Creating a submix track: Pretty impressed with myself - but you don't have to be :O)

I fail to understand why this is better/easier/more desirable than using a bus, when this is specifically what busses are for...

The worlds top engineers use the worlds top hardware consoles which often have dozens of (sub) busses. Using hardware you're limited by the physical quantity of hardware you have, a lot of consoles I've seen can define channels as inputs or busses on the fly.
 
But it doesn't answer the question, what do you get by "faking" a bus that you don't get/can't do with the normal busses?

Karyn, many top engineers don't use much hardware anymore.
 
But back to the topic, let's say you have a vocal that is comprised of four identical audio tracks, each one processed differently (one clean, one crushed, one effected and one saturated). They make up one vocal sound, but four tracks are running in unison.
 
Once you have your vocal sound by blending those four tracks, you'll want to treat it as one vocal track, with volume and other automation available with the minimum of fuss.
 
That's one application.
 
Splitting a bass track into Low, Mid and High and then summing it would be another.
 
Anyhoo, thought I'd share it. Use it/Don't use it.
 
L.
 
 

Good point Karyn. Thanks for pointing that out. Not a programmer, so I can not argue with anyone about whether that matters in the digital domain though.
 
But now that I have done what i was trying to do, I'm pretty chuffed :O) I guess i just don't like restrictions.

LJB...Now you have all your subbed tracks on one fader...

---like I already have on my Submix Bus fader.  But now I can have the choice of looking at a console module on the left side of the Console's divider, or on the right side -- hmmm.

Ludwig, I don't mean to bust your chops.  The trick you've described of setting up submixes in a different way obviously works better for you and it's your preference.  

It's great when people work out personalized work flows that feels better to them.  The particular motivation for coming up with alternate approaches may not always be shared or even understood by other people, but that doesn't matter.  We need to work in ways that don't feel awkward or stultifying.

Not everyone's going to get it why this particular thing became important to you, but that doesn't matter - it works for you!  

For me, a Bus is the same thing as a Track, only it's in its own neighborhood on the right side of the Console divider where I know I can always easily find it.  Using Buses hasn't ever been confusing to me - tracks are directed to them, I do whatever I want with FX and routing - It's all logical and straight forward.

Even though I've never considered thinking that Sonar isn't capable of having subs on one fader, since it can, I can't say I've tried your method.  Maybe with an experiment I'll see better why you find this better.  Right now, it's like I said at the start - I have my sub fader either on the left side of the divider, or the right side.  I don't see yet what difference it can make -- I can automate the faders in the same way, I can direct the output the same, add Sends, Solo the sub etc - I'm not grasping what the advantage will be.  Maybe I'll find out!

Randy B.

Atsuko
Besides, you can group busses and link the faders so you can move them altogether with one movement.

Well, but you can do that with regular tracks too -
 
RB

Atsuko
Yes, but, as we're talking about busses....

Ah, I see - That's cool.  I thought you were mentioning grouping buses as something unique with them that couldn't be done with tracks, since the original topic was about using a track instead of a bus.  I'm with your program now.
 
RB

In addition to whether the plugin acting as a summing amp affects the sound, I wonder what happens if you try to "Freeze" the submixed track?
 
Regards,
Dan
 

Yeah I don't know why the OP is getting flak for this, it's a great trick!
 
And obviously, the biggest reason to do it is organization and ergonomics. I think SONAR will eventually integrate buses and tracks in the Track View, it just makes things easier. Then we could take that Shift-B bus pane and make it a custom area where we can put whatever tracks we want. In fact, we can have tabs of them for quickly jumping to custom groups. AND we can still have our buses in the Track View arranged however we want. 
 
This gets even better when you use multiple gain stages or split sub-groups out for things like parallel compression. I've many times ended up with VOX-SUB buses that then feed into a VOX-MAIN bus after some weirdo routing. 
 
And yes, why NOT allow routing audio from a track into another track? Sure we can bounce down but that takes us out of the zone and now we have to go new track hunting and moving it to folders etc etc. If we could just insert a track and quickly render some experiments or subs we could move faster. Not to mention whatever weirdo things we might be able to do with it. Sheesh someone using Ableton figured out how to make a wobble by chaining a billion things together and now there's a whole dang sub-genre of electronic music from it! (dubstep in case you were wondering).
 

-double post-

What would be nice work flow wise is if there was a "Folder fader" that way you could group the tracks you want together and if you collapse the folder you still have a fader for the rest the tracks. This would work in the TV but not sure how this would work in the console where I do most my mixing.
 
You could also direct the tracks to a bus temporarily and then bounce the bus and import the resulting audio to a new track and place it where you want. Although that would not be very flexible if you needed to tweek the mix on your grouped tracks.
 
Glad you found something that makes you happy.
 

Yes, even if that were the "only" advantage, it's a pretty big one! Best part? If the buses pane were actually kept the same, then you could have both! I'm finding less and less difference in track folders and buses and starting to see them move towards the same thing...or at least being able to have a bus be a track folder as well.

scook
Nice routing trick, it eliminates the bus I use to create for a looper. Now I can keep all the tracks related to the looper in one folder.

I thought a looper might be feasible with this, but tried and still couldn't figure out how to get an output back into its own input. Can you describe how you're doing this? I always end up going external and using physical patching. 

I still resorted to an external loopback but the Sonitus Gate eliminates the bus I was using for the loop. For me, the advantage is keeping the tracks associated with the loop in a single folder.

As an alternative, maybe CW should introduce a new Console View (in addition to the existing one) that displays tracks and buses merged together and can be reordered without affecting the order in Track View and normal Console View.  Just an idea.