Buss confusion

What does SONAR have to do with guns? And why is my neighbor firing one at this very moment? Coincidence?

I think that's who it is!

One of these days I'm gonna snap...


:-)

Thanks Jinga,

I think I agree with you on this as well... I shouldn't have said anything.

My apologies Jack.

FWIW, It was a true circumstance... my neighbor (let's call him Uncle Ted) was unloading a clip at precisely the same moment I was reading the original post.

best regards,
mike


edit to add:

Hi Jack,
I don't have answer for your circumstance, but what I do is always run everything (tracks and buses) thru a "master" bus... which seems to make export fairly predictable. Maybe you can give that a try.

Do not route any tracks directly to your soundcard. Create a master bus that is the ultimate destination for everything, tracks and busses. Only the master bus is routed to the sound card. That way, you can be certain that as long as you export the master bus your final file will be exactly what you've been hearing.

You may want to consider always using sub-busses. Once you get into that habit, you'll find many advantages to busses.

Example: you have multiple drum tracks. Once you get them balanced nicely, sending them to a bus means you have one convenient fader to adjust all the drums together. Similarly, sending all your vocal tracks to one bus makes it easy to tweak the overall vocal levels.

Example: run all your instruments to one bus, including any instrument sub-busses. That lets you raise or lower all instrumental tracks together, which makes it easy to balance vocals and instruments. You can put a volume envelope on this instrument bus that pulls all the instruments up 1 or 2 db between vocal phrases. And if you find that the overall mix is too hot, you can just pull down two faders - the vocal and instrument busses - and lower the whole mix.

There is no downside to using busses. No loss of fidelity, and no significant overhead. And you can have as many busses as you like, one of the cool benefits of in-the-box mixing.

Another advantage of using a master bus is that you can re-route it easily, say between your main monitors, alternate speakers and headphones.

ORIGINAL: bitflipper

Do not route any tracks directly to your soundcard. Create a master bus that is the ultimate destination for everything, tracks and busses. Only the master bus is routed to the sound card. That way, you can be certain that as long as you export the master bus your final file will be exactly what you've been hearing.

You may want to consider always using sub-busses. Once you get into that habit, you'll find many advantages to busses.

Example: you have multiple drum tracks. Once you get them balanced nicely, sending them to a bus means you have one convenient fader to adjust all the drums together. Similarly, sending all your vocal tracks to one bus makes it easy to tweak the overall vocal levels.

Example: run all your instruments to one bus, including any instrument sub-busses. That lets you raise or lower all instrumental tracks together, which makes it easy to balance vocals and instruments. You can put a volume envelope on this instrument bus that pulls all the instruments up 1 or 2 db between vocal phrases. And if you find that the overall mix is too hot, you can just pull down two faders - the vocal and instrument busses - and lower the whole mix.

There is no downside to using busses. No loss of fidelity, and no significant overhead. And you can have as many busses as you like, one of the cool benefits of in-the-box mixing.

Another advantage of using a master bus is that you can re-route it easily, say between your main monitors, alternate speakers and headphones.

+100000! As always, spot on advice bit. I like to use busses for anything that has multiple tracks. For example, say we have an 18 piece drum kit. I send them all to a drum bus. 4 layered electric guitars...send them to a guitar bus. 20 back up vocal tracks, send them to a back-up track bus. From there, all busses are routed to a master bus. You can then process the instrument busses you have created with a little compression other than comping each instrument....though certain instruments depend on independent compression to be inserted on the actual track. I rarely bounce down a track because my pc is powerful enough to handle just about anything, but if I were to do it, I would most likely do it instrument at a time to make sure I don't mess anything up....or the entire lot of that particular instrument that may be routed to a bus as an entity.

I'm in with the majority on this one. I don't know if it'll solve your problem, but it'll make troubleshooting easier and in the long run will prove to be absolutely invaluable not just from a workflow/organizational standpoint, but will actually allow you to do certain kinds of audio alchemy you could not do without them.

If you "select all" when you bounce and aren't getting everything though, maybe try "entire mix" and see if that helps. I only use "tracks" when I'm creating some kind of odd submix or want to print effects.

ORIGINAL: mike_mccue

isn't that why buses were invented ;-)

LOL Mike, I don't know man.....until I got Cakewalk, "busses" were those big things with the Dog on the side. I remember when I had my drivers permit. While driving with my dad, I came to this intersection that was tough to see, so I said "yo dad anything comin on your side?" He says "nuttin comin but a Dog". I laughed and started to go and then saw this huge Greyhound bus that almost took us out. LOL!!!!