Bus's,aux?

I was reading a book about recording and they were taking about using buses. like if you have 4 tracks that are mixed perfect and you need to turn them all up exactly the same amount you could assign these 4 tracks to a bus and use 1 volume for all 4 tracks. also same with effects. If you want to use the same compression on 4 guitar tracks you could send them to a bus and add compression. am I on the right track about understanding this? If so, how do I send how ever many tracks I want to a bus? Do I delete the other tracks once they are in the bus track? also, what is the aux track for? Finally to my understanding, the master track is the track you have once you bounce all the tracks to 1. this 1 track has all the instruments. this would be the track I would master. eq as a whole and add a limiter so I can maximize the volume to the point right before it clips. Is this correct?

Greg,
Yes and no pretty much covers it. It looks like we need to work on busses, as most everybody seems ready for that.
I'm pretty much spent for the evening, but this would seem to be a good subject to attack tomorrow.

awsome, then I'll check back tomorrow.

MD, by sending the tracks to a bus, that means you're sending the track's output to the bus, not the track itself. If you delete the track then there won't be anything to send to the bus.
I'm writing this with the 'Console' view in mind. Let's say you have 3 guitar tracks, all with different volume levels, but you want reverb on all of them. 'Insert' a stereo bus, name it "Guitars", click on the output name of each guitar track (the output name will probably be your sound interface name if you haven't changed anything yet), which will show all the outputs available, and select the "Guitar" bus. That will send those 3 guitar track's outputs to the Guitar bus.
Now, in the Guitar bus, right-click in the black effects bin and select audio effects, then your favorite reverb. That will apply the reverb to all the guitar tracks that are sent to the Guitar bus. The Guitar bus will also control the combined volume of the three guitar tracks sent to it, but you can still control each track's individual volumes with their respective volume sliders.
You should always 'Insert' at least 1 stereo bus in any project that has audio and name it "Master". Send all audio tracks and/or buses to the Master before the audio goes to the sound interface.

OK, I see Master,Subgroup,Aux,and Bus4 on the right in the console view. All my other tracks on the left. Ok, I muted all my other tracks to see what happens.. When bus 4 was activated with all 3 guitars the volume increased alot. Is it like I bounced each guitar track to 1 track but still have contol over the individual tracks? If I wanted to use the bus to turn the 3 perfectly mixed guitars up I would then start with the bus track at zero volume and raise to to the desired volume? Can I decrease the volume of the 3 with the Bus track?Or do I mute the other 3 tracks and use the bus track as the master volume of the 3 tracks? Lets say I have a compressor on each track and a slight reverb at exactly the same level of effects. would I delete these effects off the 3 individual tracks and add it to the buss track? Last question would be you should always Send all audio tracks and/or buses to the Master before the audio goes to the sound interface. Im just really trying to grasp this. Is the aux just another Bus? Same with Master and Subgroup? Is The true master volume when I finish the song and the mixing when I bounce all the tracks to 1 including the busses. I would save the mix so I could go back and tweak things if I needed to, bounce all the tracks to 1, delete the other tacks beacause I know I have them saved under aother title, Then with the remaining track add eq and limitors or compression to maximize the overall volume. Let me know what you think

I answered some of these ^ questions while you were posting them, above yours.
If you mute the tracks, that also mutes their output, thus no sound.
If you have 3 compressors running, that uses more computer power than 1 compressor. Put it in the bus and delete the 3 track comps.
When sending multiple tracks to a bus, think of it like you have a cassette deck, a CD player and a phonograph connected to your stereo receiver, and all of them playing at the same time. All the volumes are summed, making it louder.
It's not like bouncing a track; Do you play guitar? Use stomp boxes like distortion, phaser, flanger? Inserting a bus and sending it's output to the bus is like plugging your guitar into an effects box and the effects box into your amplifier. You just added something into the signal flow. The track is your guitar, the bus is the effects box, and the Master is the amplifier, broadly speaking.
If you bounce all the tracks to 1 stereo track, and mute or archive or delete the original tracks, then the remaining stereo track is one you can apply effects, EQ, compression to.
It's a good idea to always run your audio tracks through a Master bus so you can see if anything is clipping. For instance, you may have a stray track with it's output going to the interface main output, and you mix the rest of the tracks so it's at maximum volume but not clipping, according to the Master bus's level meter. But when you mix it down to a stereo track, you can't understand why the stereo track is clipping so badly. It's because the track routed directly to the main raised the overall level and it clipped the signal.

The 1 on the far right is the M-Audio main output. Click the little lock icon at the bottom of it to link it's sliders so moving 1 moves them both the same amount.

In this mixer image, you can see that I've named the tracks to what they are, and I've named the buses to what is sent to them. You can name the tracks and buses by double-clicking the current name, like changing 'Bus 1' to 'Guitars'. That makes it easier to keep track of what is what instead of trying to find which bus is for guitars, bus 1 or bus 5? You can select which output to send the tracks and buses by clicking the output name and changing it's output to the desired bus. Name 1 of the buses "Master" so you know which 1 to send the other tracks and buses to.
The M-Audio main output is not the Master. That's just where you send the Master to, to control the overall output.
You should turn the main output down so it's not clipping.
I don't know why it's dropping out now, you had a greater possibility of dropout when you had multiple compressors.

I use the master buss for the main output levels and also that's where I insert my mastering plugin (ozone3) ...if you don't have O3 or some other mastering plugin, you would insert your compressor & reverb & widening plugins in the master buss (for the purpose of mastering manually)

99% of the time (with a few exceptions) my tracks are dry... no fx in them. The Fx (generally reverb only) is in the sub busses and in the master buss.

ok, When Im finished with all the tracks/effects and I have added my mastering effects to the master bus, I then save the file so I can go back and make edits if needed, bounce all the tracks including the busses to 1 track, delete the other tracks so I can export it to mp3 or real player? I dont add any effects to the bounced track? I thought that the bounced single track is what the engineers master. I am probably wrong. I wouldnt master the exported file or the bounced track right before exporting?

there's no need to bounce anything unless you want to save CPU power for adding more FX.

personally, I always bounce all of my MIDI to audio before getting to the mixing stage so that I'm working only with audio tracks. I've found some samplers don't have the exact same waveform each time the project is run while it's still in MIDI/SYNTH form. but that's the only reason I feel the need to bounce the tracks to audio. yes, you can add FX to the bounced track, but if you're bouncing several tracks and/or buses to a track then you are applying the FX to them at that time. engineers would not typically bounce everything to a single track before proceeding. that's what you do at export before mastering.

If I do what Herb says thefile will be sent to my select folder under what ever name I choose. Will this be in a format where I can put it on cd? Im not sure what a Riff file is. when I was messing around with song before, I saved the final mixed file so I can come back to it later if needed .bounced all my audio and midi tracks to 1 track. deleted the other tracks. exported to audio, no presets, selected the file name and destination,selected 16bit, selected real audio, then I was able to open it with real player and put it on a cd with real player. This was with Sonar Le. MC4 doesnt seem to have the real player option. It seems I was probably doing things the hard way anyways.

You don't need to bounce everything in the project. when you're thru with mixing the project, you just use the EXPORT function to get it to a stereo wave file.

FILE>EXPORT>AUDIO