How do the Pros Route Tracks, Busses, Masters

[Scott Kendrick]

Been digging around into different approaches from people like Scheps, CLA, Korneff for how they are routing tracks, sends/returns, busses etc and curious what other people have found works best (I know there's not right answer, personal preference, how does it sound, etc). For context - I'm more interest in what produces the best sounding mixes (e.g. space for everything, gluing for cohesion, big mixes) than what provides convience (e.g. a single fader vs. multiple to achive something), and my genre is primarily rock (classic rock, hard rock, some punk).

High level I have tracks, going to instrument/group busses, which then combine into instruments and vocals, then to master. 

Some approaches I've found and have questions about... 

• Drums and bass combine into a Rhythm Bus so they can be glued together (which then goes to all instruments bus)
  • Or Kick and Bass to a Low End Bus so low end can be controlled, Low End Bus goes straight to master 
• Parallel processing aux/busses combine into a Paralle Master which is sent directly master (e.g. Korneff sends parallel drum compression and guitar widening to this)
  • Or parallel processing combined back with the instrument tracks (such as Drum parallel compressor back to the Drum Master Bus)
• Reverb / Delay sends, returns, etc < seems to be lots of different approaches and where I'm most confused on what sounds best
  • Use a handful of reverb rooms that different instruments are sent to, so they share space (creates glue) 
  • More often I see vox, guitars, drums, each having their own independent set of verbs
  • Sometimes verb/delay sent to the master, other times returned back to that instruments main bus (e.g. Drum Master), other times instrument verb/delay sent to "all instruments bus" and vocal verbs/delay to all Vox bus
  • Other times I've seen a completely separate FX bus where all verb delay combined, which goes to Master (similar to the parallel mention above)

Hope this makes sense - would love to hear what tips you have gleaned from the pros on routing, mix templating, that work best for you. 

Edited January 15, 2023 by Scott Kendrick
Clarified title

[msmcleod]

I think it's worth considering why the big names in mixing use templates in the first place.

From what I can tell convenience is by far the main reason. Although sound comes into it, I don't think its a case of using a template to get a specific "sound" of an overall mix - it's really just an extension of convenience.

Some thoughts come to mind:

1. Track / bus ordering - using the same tracks and buses for every track means you know which track everything is on.  If for every song, you always use track 1 for kick drum, and track 20 for lead vocals, then you're not searching around looking for them.  

2.  A lot of big names use outboard gear.  Using outboard gear usually means at least some things are permanently patched into certain ports,  so having a bus set up ready to go for your 1176 or LA2A makes sense.

3. Most of them use ProTools... I'm no ProTools expert, but when I have used it I got the impression that it can do anything, but everything has to be done the hard way. Complex effect routing (at least before they introduced bus folders), means inserting various aux tracks/sends and routing them via numbered ports. This all takes time.  Having this set up in a template means it's there for you when you need it.

4. Really just a follow on from (3)...  mix engineers are listening to a mix solving problems, then using creativity to create a particular sound or emotional impact.   So if they know that putting a kick drum through a particular set of compressors routed in some crazy way gives them "that sound" or using a particular chain of effects is good at getting rid of hi-hat bleed into the snare, having that routing set up ready to go means it's there for them.  The point is, it's set up in their template as a go-to tool for solving a particular problem, not because they put every track through it on every mix to get an overall sound.

The big names in mixing work on some wildly different genres, and there's no way they'll be treating every mix with the same effects on every track.  What they will do however, is use tried and tested tools/techniques to solve problems as they come up...  the most common aux track/bus/effects combinations for achieving these techniques will be in their template.

A lot of this is evident by the signature Waves plugins that have been released over the years.  CLA ( CLA Drums, Guitar, Mix etc), Schepps (Parallel Particles) are plugins that replicate the complex routing of several effects and wrap them up in a simple to use plugin.  The more complex setup would have been in their templates at one point... but now they can just use the plugin.  

So with regard to things like track ordering and the buses you use, definitely pick a set of tracks & buses that works for you and put that in a template.  Having everything always being on the same track/bus for every song, will mean that muscle memory will take over in time, and you'll get through mixes faster.

If there's things you genuinely use in EVERY mix, then yes, put them in your template.  However putting everything in your template just in case you need it is just going eat up CPU.

