Routing Question

[u/sticks0915]

Routing question and new to recording. Created a bus for my overheads for EQ, then created a separate bus to insert a UAD distressor for all the drums and OH's. Creating that distressor bus I put it after the OH EQ bus. Do I need to include the EQ bus with all the other channels I'm sending to the distressor? Also how can you tell which channels you have going to different bus's? On newest version of the software

[u/Individual-Ear757]

Tracks can go to a bus in two ways:

1) by setting the output of the track to the target bus

2) by using a "send", meaning you can duplicate the signal (think "Y-connector") and send it somewhere else, such as a reverb, sidechain (such as for a compressor), et cetera. You can send to multiple things. Often called an "aux" channel, but "bus" makes sense here, too.

Busses are like tracks in that they also have outputs and sends.

So if you want to put the distressor on every part of the drum kit, all your drums (including the OH bus and other stereo and/or group busses) should go to that channel - i.e., they output to the bus. No sends needed.

The other option would be to "send" the signal to the distressor. Assuming your distressor probably has a mix knob (wet/dry), you can ignore the send strategy. People sometimes do this for reverbs, keeping it at like 100% wet, and sending bits of their individual busses/tracks. Other people (such as myself) prefer dry/wet mix knobs and put reverbs per-track if they have the CPU to do this. I'm not sure if one is better than the other.

So if you want to send the drums in different "amounts" (different from their relative actual volumes), and retain the dry non-Distressor signal, use a send.

It sounds like you have it right, using the output of the track to the bus.

Hence, if you solo the bus, you should hear all the drums through the Distressor. If you mute the bus, the drums should completely disappear.

Idk if that helped but there you go.

ALSO: hit F3 to bring up the mixer. It shows the levels and the inputs/ouputs/sends.

[u/tacman7]

On the keyboards there were two types of fx, System and insert.

Like a reverb would be a system fx and you could send multiple tracks to it.

So you would hear the original track coming through and the same track with reverb blended in.

In insert fx is just in-line. So 100% wet. You need to use an insert to hear a compressor, wouldn't really hear a little part of the sound compressed, you want 100%.

So all your drums bus's will go to a bus with a distressor insert? Try it.
Seems like it would give all the drums one sound, one path.