Bus versus Pan

[brandon]

I am sending 3 sets of vocals to the same bus. Before the send I have them panned left, centre and right accordingly. However it looks like once they leave the bus I am going to lose all these panning levels? Is there a way around this?

 

Thank you

[Colin Nicholls]

@brandon

Okay if you take a stereo bus and pan it all the way to the LEFT side, then yeah, everything you've sent to that bus will be sent to the LEFT channel. That's how it works.

>> However I still cant get the individual tracks to pan separately from each other.

Try the following simple test:

• Create three mono audio tracks
• Route them to Stereo Bus A
• Route Bus A to your outputs (Hardware out 1 & 2 or whatever your LEFT and RIGHT output channels are called)
• Put a unique mono sound on each track (say, high voice; mid voice; low voice)
• Pan track 1  LEFT, 3 RIGHT, and leave 2 centered.
• Press PLAY.

What do you hear? It should be a nice stereo field. If it is not, then something is wrong with your configuration.

Here's my test. I used four tracks because I had them handy in a fugue I've written, bounced to MONO and directed to a new stereo bus A:

Now hard-pan that Bus A to the LEFT. You should be able to hear all three (or four) tracks coming out of the left channel. Try panning to the RIGHT. Same.

If you don't, then there is something wrong with your config.

 

Edited October 29, 2020 by Colin Nicholls

[Nigel Mackay]

The bus does all audio that is routed to it. Everything. Panning, level, FX, sends, etc. That is the point of a bus - one place to handle lots of things.

Audio that must be treated differently must be handled BEFORE it goes to the bus. You want singer A softer, turn  it down on that TRACK. You want singer B to be louder, turn it up on that track. You want ALL the vocals softer, turn them down on the bus.

Leave the pan knob on the bus alone. Don't touch it. It must be centered. Adjust individual panning on the individual tracks.

Everything that is unique must be done on the unique tracks.

Everything that must be done together, like fading out at the end of the song, is done on the bus.

 

[Nigel Mackay]

Are you sure it is a stereo bus?

Edited October 29, 2020 by Nigel Mackay

[brandon]

Colin/Nigel - Hi once again.

I have done everything Colin suggested above but I havent tried his really good idea of 3 totally different 'voices' going through the Bus. i will do that for sure. The Bus is definitely a stereo bus. And its pan control is centred. All interleaves are stereo. There is only one thing that may or may not be affecting this and that is the 'Post' button on the Bus is checked (see below).

I agree with you Nigel that everything should work. That's why am so perplexed.

 

 

Edited October 29, 2020 by brandon
mistake

[Nigel Mackay]

Create a new project. Load any instrument. You can use the PC keyboard to generate notes. Pan it hard left and make sounds. On left or centre?

[scook]

Bypass the plug-ins.

My guess is one or more of the plug-ins are the issue

Here is another discussion about how a reverb on a bus affects the panorama

 

[brandon]

5 hours ago, Nigel Mackay said:

Create a new project. Load any instrument. You can use the PC keyboard to generate notes. Pan it hard left and make sounds. On left or centre?

I can get cakewalk to pan left and right if required. However when I mute 2 of the 3 vocal tracks in question and send the one track unmuted to the bus (and either panned left or right)  it becomes centred. But if I send the same track to the master then it becomes panned again.

And, having just read Scooks post above I think he is right. I have 4 stereo plugins as per pic below. And technically there shouldnt be an issue, but.... I removed each plugin and the culprit was the VX-64 Vocal Strip.  Might there be a good reason for this?

[Nigel Mackay]

Why have you got a Send to the Master (and Output routed to Master as well) if nothing changed from earlier screenshots.

Might be confusion there. Delete the Sends. For what you want to do, only use the Output of the tracks/busses.

[brandon]

52 minutes ago, Nigel Mackay said:

Why have you got a Send to the Master (and Output routed to Master as well) if nothing changed from earlier screenshots.

Might be confusion there. Delete the Sends. For what you want to do, only use the Output of the tracks/busses.

Thanks for noticing that am not sure how it happened actually. I have deleted the send although it hasn't changed anything. 

[Nigel Mackay]

As a matter of interest, have you tried putting the other FX back? To make sure it is the VX-64, and not just any FX.

[brandon]

5 hours ago, Nigel Mackay said:

As a matter of interest, have you tried putting the other FX back? To make sure it is the VX-64, and not just any FX.

Yes,  I tried various combinations of the 4 FX and the common denominator was the VX-64. Very odd given thats its one of Cakewalks very own style dials. Or maybe not so odd given that it is not 'readily' available to CbB users.