Newb Bus question

[stumboid]

Why would I rather use a bus to add inserts rather than placing the inserts into the vocal/guitar channel directly?

I can see this is of benefit when you are trying to use the same EXACT settings/inserts for more than one track, but other than this, is there any other benefit to using buses?

BTW, I'm using Logic Pro 7.2

[Dave Klausner]

Busses can help you minimize your CPU usage. Something like a reverb tends to be pretty processor intensive, and you typically don't want too many different reverbs going in a mix (if you get the exact perfect reverb for each instrument, you may find that the track gets really muddy - reverb can be the "acoustic glue" that puts all the tracks in one space). In a case like that, having a single aux track with a reverb on it, and bussing 6 or 7 different audio tracks to it saves a whole lot of CPU power.

Having a reverb on an aux also lets you do things like put an EQ or compressor after the reverb, so just the verb is affected. It's also easier in some DAWs to do some kinds of automation on a fader as opposed to within a plug in.

[rinnytin]

There's also the issue of latency, lots of DAWs don't compensate for the delay caused by inserting plugins, reverbs tend to have a long delay so if you insert it on the track your source will be latent, if it's on a bus, just the reverb is latent, which is easier to deal with.

Also, if you want to put a compressor across the entire drum set, or send multiple tracks to the same reverb, bussing is the best way to do it.

[stumboid]

Great. Thanks guys (or gals).

[GaryNattrass]

Also bussing is the way that things were done in the analogue days and it has several advantages whan mixing music or even doing post for TV and Film.

In music for examp,e you could compress the drums and bass together via one bus and add fx etc to say the guitars and other things in another bus and then compress and reverb the vocals in another bus. The overall balance once you have sorted balancing withing the busses can be made easier if you can solo and sort out things in isolation within as bus (also called groups)

In TV and Film my own job function bussing or grouping as dialogue effects and music is commonly used and allows lots of tracks to be balanced within a bus or group and then finalised in the main mix. This is extended when doing surround in 5.1 or 7.1 where you can balance the dialogue effects and music as individual buses that are surround sub mixes and sort their own balances within the surround sound stage and then balance the dialogue effects and music sub group stems for the final mix.

Put it simply if you sub things down you can mix and balance them more easily and get a better end final mix by enabling things to be balanced together and then added to the final mix under more control.

[stumboid]

Originally Posted by GaryNattrass

Also bussing is the way that things were done in the analogue days and it has several advantages whan mixing music or even doing post for TV and Film.

In music for examp,e you could compress the drums and bass together via one bus and add fx etc to say the guitars and other things in another bus and then compress and reverb the vocals in another bus. The overall balance once you have sorted balancing withing the busses can be made easier if you can solo and sort out things in isolation within as bus (also called groups)

In TV and Film my own job function bussing or grouping as dialogue effects and music is commonly used and allows lots of tracks to be balanced within a bus or group and then finalised in the main mix. This is extended when doing surround in 5.1 or 7.1 where you can balance the dialogue effects and music as individual buses that are surround sub mixes and sort their own balances within the surround sound stage and then balance the dialogue effects and music sub group stems for the final mix.

Put it simply if you sub things down you can mix and balance them more easily and get a better end final mix by enabling things to be balanced together and then added to the final mix under more control.

Thanks. At first I was a little intimidated when I got Logic Pro 7...terms I never heard of like bus and such had no meaning to me. Now I can see the benefits of such things as I go along. Thanks all.