ya got me Arlen    
Hey Skook, yeah i hear ya but.....in case youre wondering why i had it set up like this.  I'm doing a beginners course to mastering and the module we are on involves setting up different buses.  I wont bore ya with the details but trust me...it was part of a project we were doing.  

Are you using a send from the track to the bus, or is the bus set as the track's output?

Just curious, because if the former then you'll be getting parallel processing (raw track plus the processed version from the bus) into the master bus. Which seems a bit odd for mastering purposes.

tlw
Are you using a send from the track to the bus, or is the bus set as the track's output?

Just curious, because if the former then you'll be getting parallel processing (raw track plus the processed version from the bus) into the master bus. Which seems a bit odd for mastering purposes.

 
This was my immediate thought as well. Do you really want to be sending to a bus (i.e. mixing the original track with the signal processed by the bus) or do you want to route the track to a bus? Huge difference. 

Hi TLW and Sharke
Thanks for jumping on board guys.   Although the resolution to the problem was how I exporting and had nothing to do with the "send" your input has been invaluable because
I was actually going to ask this question on a different post .   You see i never was able to figure out the difference between sending and outputting to a bus.   In my mind you were trying to get to the cinema.  And you could "send" to the cinema or "output" to the cinema.  And to me it seemed you still ended up in the same cinema watching the same movie.    So your input there has been very helpful to me albeit for a different question.   Thanks guys 

Think of a send as a COPY of the original track which will get mixed with the original when they both arrive at the buss(es)

Thanks Bristol.  I wont ask the next question here as it really belongs in its own thread.  But i will post a question of when or why should you choose "send" or "output". 

I'll answer here, no problem.
 
Generally speaking (and there are always exceptions or special cases), you would activate your Sends when you want to blend the original, dry track with an efffected version, applying processes like Reverb or Delay which are Busses with the appropriate Fx plugin.
 
Outputs will normally be routed to their own buss. for example, i will route all of my drum tracks to a drum bus, vocals to a vocal bus and so on. Each individual buss then OUTPUTS to the Master Buss.
 
Now if you want all your vocal tracks to have a little bit of reverb on them, you would first of all create your Reverb Buss (OUTPUT to MASTER). Now you can activate the SENDS on each Vocal track and adjust how much of each track is sent via the send level control.
 
It's important in this scenario that your Reverb plugin is set to 100% wet. Some plugins have separate controls dor Dry/Wet, others have some sort of slider but whatever option is available, you want to totally kill any Dry element as your mix is already getting this from the Track Outputs.

Thanks for that Colin. I'll do a copy paste of your explanation there and keep it in my notes.
 
I'll try play around with the reverb (or delay etc) settings as per the last paragraph of your post.
As you say, a lot of my plug ins have their own wet/dry controls within the plug in.  So its a case of trying those or playing with the send control and faders.
Thanks again     

So would it be fair to say Colin ( and again I appreciate this might be a generalization) that you would use the "output" option to direct tracks to a bus that was not going have effects on it.  As in the reverb example you mention.   So you would only be using that "dry" bus to do a single volume control of all vocals or drums.   The "send" option is used if you want to use effects.
I assume of course, you could also use the "output" option and use effects also.  In that scenario I am guessing that you would not be mixing the dry track with the effects copy of the track on the bus?   Sorry if that is all getting messy :( 

Well, yes and no!
 
In the example I gave above where I route all of my drums output to a drums buss, the buss can have whatever plugins you think would benefit the kit as a whole - the PX64 Percussion strip is commonly used on my drums buss.
 
This same logic can apply to vocals, guitars, anything you want.
 
And yes, you can then use the buss fader to control the level of the drums as a whole and not have to tweak the levels of the individual tracks.