to mix buses? If you solo safe all your tracks, soloing simply doesn't work. PT's solo scheme is truly idiotic, and people who have never used other software or a mixing board are clueless about it.

Yeah, sure. If you do that then solo-safing the aux is the way. Fair enough.
 
What if you submix your drums, solo safe all the drum tracks, and then want to solo a vocal track? Won't you then still hear all your drum tracks when you solo the vocal?
 
I'm not if front of my system right now but I think this is what vca's are best for. I don't remember off hand but I thought you could do Group soloing? For instance all your drums, drum aux and drum vca as a group you can select enable group solos/mutes? I usually only solo safe the mix bus only. For listening to aux plus aux sends post fader I just highlight all the tracks I want to hear(usually shift click since I tend to have them all together) then(on windows) Start+Alt +click on any solo button.
 
For listening to aux plus aux sends post fader I just highlight all the tracks I want to hear(usually shift click since I tend to have them all together) then(on windows) Start+Alt +click on any solo button.

Dos that allow listening to just the output of an effects bus?
 
In any case, the PT soloing scheme is clunky. An actual solo bus would be much simpler to use than the "mute everything but" method. Digital and analog mixers do it, other DAWs do it. All you do is press the solo button and it works, whether it's a track, a submix group or an effects bus.
 
Thanks for all the responses on this topic. Y'all.
Sounds like a pain in the ass. I have no idea what safe solo is. I just hover over the solo button and click it. :D
I did discover that to solo an effects aux like verb ir something, I have to set up the sends to it in pre fader so just the effects solo.
I wish it was simpler. On my console it is lol :D
 
Thanks for all the responses on this topic. Y'all.
Sounds like a pain in the ass. I have no idea what safe solo is. I just hover over the solo button and click it. :D
I did discover that to solo an effects aux like verb ir something, I have to set up the sends to it in pre fader so just the effects solo.
I wish it was simpler. On my console it is lol :D

Solo safe shows the solo button as faded grey rather than yellow and means that the track will always act as if it's solod when you solo others.

It is messy and confusing all this ^^.
A simpler example is that I might solo-safe the click track near the start of a session because no matter what else I might solo, I'll want to hear the click with it at that time.
 
Depends on how it is bused but usually no. To do this I highlight all in the group, open one send and start alt click the send pre button. Start click again to put back to post fader. To do it more accurately set another set of sends already set to pre fader with the levels the same as the post fader sends going to the same aux. Then mute post fade send unmute pre fade send, start alt click, etc. Or send the post fader sends to another aux the output of which goes to the effect aux in and set a separate vca just for those two aux tracks so they can be soloed as one. There's probably an easier way but I cant think of it right now , sorry. Op wasn't about an effects bus though AFAIK, VCA is really the best way to do what was requested(drum sub mix I'm assuming). If going to 2bus mix bus, well, usually go through another aux (drum)sub first is easier. Although a VCA should still work. The other work around is to highlight every thing you don't want to hear and Start alt click mute. Note: VCAs can be nested.
 
Hahaha. All this is driving me back to just bringing subgroups back into my console and mixing there. :D
But in the other hand I'm committed to learning the ITB flow.
 
Depends on how it is bused but usually no. To do this I highlight all in the group, open one send and start alt click the send pre button. Start click again to put back to post fader. To do it more accurately set another set of sends already set to pre fader with the levels the same as the post fader sends going to the same aux. Then mute post fade send unmute pre fade send, start alt click, etc. Or send the post fader sends to another aux the output of which goes to the effect aux in and set a separate vca just for those two aux tracks so they can be soloed as one. There's probably an easier way but I cant think of it right now , sorry. Op wasn't about an effects bus though AFAIK, VCA is really the best way to do what was requested(drum sub mix I'm assuming). If going to 2bus mix bus, well, usually go through another aux (drum)sub first is easier. Although a VCA should still work. The other work around is to highlight every thing you don't want to hear and Start alt click mute. Note: VCAs can be nested.

JFC, in Vegas Pro I just click the solo button.
 
Yeah pro tools routing is supposed to be so flexible, but it can be a headache. Which is supposedly why they implemented VCAs. I still get confused and I've been using Pro Tools since ~ 1998
 
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