CbB has FXChains for commonly used chains of effects, and track templates (which can include buses) for more complex routing.  I'd recommend looking into building up a library of your own toolkit of these so you can drag them into your project when you need them.

 

[Glenn Stanton]

imho - templates are mainly about speed and efficiency - to get to the point where all the baseline work is done:

• file prep and load -- including naming and so on
• general leveling to get a sense of the material (especially if there is no reference mix)
• "typically" things such as routing to sub-mixes for easier overall mix actions: drums, bass, guitars, vocals, keys, orchestral, etc 
• maybe some FX like reverbs and delays to get started

this is the stuff that you generally need to get out of the way so you can focus on the actual creative aspects. any number of the big names likely have their interns/assistants to take care of the prep stage, but i'm sure it depends on the project (single song versus an album for example).

 

[Scott Kendrick]

Thanks for the replies - I probably inappropriately focused my post title on "Templates" - I've adjusted it to try to clarify more what I"m after which is best practices for routing tracks to busses, all the way through the master, like the bullet points I listed. Reiterating as an example - is it better to send different instruments to shared reverb busses or independent per instrument? Would a vocal and guitar ever share a delay or reverb bus? And after you send to a reverb, what should that reverb bus output to? 

Slightly different question - but for cakewalk, are there best practices for when you should send to a bus vs. send to an Aux track?

[Lord Tim]

OK, first I'll say that Mark and Glenn nailed it - this is exactly the process I use too. Basically a time-saving thing to stop boring repetitive tasks getting in the way of making creative decisions.

As far as the whys go when setting up what to use in your last question, it all depends on the application.

If I know I'm going to be making stems for whatever reason (sending out for a remix, or a mastering engineer has requested them aside from a stereo master, or I want a bit more control over certain elements later, eg: different orchestral sections that I'm dropping into another mix) I'll try to make stuff as modular as possible, each group with its own self-contained effects. This isn't great as far as CPU efficiency goes, and can actually be a bit annoying if you want to do any global changes quickly, but it pays off later with what it spits out. For a great example of that, if you go to Help > Check For Updates in Cakewalk, grab the demo projects. There's one in there by me called "Time to Fly" that I did in this modular way, and it includes a PDF where I talk about the methodology of how and why I did it that way. Using shared global effects when you spit out stems can give you unpredictable results, so keeping things self-contained is a good safeguard.

Typically, though, I will have shared effects, busses and aux tracks when I do a mix, because the bulk of the time I'm going to be doing everything in the single process (including mastering... which is a big can of worms and there's definite cons to this. I've found a great process that works for me but I'd almost always recommend against doing this, honestly)

Why use busses instead of aux tracks, or vice versa? Ehh.... Honestly, both more or less work the same with a few caveats.

On the similarities side, if you wanted to set up a bunch of aux tracks with reverbs, delays, etc. on there, it's not a real lot different to just setting up busses, other than it's sometimes nicer to have them either hidden away down in the bus pane, or up where you can easily navigate to them in the track pane. That's really personal preference if you use them in that way.

My preference for this is any global effects (general reverb, overall delays, doubler/slapback, etc) live in the bus pane, because everything in general is going there. On the other hand, if I have a specific effect for a section, for example, a drum reverb, I'll tend to put that up near the drum tracks, usually in the same folder, so if I want to mute the drums, that also kills all of the reverbs and anything associated with that as well, or if I just want to listen to the drum reverb, it's not like a global thing where I'm hearing echoes of other tracks in there as well.

The other thing I tend to use aux tracks for more than busses is subgroups. Again, the "Time to Fly" demo project is a great example of that. I'll have drum parts mixed down in sections (eg: kick in / kick out / kick trigger > kicks > drum master,  snare top / snare bottom / snare trigger > snares > drum master, etc.) so if I just want to add reverb to a snare or adjust the overall EQ of a kick, I'm working on the composite sound rather than fiddling around with 3 or 4 tracks per element.  Backing vocals is another big thing I use aux tracks for - having each harmony layer comprised of 6 or so voices, all mixed down to a single harmony layer, and then all of those layers being mixed down to an overall choirs master track makes balancing the mix much easier than 42 discrete vocal tracks. I used to do this kind of submixing thing with busses, which worked, but with aux tracks I can put all of these things in the one folder and hide it away unless I need to change anything, or I can put the source tracks there and just leave the masters out in a main mix folder. Much cleaner and more focused experience.

