Working with Buses

I'm starting a new thread in the event this proves useful
OK. Some of this will be redundant,as it has already been touched on here, but just to keep my own head straight, I am going to go all the way through. This is by no means comprehensive, but should hopefully give a basic outline for using buses.
Open a new project.
First off, there is nothing special about the Master bus. It is just like any other bus. However, in general, it should have the ONLY output directed to your sound card. For this exercise, we will make Subgroup 1 our Master bus. Click on the white Sbgrp1 label, and rename it Master.
We are going to apply some reverb to all tracks, so change the name of Sbgrp2 to Reverb. If your sound card has an additional pair of outputs (ie 4 outs,usualy 1/2,3/4) you can do a headphone mix. Mine doesn't, but we will throw a headphone mix in here anyway. rename Sbgrp3 to Phones. Your console should look like this.

Now let's move to the tracks. Import or record some sound into tracks 1-3. Now hit play. By default, all tracks should have the output set to your sound card, so it will look like the following. Note that there is no activity in the buses yet.

Now we want to send our primary outputs to the Master bus Click on the Output box at the bottom of your screen. Select Master. Repeat this for all three tracks.

Now hit play. We see a couple things. All of the signal is being routed through the Master bus. and we are getting some clipping, as shown by the red Clip indicators in the Master bus meter. To correct that, lower the track levels, and leave the Master set to 0.

Now we get to the fun stuff. Insert your reverb of choice in the FX bin of the Reverb bus, and set it to 100%wet. Click on the Post button on all three tracks, so it lights up and shows Pre. Then click on the Aux 1 button in the track, and change it to Reverb. We are now splitting the signal and sending a copy of our tracks to the Reverb bus. It is not affected by the track volume fader, because it is being split out before the volume fader comes into effect, hence Pre-Fader. Click the Enable button on each track. Change the Output of the reverb bus to Master.
Now you will see this

It's probably sstarting to sound pretty bad, if you have an aggressive reverb set, and you may be getting some clipping. But just for fun, lets listen to only the reverb. Slide all of your track faders to the bottom. Now hit play. What you see and hear is the signal being sent through the Reverb bus only.

Now bring your track faders back up. At this point, you can control the presence of the individual instruments, as well as the reverb from the virtual room, and it all goes to the Master bus.
Let's explore the headphone mix. Your singer may want the mix louder or softer, but you don't want to disturb the basic mix. This is where Aux 2 comes in. If you set this to Post-fader, your singer will hear the balance of the mix, withuot affecting anything else. In this screen shot, I have shut everything else down to show that a signal gets to the Phones bus, independently from the other buses.

I hope this all makes sense. Entire books could, and have been writen about this, and this is just a quick sketch.

Good deal, Grant. It takes a bit to put these together, but if it helps somebody, it's worth it.

Bob, that's top banana!!

I appreciate you taking the time to put that together - when you see it laid out like that, it all makes perfect sense.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, we need a FAQ Sticky at the top of this forum; the quality of this sort of help shouldn't need to be repeatedly bumped or have links posted to it.

Good on you Bob

Steve

Thanks Bob,

Very clear and well put together. Great Job!


But really.... You've been hanging out at Steve's too much. He's starting to rub off on you!

Glad that helped, Steve,
Looks like you are having fun with it.
Doc,
I can't really blame it on Steve. I've got a few of these floating around. You should see my Photobucket account. 80+ screen shots.

Strummy, Now we need to get you started on SHS6XL. and then onto Sonar SE, then PE. That will see you through the progression from Acolyte to true master.....


Bob, Come to think of it. weren't you one of the first to put up a visual help for someone way abck when???

Thanks for the kind words and for the advice Bob - I'll try what you say with the vocals.

I do have to clarify that that's not me singing though - 'tis my old mate and bassist SidStrummerUK on lung duty. I can assure you that if it was yours truly crooning your advice would have probably been "That'd work nice as an instrumental Steve"

He had a cold at the time and sang it through a £2 karaoke machine microphone! He recently found our old condenser mic that we used for vocals years back and with a nifty bit of soldering I've managed to get it working again so that vocal will soon be completely re-recorded.

Once that's done I reckon we'll [BTLaw = Me, Sid and Doc] be just about happy enough to make the tune's debut in the Songs forum!

BTW, I think I'll steer clear of Albert Hall - I'm not much of a Woody Allen fan.

Steve

ORIGINAL: DRHollingsworth

Well there is always Madison Square Garden.....

Madison Square Garden!! It would be like Pete's IQ I'm afraid Doc - way too small! [sm=rolleyes.gif]

Same goofy humor as mine, soc. Yours is funny though.

ORIGINAL: hrtfxr

Same goofy humor as mine, soc. Yours is funny though.

I think it's what keeps this such a nice cozy place for us SHS and S7 users. (yes group hug )

ORIGINAL: RobertB

Doc,
Steve beat you to it. Check his song post. That was what inspired the Albert Hall reference. I think New York may be a bit of a run on a double-decker.

He may have beat me to it but mine was graphical!

Next you'll be telling us that Fleet Street has incontrovertible evidence that Elvis was the culprit

Hmmm. Sound as if we have a malcontent in our midsts. I think it's time for an inquisition. To be held in the OT: GT Forum Chat.

Buil voor Bob

That was very informative and helpful Robert.

The one part I'm still not sure I understand is that the sound from the tracks is being sent to two places. Part of it goes to the master bus which I presume is a raw copy of the track, and part of it goes to the reverb bus which then gets sent to the master bus after the effect is added. So what you hear then is a mixture of the raw track and the effected track?

Why wouldn't you want to send the entire signal only to the reverb bus? Isn't it harder to adjust the volume levels if the sound is coming from two places?