Interesting use for Aux Tracks

I'm sure others have disvovered this too, but I thought I'd share a little tip:

Though I work mostly with rock, pop and folk projects, I often use live cello and violin etc. I record at least stereo, but often record Mid/Side plus room, which makes for 4 audio tracks per performance.

In the past it was a pain to fix any intonation issues a performance might have (even the best guys miss a note or two) - you can't stick autotune on every track separately as they all respond differently depending on the nature of that particular source (different mics and distances) - which causes phasing and chorusing.

Since AUX tracks came out, I just submix all the mics to a track and stick Autotune on that track. Works great.
 
Ludwig
 
 

True.

Also nice is that you can record the tuned tracks for archiving. Yes you can bounce busses too, but it gets messy. I love them little Auxes - every day a new use is discovered. And the ProStoolz users have finally run out of stuff to say :O)

Pro Stools.

jmasno5

tenfoot
Very handy Ludwig. I must confess when aux tracks were first introduced, given that we already had unlimited buses, in my ignorance I wondered at their usefulness. Now you would have to prise them from my cold dead hands:)

Correct me if I am wrong.  What I like about Aux tracks is that I can use external effects and print to Aux using its record feature.  You can not record a bus track.  For that matter, you can print any effect thus lightening your CPU load.  Very useful.

Yes - I have discovered that and many other advantages since John. As I said, it was in my ignorance that I didn't see the point. The aux tracks also happened to be released around the same time as the ability to record vst instrument outputs real-time. A golden era of great leaps forward:)

I used to export drum mix's (AD2) and bring them back as a fresh track, just to stop me from continually tweaking the hat, or the snare, (or pretty much everything) and wasting too much time. Now I can do what Craig does and keep the audio in the drum folder, done, finished, non tweakable!! Yeah, right, but I do end up with, well, multiple drum mix's to pick from. I wouldn't have thought the aux tracks would have made such a difference either, but it has for me. We've come along way since Splat was introduced me thinks.

I don't use aux tracks during writing and tracking because I typically need to use the 'clear all input echo' button which tends to break the aux tracks. But now I'm focusing on mixing, I'm using aux tracks to create subgroups and applying my fades and mix automation there. It's much easier to work with an aux where you know the baseline volume is 0.0, than trying to do it on individual tracks when those tracks have already got their own individual mix levels and you need to move up or down relative to that.