batsbrew
....
how many of you mixers setup your busses going into a 'MIX' buss, and then into a 'Master' buss?
 
 ...
what would be the advantage of setting up a 'second to last' buss that all outputs are routed to,
then having THAT buss routed to the 'MASTER'?

I work this way too. I call that 'just-before-the-last-bus' the MixMaster. It's where I put iZotope Ozone.  It's also positioned in my console view of busses as the boundary between the 'music' busses, and the 'effects' busses. In that way, when Drums, Vocals, BGV, Keys, Egtr, Agtr, etc, get too hot, I can swipe across them right-to-left starting at the left side of MixMaster, and concurrently reduce the faders on them all, while leaving the effects buses' faders untouched. 
 
 

ceemusic
 The Master bus has tools & the fader never gets adjusted.

Pretty much the same here. "A" always has a brick wall on it set to -.01 dB
and then finally a Klanghelm VUMT meter.
The one right before A always has a multi-band compressor on it.

so, i understand everyone's different approaches fairly well,
as you all have described them...
 
i typically have anywhere from 8-14 sub busses...
 
i'll buss drums, toms and overheads separately very often...
electric rhythm guitars....
acoustic guitars....
i usually have at least two bass tracks, so bass gets a sub.....
vox sub.....
keys.....
and then each effects i use, gets it's own sub...
delay, verb, drum verb, parallel compression, etc....
 
but everything gets routed to the 'master' bus, which gets routed to MAIN
 
i guess the root of my question is, is there any reason to have one more bus before master?
and keep master clean?
 
for that matter, if you were smart enough to do it right, and wanted to,
you could route everything to MAIN and bypass Master...
is there a preset in the 'bounce to tracks' command?
 
 
 
 
 

I've seen posts saying it's better to not have processing etc on a master bus (the Sonar master bus) as that could cause problems or unwanted things happening, the posts mentioned the master bus was not handling 100% /not designed for processing and it would be better to have nothing on there and the fader at 0 as that bus would be 'talking' to the soundcard directly and the last stage in the chain.
I have no proof/backup of this but then agian I don't see any negative side to having that clean/zero master bus in Sonar. Afaik it would not have any affect having 1 extra master bus.
hope this helps a little somehow

My reason for keeping the master "A" bus clean is to be able to accurately read RMS using the Klanghelm VUMT meter. I'll be getting an LUFS meter soon I suspect.

I've got a thread asking just about the same question as I'm struggling with my tried and true method of I've always used the multi band LP64 in the Master's Bin. I use it to check how my frequencies are behaving and then often turn it off as I'm not sure having it there is a good idea. 
I can see putting it in a Pre Master Buss might be less scary but then again I'm not sure this would change anything at all.
The Master buss is nothing special. It's just another source to the audio outputs.
You can send a track directly to your outputs.
Matter of fact I've had plenty of projects that had no Master by default and adding the Master and re routing the tracks made zero difference to the sound.
 

Cactus Music
I've got a thread asking just about the same question as I'm struggling with my tried and true method of I've always used the multi band LP64 in the Master's Bin. I use it to check how my frequencies are behaving and then often turn it off as I'm not sure having it there is a good idea. 
I can see putting it in a Pre Master Buss might be less scary but then again I'm not sure this would change anything at all.
The Master buss is nothing special. It's just another source to the audio outputs.
You can send a track directly to your outputs.
Matter of fact I've had plenty of projects that had no Master by default and adding the Master and re routing the tracks made zero difference to the sound.
 

Well ... with it turned on and on the final bus I suspect there might be an issue with getting an accurate reading on your final level.
Putting it on a Pre bus no problem for sure.
Then, if your "A" bus has the fader set to zero and is never changed then you know what the level will be.

Steve_Karl
My reason for keeping the master "A" bus clean is to be able to accurately read RMS using the Klanghelm VUMT meter. I'll be getting an LUFS meter soon I suspect.

that makes sense.
 

I still don't follow how it would make a difference at all.
 
I can see with analog gear, But the digital signal path is ones and zeros.
Where the  plug in goes wouldn't seem to matter in this case.
Lets use the Multi Band as an example which we will call the processed signal X.
 
My thinking is if you use a Pre Master buss with nothing on it at all, and route that directly to a Master buss, the Ones and zeros will be unaltered if both are set at unity. There is nothing happening to the signal.
 
Put the Multi Band in the Pre Master buss bin and it will now do X to the ones and zeros.
Put it in the Master buss bin and it will still do X to the signal. There in theory should be no difference to the one and zeros. 
 
 
 
 
 
 

it forces unnecessary math.
if nothing else,
more busses than necessary, could degrade the audio.
yes?