The other really big bonus of aux tracks is you can record them off and archive the source tracks, so if your machine is starting to creak under the weight of your 200 track orchestral synth layout, set each section to its own aux master, record each section's aux, and archive the source tracks to take the VSTs offline. That's a lot more tricky using busses for the same thing. It just means if you want to do any changes, you'll have to delete the aux recording and unarchive the source and repeat the process. It could mean the different between a project that plays in real time or not though.

But to answer specific questions:

On 1/15/2023 at 1:55 PM, Scott Kendrick said:

is it better to send different instruments to shared reverb busses or independent per instrument?

It depends. If I want stuff to sound like it's in the same space, I'll use a global reverb bus for that. On the other hand, if I have a specific sound I want for an instrument (or similar groups of instruments) I'll use a different bus or aux for that, eg: I'd like a fairly open reverb sound for vocals, synths, maybe guitars, etc. but I'd want a much more dense reverb for drums to add thickness to them. There's also no reason you can't combine both - I might like a big gated AMS NonLin style reverb on my snare for a big 80s sound, but I might also send part of that to the global reverb because it adds a nice decay and air to it.

On 1/15/2023 at 1:55 PM, Scott Kendrick said:

Would a vocal and guitar ever share a delay or reverb bus?

Sure, mine do often. The send levels are typically wildly different, though.

On 1/15/2023 at 1:55 PM, Scott Kendrick said:

And after you send to a reverb, what should that reverb bus output to? 

OK, this is where how you set up the project comes into play.

If you've done it in a modular way, I'd typically send that to that section's master bus. So for example, if I had drums set up with a dedicated aux for drum reverb, I won't normally send the reverb out and the drums out separately to the project master bus directly, but I'll send it to a drum master bus first and then onwards to the project master. That makes sure if I turn the drums up or down or process them further (say adding a nice spanky compressor on the drums or parallel processing or whatever) then I'm not changing the balance of the drum reverb because it's all feeding into the same drum master bus. (Note: I'm saying "bus" here but that can mean bus or aux, depending on how you prefer to work)

For any of my global effects busses, I tend to send them straight to the main project master bus. I recommend a project master rather than sending to hardware outs directly because you have a lot more control over levels, any additional final effects, etc.

It's a big topic! Honestly, a lot of it will come down to how you prefer to work and the intended final delivery as to how you do it. But the real key is consistency. If you can work out a template for each scenario where you'll have tracks and routing pre-prepared for everything, it's far less boring grunt work setting stuff up and you can just rely almost on muscle memory as to how you record and where the tracks are, so it takes out a bunch of obstacles between your brain and the speakers, really.

Edited January 16, 2023 by Lord Tim

[Glenn Stanton]

16 hours ago, Scott Kendrick said:

Slightly different question - but for cakewalk, are there best practices for when you should send to a bus vs. send to an Aux track?

an aux track can be used as a buss since you're using a patch point to route there. for example, if i had several vocal tracks i wanted to put into a few compressors or reverbs and wanted those to be in proximity to the tracks - aux tracks would be handy so you don't have to move around too much to tweak things, or if you want to set up some variations by grouping them via an aux track as a "vca" type control, etc. i have a couple of templates i set up like this based on some tutorials based on ProTools but i don't use them.  

but as Lord Tim pointed out, depends on what you need - per instrument, per group, or global effects.

one thing to note: with stems you can never truly recreate the global effects in individual stems because they don't have the cross-mix of others. so usually i assign my "per stem" effects to those groupings, and then tie in a set of global effects for my mix down, but when sharing, i'll just document the global effects so they can be recreated by whomever is taking the stems and produce a "global effects stem" which may or not be useful. it's also handy to produce "dry" stems as well and document those effects in case they will recreate on their end. 

one other note: use the export function. the ability to setup a bunch of tasks to produce stereo, multitrack, buss, buss as stems, dry (no fx), etc and variations on mixes (no vox, no solo, no drum, etc) and re-run if needed saves a ton of time.

