Subject:A question about the behaviour of FX in a Bus.

Posted by: Jacose

Date:9/4/2002 1:01:28 AM

I was just wondering....

Lets say I sent all my vocal trax to Bus "A"

then

I went to the green Bus FX button in the mixer view for BUS A.

I then chose Sonic foundry's Track compressor.

Would this be the same as using the track compressor on each of the vocal tracks individually, without a bus?

or is the bus more like a send. ?

Subject:RE: A question about the behaviour of FX in a Bus.

Reply by: Jessariah

Date:9/4/2002 6:16:05 AM

Both of your examples are kind of the same thing. But you can think of it as being the same as putting the effect on each individual track. Busses are time-savers, for sure. Sometimes I'll throw tracks onto a bus just for gang volume control.

Subject:RE: A question about the behaviour of FX in a Bus.

Reply by: Jacose

Date:9/4/2002 9:59:29 AM

ok...thats what I thought... its just that lets say if you have a send, you wouldnt want to put an effect like a compressor on there cause it would be mixed (unless you are experimenting) But you would put a reverb or delay on there..... so I just wanted to see if the buss was like a send cause on my latest song (posted above)
the compressors didnt seem to work very well like it has on other songs...

Subject:RE: A question about the behaviour of FX in a Bus.

Reply by: pwppch

Date:9/4/2002 2:00:08 PM

The FX on a bus are "insert" FX like on a mixer. They have similar routing as the track insert FX do.

This is in contrast to an FX Send/Return bus. These behave like the aux send/returns on a mixer. A channel strip(s) or "track(s)" sends a portion of its signal pre or post fader to the FX bus. Note that FX buses have an input gain and output gain control. These work like master AUX send and AUX return gains on a mixer. The point of an FX send/return is to send multiple tracks to the same FX so the tracks can be effected together. Very important when we were all using outboard gear and had a single reverb in our racks.

Peter

Subject:RE: A question about the behaviour of FX in a Bus.

Reply by: ibliss

Date:9/4/2002 2:09:20 PM

The result of putting 3 vocal tracks through a single bus with a compressor on it and that of putting individual compressors on the vocal tracks will be different because of the way compression works.

Say that Vocal 1 is shouting and Vocal 2 is whispering - when they go through the bus, the compressor will react to the loud vocal and pull the level of the audio passing through the buss down - including the Vocal 2 whisper.
If you put a compressor on seperate tracks, the shouting would be compressed without having an effect on the whispered vocal.

The Sofo track Comps aren't exactly CPU hungry - go mad and treat yourself to comps on individual tracks!

Something like a EQ plugin (or anything that isn't a dynamics processor), on the other hand, would be fine to use on a bus as you described.

Mike K

Subject:RE: A question about the behaviour of FX in a Bus.

Reply by: Jacose

Date:9/4/2002 3:08:32 PM

thank you for all of your comments, it really helps me get a better understanding and refines things I already know

;) another satisfied customer. (hopeing to get to ACID 4 b4 sept 30th!!!)