newbie confusion with sends & busses

[nassa]

Hi,

 

I am having trouble understanding the whole concept of sends and busses. I get the impression that they lessen the CPU ... ?

 

At the moment when I record a vocal track, I simply arm the track, load whatever fx I want and off I go. I get the feeling that if I keep doing things this way, I am going to hit overload soon or something bad ... ?

 

What should I be doing and how do I do it? I've had days of theory (reading the ref. manual, checking out this forum - which is awesome btw!!!) trying to work this (I'm sure) simple thing out and quite frankly am overwhelmed and would really appreciate a step by step rundown of why and how.

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

P.s I run logic pro on a Mac OS X Intel core duo and use an inspire 1394 audio interface.

[zaque]

You can put effects on a bus and then "send" tracks to them for processing thereby sharing them. Lets say you want to multiple tracks use them same Reverb: put the reverb on Bus 1 and then send each track to bus 1. You can also set a bus as an output of a track. Play around with it and read a bit about buses in the manual.

 

Good luck

[camillo jr]

What zaque said. For an overview, have a look at this thread here:

 

http://www.logicprohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=4159

[djane]

I'm a newb also, but I would think you might want to record you vocals without any effects, then process later. To me it sounds like your processing real time, and if you were to do it later, and leave the track plug-inless while recording it should take some load of the processor

[nassa]

Thank you guys for your responses and advice. I know this is probably an easy concept but for now I am still in the grey

 

I've been reading and experimenting and I think I am getting the general gist of the buses, more along the sub grouping role...(but the word object is bugging me!) A bus is a track you create with fx on it needed by a number of tracks. You route signals here to save having to load the other individual tracks with the same fx. Right? That's about as far as I am with the theory.

 

And this is what I am doing.. I load up a fresh new window and create a few more audio tracks. I also create a bus track (bus 1) inserting the desired fx on that leaving the audio tracks dry. I then record arming the audio track only (should I be arming the bus track as well?) and la la la. When I finish, I go into the audio track I have just recorded on and send it to the bus 1. On playback now, I hear nothing. ??

 

And yip, djane you're right. How do I record 'dry' but be able to monitor with a tad of verb in my headphones?

 

Your responses are not only helping in a practical way but it is also encouraging. Thank you

[djane]

 

And yip, djane you're right. How do I record 'dry' but be able to monitor with a tad of verb in my headphones?

 

 

hmmm... can you arm the track, with the plug active, but not actually record and monitor then? That way you can adjust your reverb, get it the way you like it, then disable the plug, then record, then once you have your vocal recorded the way you want it enable the plug.

 

does that make sense? seems like a lot of work I guess but maybe one of the more experience guys will come up with something for you.

[camillo jr]

If you turn on Software monitoring, (Logic Menu: Audio>Audio Hardware and Drivers>Driver tab>Core Audio tab) you'll be able to record and hear reverb at the same time. However, if your buffer is set too high, you may hear a doubled sound, the initial audio going in and very quickly after that, the sound coming back out the computer. For this reason, I almost never use Software Monitoring and just monitor from my I/O box, which has zero latency monitoring. Most of them do these days. ZLM just means that the I/O sends you the direct sound of the audio to your cans before sending it to the computer so you can hear it with no delay.

 

I also use an external hardware verb which I send to from the I/O and back again and route that signal to the cans if I need to hear some verb while I record.

[nassa]

Thanks again for your help with all this guys.

 

I have software monitoring enabled, the buffer size is set to 128 and I am running my headphones straight from the inspire and have no latency issues at all so that bit seems all good. I'm still wondering about monitoring with effects while recording dry simultaneously though. It's like there should be a monitoring check box where you can enable 'effects on' monitoring or vice versa... I'm sure its a simple little thing ..just hiding out of my view !!

 

And I still am not understanding why my audio channels have no sound when I route them through the bus channel .. ? I'm thinking I've set the bus up properly but then haven't told it where to 'out' ...

[orangedog]

Hello Nassa,

If you are sending the "Send 1" to a bus with an effect on it you are still recording dry. If you record with the signal sent to the bus then turn down the send on plyback you will hear that there is no effect on the actual audio.

As far as not hearing the audio at all i'm not sure about. Maybe you have it going out a diff out than the bus?

Hope this helps...

Cheers...

[camillo jr]

Nassa, I can think of two possibilities for you hearing no sound....

 

One is that, on my system at least, sometimes a newly recorded track will not play back until I have done one or all of the following - deselect the track by clicking on the background and making sure I restart the tune before the newly recorded region. A PITA for me but I've kind of gotten used to it.

 

The other thing is that maybe you are not sending your audio track to the bus but instead are actualy routing the entire track to that bus? You don't really need to do that, if you want to send some verb to the bus where you have a reverb inserted, use one of the "Send" slots in the audio channel strip, select the bus with the reverb inserted and turn up the little dial that will appear to whatever level you want.

 

Routing the entire track to a bus is good for certain purposes, like as you mentioned, grouping tracks. This would be good for something like grouping all your BG vocals which you wanted to compress all at once. To route the whole track, you go to the middle of the audio channel strip where it should say "output 1-2" and go into that menu and select a bus, which is maybe what you have already done. That is generally NOT the way you would send a signal to a reverb, the first scenario is.

 

You might also try another test, just to make sure anything is getting out of Logic at all - grab a loop from the loop browser and drop it on an empty audio track - green or blue will both work. You should hear that loop playing through your main outputs. If you do not, then maybe you need to make sure that your Logic outputs are going to your "inspire" (your in/out box?)

 

Hope that helps!