Edited January 15, 2023 by Glenn Stanton

[Tim Smith]

@Scott Kendrick As you can see there are many different approaches and methods.

If making a set of songs that are all basically the same in style, then templates make complete sense. I seldom use templates because I don't create for only one genre and I like to experiment with  many plug ins. There are both pros and cons to this. Keeping the process simple using only a handful of known good plugins means you get mixes faster and more efficiently, but part of the fun for me is throwing in various plugins of the same thing to get the best result for any mix I'm working on. Even without templets that load plugins, if you know your way around a DAW, it really isn't that time consuming to experement with various plugins. If something worked well before I will often try to revisit it or at least the concept that made it sound better.

A big difference between large scale orchestral mixes for movie houses and lil old us at home in our home studios running minimal numbers of tracks. In their case, using buses, templates and subfeeds simplify the process and should be templated. Otherwise you could spend all day simply getting a project ready. 

In a smaller mix too much routing tends to mud things up for me. In some circles, there are engineers who say things "should" be done a certain way. The whole idea of routing all tracks to a reverb bus came from hardware mixers. Not saying it's  a bad thing, but most likely came about to maximize limited hardware in the studio. We are free to use different methods in a DAW.

Descriptions for what most will want in a mix would be clean, dynamic, punchy, uncluttered, and either sharp or smooth all depending on the mix vision. The biggest problems are often EQ, reverb and routing.

Here are questions I constantly ask myself.

Do I use the space in my drum vst or do I feed to a reverb bus? Do I side chain my bass? What freq. will I roll off my bass and what character do I want it to have? Am I driving my channels too much in the gain  stage? Do I really need reverb at all, and if so what space do I want? Do I want this to sound like it's played in a hall or a stadium? If my bass drum isn't popping should I boost EQ in some ranges or go to my bass dum vst and try different drums and tunings? Am I happy with the solo for each track? If not, why? 

Drums and bass are generally dryer in my mixes than instruments and voice in the mids. Bass often has zero reverb. Drums only enough to add sparkle. How is my cumulative mix before master? What isn't forward enough? What is too forward? If you're ok with the basic mix, What do you hope to achieve at the mastering stage? How do you intend to achieve it?

Noone can really tell you what you like but you. All we can do is tell you how we get any given result. You might not like my mixes and I might not like yours.

 

Edited January 16, 2023 by Tim Smith

[Scott Kendrick]

Really appreciate all the detailed responses... just getting back to this now and going through all this helpful info.

[Scott Kendrick]

Thanks again - so much good stuff in here, I read through immediately. And I'll return more times.

How I got to posting this... first off, my scenario is much simpler than most here. Right now just mixing for one band so things are kind of consistent, even though we record different genres, sometimes with some different arrangements, but usually the typical drums, bass, multiple guitar tracks, multiple vocals, harmonies, etc. Only on one occasion have I been asked for stems, so I haven't incorprated a need for that into my workflow just yet, but it does explain a lot in terms of why certain routing and templates are set up the way they are.

I had a go to template, but I'm always looking to get better and started researching. The template for me, even as I branch out to other bands, genres, different arrangements -- it's about knowing certain things that work well, and sticking to them, or starting with them, and adjusting. Simple example - I like gated reverb on my snare, so it's all preset ready to go. I dynamic EQ my bass side-chained by the kick, so that's set up. Similar with certain delays, reverbs I like sitting in busses to receive sends. Again - my interest was not specifically for a more convenient mix managment, but rather, wondering if I'm getting the best sound by reverbing certain instruments together, compressing certain intstruments together etc. 

Templates are a good way to see how other people are doing it - I first found @fossile's shared template in another post and will definitely check out @Lord Tim's as well (and as mentioned, getting glimpses of how folks like Scheps, Korneff have things set). 

