# God I hate looking like a newbie but I'll ask anyways



## nowimhere (Nov 27, 2020)

So I got a few sweet effects, but I found putting them on the actually channel can be "too much"
(changes the original tone too much)
I THOUGHT the solution was to just create a BUS track and route the channel there and put the effects there, 
so I can control the level of the effect, but it seems for whatever reason its still effecting the natural 
tone of the original track that I've routed it too.

What's the solution for this?

I want to create an extra track of somekind for this but it appears its not a BUS.

Any ideas?


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## mybadmemory (Nov 27, 2020)

Putting an effect as an insert on the track or as a send on a bus will produce exactly the same sound. What sound is produced is all up to the effect itself, and the amount of dry vs wet signal. If you use it as an insert on the track, you control the amount of the effect from within the effect itself. If you put it on a bus, the most common thing is to have the effect itself 100% wet, and control the blend between dry and wet signal with the send level instead. Regardless of how you do, the end result will always be the dry + wet sound, with whatever balance you set up for them.


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## mybadmemory (Nov 27, 2020)

If you want less of it, you can either change the settings within the effect itself, or just use less of the wet signal and more of the dry.


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## nowimhere (Nov 27, 2020)

That's exactly why I put it in the buss. But I want to have the main channel be dry and the buss be wet. How do I do that?


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## JohnG (Nov 27, 2020)

Hi there,

What you are wanting is a bus AND an Aux track.

1. Create a bus (say you call the bus "Reverb Send")
2. Create an Aux track (call it whatever but let's say you want to add reverb, so we'll call it "Reverb");
3. Add your reverb effect to the Aux track only;
4. Use a Send on your original track aimed at "Reverb Send" bus;
5. Make the input of the Aux track "Reverb Send."
6. Use the controls on the reverb plugin so the reverb effect is "Wet Only" (turn off the dry -- original -- signal completely);
7. Set the output of your Aux track (the Reverb track) to the same as your original track.

This way, you can control -- independently -- both

a. the amount of signal going to the Reverb plugin from your original track, and
b. the amount of that reverberation that you decide to blend with the original track.

Extra tip: If your reverb plugin already has EQ built into its receiving end create a high pass and low pass so you can exclude both:

x. the very low, rumbly part of your original signal from hitting the reverb (say anything below 60 Hz), and
y. the higher part of your original signal -- say anything above 2 or 4 KHz

If it's a mid-range type of instrument or a drum kit, you can tighten that band even more.


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## nowimhere (Nov 27, 2020)

JohnG said:


> Hi there,
> 
> What you are wanting is a bus AND an Aux track.
> 
> ...



That's awesome !

I'm trying to do this with two specific effects at the moment.
One is a reverse delay and the other is a straight up delay
(its a emulation of the boss dd3) with either one, its wayyyy
too "pronouced".... Way to wet. But I find within the effect 
I don't have as much control as I want between wet and dry.
It's practically _one or the other_

I imagine your tip will work for this as well, yes?


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## NoamL (Nov 27, 2020)

nowimhere said:


> That's exactly why I put it in the buss. But I want to have the main channel be dry and the buss be wet. How do I do that?



No shame in asking Q's, audio routing is tricky to understand at first.

Audio is like water in plumbing. If you send your audio from your instrument to the stereo out, that's like a pipe. If you send your audio from the instrument, to a bus, then to stereo out, that's just like adding another length of pipe in the middle. All the audio will still flow through the pipe. What you want is a T-junction pipe, that splits your audio into two streams. One stream is just the unchanged signal, the other stream flows through the plugin and receives 100% of whatever effect you are using such as a delay or reverb. You can then _recombine_ these audio streams into one signal by sending them both to stereo out.

Where the water metaphor breaks down a little is in two things. First, every time we create a new send we aren't _splitting_ the signal (weakening it) but rather _duplicating_ it. Secondly, we can control the strength of any signal using a gain plugin or fader.

So how do you create that T-junction to turn one audio stream into two?

One simple way is to just send your audio from the instrument track to two busses called Wet and Dry, make each bus output to the stereo out, _and disable the output of your instrument track_ (otherwise it will send a _third copy _of the signal to the stereo out). You can then adjust the wet/dry balance by controlling how much you send to the busses. The advantage of this method is that you could have one Wet bus (such as a reverb) which takes care of putting an effect "on" multiple instruments, and control how much you're sending FROM each instrument independently. Another advantage is that you can control the Wet and Dry levels very independently, such as even muting the Dry if you want. This method gives you total control, but also responsibility. The Dry and Wet signals are completely independent, so it's up to you to make sure that you keep them sounding balanced - if you change one during a piece, you might have to change the other.

