Ok I've never really used "SENDS" in Sonar.. what would I use them for?

I'm curious as to what (if any) are the benefits of using SENDS in the DAW environment?

Besides using SENDS to go go out to hardware etc..

I've heard of people using SENDS for reverb, but why not just put the reverb on an insert instead?

Basically I'm wondering what the point of using SENDS is and what benefits there are to using them?

Thanks in advance!

But you could just route your tracks to a bus and insert the FX you want on the bus?

The only advantage I can think of is if you want to have control of wet/dry 
(assuming the plugin already doesn't have that feature)

Because you could just route your tracks to buses and then put the FX you want on the buses as inserts right? And you could save CPU power that way

Sends can be looked as another way to preserve the original 'dry' signal while adding 'wet' signal from a send or bus. Let's say you set up a compressor on a bus and it was pretty extreme. If you had a way to add that compressor a little at a time to your dry signal you could preserve your dry signal and add that compressed signal. The sound will be different than if you simply added the compressor to the track. That 'difference' is the reason for it. To get a different sound or effect than you can get with just a compressor on a track.

Have you heard of parallel compression? Or New York Compression? Look that up and check the signal routing. It is a very cool way to use sends and buses and opens up a huge new landscape of compression - for one.

Or side chaining? That usually requires a send as well and is an absolute must in some musical style.

The ProChannel has side chaining as well and requires a send.

And to your point if you use a send for a reverb effect you can vary the wet and dry signal as well for a little different effect. Again different being the key. You don't want to use a send ALL the time but to have the option is pretty cool. What if you had the Sonitus reverb on a track and a send to a bus with Perfect Space you could blend the two verbs for another sound all together. Doable with just track verbs but much more flexible with a send.

As always others will know more but that's the little I know about them.

I am familiar with parallel compression, 

So to summarize... 

You would want to use SENDS for setting up Parallel FX, or wet/dry situations, or for side-chaining, or for some outboard processing?

collisionmac


By using the send functions it's easy to send many different tracks to a single effect. It saves CPU and time. To me the most useful thing about it is that you have complete control over how much of the signal goes to that desired effect as apposed to just routing your tracks to the FX bus and all of them have the same amount of reverb(for example), and as stated sidechaining. A very useful feature once you get the hang of it.

+1

I don't use this near often enough but a really good explanation for using 'send' for reverb.

I use MC4 which doesn't have sends. I have to work a bit differently, but to me it's now natural.

I use busses. I put my FX in the track or the buss and set the wet/dry mix in the FX controls.

It works for me.

Guitarhacker


I use MC4 which doesn't have sends. I have to work a bit differently, but to me it's now natural.

I use busses. I put my FX in the track or the buss and set the wet/dry mix in the FX controls.

It works for me.

Herb,
I use MC4 as well, and use sends on every song usually. I right click on the track in the control panel view, and select ' insert send', just select which bus your effect is on. I'm sure you can do it from the Track View too. Give it a go.

Rob.... I might have seen that but never really used it...I'll check it out.

Thanks

Channels, sends and buses all go back to analog desks.  It is merely a convention in software, but still works.  Sends allow you to "tap" the sound of a channel out and control the volume of the tap without changing the volume going to a bus - including the mix output.

Some good uses have been alluded to above.  Reverb is a usual use, and the Perfect space reference goes straight back to analog days when reverbs were expensive.  You usually only had one good one.  So you had a send on each channel needing it, and controlled the amount of reverb using the send.  Drench the backing vocals and snare (showing my age here!), and a touch to the lead vox, and a little more to put everything else in the "room".  Voiliá - reverb on everything without smearing the whole song.  I do the same thing with Perfect Space today, except I can add algorthrymic reverbs/delays on individual tracks.

@

windsurfer25x


But you could just route your tracks to a bus and insert the FX you want on the bus?

Something I frequently do is add compression or EQ to an effect.  For example I may Compress the signal going into a reverb or EQ the signal coming out of the reverb (or going in or both).  


And I probably don't want to do the same thing to the dry signal - so by putting a send on a vocal track (maybe several sends - reverb, delay, doubler etc)  I can then build a chain (i.e. Compression>Reverb>enhancer or EQ) on the reverb buss and only the reverb gets compressed and EQ'ed.

Guitarhacker


I use MC4 which doesn't have sends. I have to work a bit differently, but to me it's now natural.

I use busses. I put my FX in the track or the buss and set the wet/dry mix in the FX controls.

It works for me.

Herb,
I just checked to make sure on  an old copy of MC4 that I have and you can have up to five sends on a single track. Hope this helps.

^^^^

There's a dedicated pan control contained within the send 'block'

This way you can still use the Reverb buss in stereo mode for those tracks that need it, and pan the effect to either side (from the track) for your scenario abvoe.

Another cool thing to add for using sends is panning. An example with reverb would be to have your track panned to one side, and route the send to a buss with reverb and pan the buss to the other side. A neat effect to hear the instrument on the left and it's reverb on the right. Not sure how you would do this without a send to buss.

PerfectSpace lets you do that as an insert effect, too. The panning happens within the plugin. What's even cooler is you can have the pan sweep over time so that the reverb tail moves to one side as it fades out.

Another thought: in order to do panning effects with a reverb, you have to have a true stereo reverb effect. Not all reverbs process left and right sides independently, even those that have stereo outputs.

Of the bundled reverbs I've tested, StudioVerb2, Sonitus Reverb, and Lexicon Pantheon cannot be used this way, but PerfectSpace can. None of the free or inexpensive third-party reverbs I've tried (Ambience, Kjearhus Classic Reverb, epicVerb, Mo' Verb, Room Machine, TB Reverb, Anwida Light, M30 ) can do it, either. Of all the reverbs in my limited collection, only PerfectSpace and Ozone offer true stereo processing.