My template used to be

• Instrument tracks output to instrument busses
  • Sometimes multiple busses - example combining guitars for the verse into a Guit-verse bus, for the chorus, Guit-chorus bus, both combine into a Guitar master
  • I was outputing my drum room and drum overheads to a shared bus, then combing back with the rest of the drums
• Drums, Bass combine in a Rhythm bus
• Sends for reverbs, delays, parallel compression lived in busses < I used to use the same parallel compression bus for Bass and Drums, but then realized the bass was stomping on the drums - perhaps I could have contolled this with send level, but I just stopped doing it and drum parallel compression sounding way better
  • Reverbs/delays were going to master
  • Parallel compression for bass/drums were combining back into the Rhythm buss.. a bit of glue and EQ on that rhythm bus
• Vocals - I had a lead vocal bus and a backup vocal bus... lead and double to the lead bus, all the backups and harmonies to the back vocal bus, then combined into a vocal master... I was playing with where I should have my sends to delay, reverb, doubling, chorus - usually the backups/harms, I'd send the bus to those rather than the individual tracks, but with leads, I'd often just use the lead for sends and not the double

At time of writing this original post I was only sometimes using Aux for sends for specific instruments - but after posting I realized you can also output to Aux tracks, which a few of you have pointed out here. I've started moving a lot more to aux tracks, as I am finding it convenient when the aux is isolated to a specific instrument or group (the muting scenario Lord Tim mentioned). But outputting to Aux trax will be a huge convenience as well with out impacting the sound... example - the multiple guitar tracks, drums, or the vocals combining first to AUX, then outputting to busses.

I'll continue hunting for those best scenarios for combining or separating reverb and delay, or combining tracks for bus compression to get the best result.

again - thanks, I'll go through these posts a couple more times, and grab that template!

[Scott Kendrick]

@Lord Tim > that demo project is amazing... sounds really good all with stock plugins, very clean. Thank you.

[Lord Tim]

Cheers, Scott

The faux mastering I put on the master was maybe a bit iffy, honestly, but considering it was all stock without anything specifically made for mastering, I think I just got away with it!

But yeah, as I said, this is not a great way to do things if you're planning to keep the mix all in one process (aside from the big benefits of good organisation), but if you plan to make stems or alt mixes, this method is super useful. And doing alt mixes with the Mix Recall module as I did is really easy - you can load each one into the export module as a Task then set it to export while you go have dinner - it's great!

[Scott Kendrick]

@Lord Tim > I can't seem to find the PDF. Any idea where to find it, or possible to send? Thx

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

On 1/14/2023 at 4:44 PM, msmcleod said:

1. Track / bus ordering - using the same tracks and buses for every track means you know which track everything is on.  If for every song, you always use track 1 for kick drum, and track 20 for lead vocals, then you're not searching around looking for them.  

This works very well if you do templates or use a physical mixing console. Imagine the nightmare it would be if you had to re-patch all the channels of your 48 or 64 channel console for every mix.

On 1/14/2023 at 4:44 PM, msmcleod said:

2.  A lot of big names use outboard gear.  Using outboard gear usually means at least some things are permanently patched into certain ports,  so having a bus set up ready to go for your 1176 or LA2A makes sense.

It's also important to consider that while we are basking on millions of dollars worth of gear in the virtual realm, a large studio might have maybe 1 or 2 compressors like a 1176 or LA-2A (considering they cost 4 grand each), so that's a necessity more than anything.

On 1/14/2023 at 4:44 PM, msmcleod said:

3. Most of them use ProTools... I'm no ProTools expert, but when I have used it I got the impression that it can do anything, but everything has to be done the hard way. Complex effect routing (at least before they introduced bus folders), means inserting various aux tracks/sends and routing them via numbered ports. This all takes time.  Having this set up in a template means it's there for you when you need it.

That's mostly because ProTools was created in a time where the only people with access to DAWs were people which could afford the expensive TDM systems that came out in 1995, so the software had to operate in a way that made sense for the people with large consoles and tape machines. Modern DAWs have thrown that tradition away for the sake of ease of use.

On 1/14/2023 at 4:44 PM, msmcleod said:

A lot of this is evident by the signature Waves plugins that have been released over the years.  CLA ( CLA Drums, Guitar, Mix etc), Schepps (Parallel Particles) are plugins that replicate the complex routing of several effects and wrap them up in a simple to use plugin.  The more complex setup would have been in their templates at one point... but now they can just use the plugin.

While they can use their plugins, I very much doubt they do. Why would CLA load an instance of his plugins when he has the actual gear already set up in his studio and could use that instead?