*An alternate method - which is actually the one used far more often* - is to send from your instrument track to a Wet bus, and set the _output_ of your instrument track to the Dry bus (and then stereo out), or simply straight to stereo out. There is a simultaneous advantage/disadvantage to doing this. The send to the Wet bus will always be a certain percentage of the instrument's audio signal. If you lower the fader of your instrument, the Dry output will lower, and the Wet will lower in the same ratio. This is because DAWs default to putting the send _after_ the volume fader on instrument tracks, so the fader affects the dry output _and_ any sends. The disadvantage to this method, therefore, is that the Wet signal is "tied to" the Dry. If you lower the instrument to inaudibility, the wet signal will go away too. The advantage of this method is the other side of the coin: if you have an effect where you know that YOU WANT the effect to always be a "fixed percentage" of the dry sound, such as a hall reverb for instance, then this lets you alter the volume of your instrument throughout a piece of music and have all effects keep in tandem without getting out of whack.

An important point to remember, with either method, is that a "Wet" bus should almost always be considered "100% Wet." For example if you have a delay on that bus, you want to hear ONLY the delay, and not the original signal, because the original Dry signal is going to be contributed entirely by the Dry bus or Dry audio stream. Therefore you need to investigate how to set your plugins such as delays or reverbs to 100% Wet, which is usually a knob you can turn!


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## nowimhere (Nov 27, 2020)

NoamL said:


> No shame in asking Q's, audio routing is tricky to understand at first.
> 
> Audio is like water in plumbing. If you send your audio from your instrument to the stereo out, that's like a pipe. If you send your audio from the instrument, to a bus, then to stereo out, that's just like adding another length of pipe in the middle. All the audio will still flow through the pipe. What you want is a T-junction pipe, that splits your audio into two streams. One stream is just the unchanged signal, the other stream flows through the plugin and receives 100% of whatever effect you are using such as a delay or reverb. You can then _recombine_ these audio streams into one signal by sending them both to stereo out.
> 
> ...


I'm going to give this a go, I'm a little confused on the actual implementation. Basically create two buss tracks, name one dry and name one wet (both linked to the source I want to manipulate) but then DISABLE the output of the original track, correct? Then from there, just put the effects wet and not on dry (obviously) ... Correct?


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## NoamL (Nov 27, 2020)

yep, correct so far! What's your DAW? if you use Logic it'll end up looking like this (below). Notice that the instrument is active (blue) as are the busses, but the stereo output is set to No Output. The first method is probably better for getting to grips with understanding signal flow and how all of this actually works, but the 2nd method is the one I use much more often.


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## Minsky (Nov 27, 2020)

JohnG said:


> Hi there,
> 
> What you are wanting is a bus AND an Aux track.
> 
> ...


 And this is why this forum can be so great!


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## nowimhere (Nov 27, 2020)

NoamL said:


> yep, correct so far! What's your DAW? if you use Logic it'll end up looking like this (below). Notice that the instrument is active (blue) as are the busses, but the stereo output is set to No Output. The first method is probably better for getting to grips with understanding signal flow and how all of this actually works, but the 2nd method is the one I use much more often.


I'm using studio one 5 pro


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## JohnG (Nov 27, 2020)

nowimhere said:


> That's awesome !
> 
> I'm trying to do this with two specific effects at the moment.
> 
> ...



Yes. It will work fine for delay and for reverb.

For songs, you sometimes use more than one bus to trigger different delays, each with a different characteristic (more or less feedback, dampening -- all that). By contrast, with orchestral music, you might get by with just one reverb, using Sends to hit that reverb as much or as little as you like.

If your delivery requirements are for stems, you will want separate reverbs for each stem (and maybe somewhat different reverb lengths or types for each stem) but that's another conversation. Right now, you are just talking about getting the sound you want. Stems are another thing.


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## nowimhere (Nov 28, 2020)

UPDATE ! @JohnG was so kind to pm me and tell me I need a PRE-fade for what I'm looking for.

Since I'm using studio one, basically you have to send to a FX channel, then in your MAIN channel, you find the send effect and will see a blue level, to the right of that there's a button you click and it changes it to yellow. You are now in presend mode. So you can now have the main track fader at zero and it will still send to the FX send.

Thanks again @JohnG !


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## PaulieDC (Dec 31, 2020)

nowimhere said:


> I'm using studio one 5 pro


Studio One makes that so easy too... hold down ALT (Option on a Mac) and drag the effect to the edit area. BOOM, your effect's Aux Send is ready to go. Go to your instrument channel(s) and add a Send to the new effects buss, sending as much as needed. Cubase can do the very same thing, just takes 4 times the mouse clicks, lol.

Of course if you shift-click a boatload of channels, you can move the Send level on one channel and they'll all move with it. Probably common to most DAWs!


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## Fredeke (Jan 1, 2021)

nowimhere said:


> So I got a few sweet effects, but I found putting them on the actually channel can be "too much"
> (changes the original tone too much)
> I THOUGHT the solution was to just create a BUS track and route the channel there and put the effects there,
> so I can control the level of the effect, but it seems for whatever reason its still effecting the natural
> ...


If what you want to do is use the effect in parallel to the dry sound, you need to send sound from your dry track to the effect track/bus.whatever (depends on your DAW) while still assigning the dry track directly to the master bus (or whatever its natural parent is). Then you may or may not want to set the send level as independent from the track's level. Sorry to remain vague about the procedure, but it depends on your DAW. (On a hardware mixer, what you would be looking for is fx send / fx return)


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