A Question About Sends

[Sailor55]

(I'm using Cakewalk Sonar, but this also happens in CwB)

I have a project with several vocal tracks, all of which feed into a single vocal bus which outputs to the master bus. I wanted to duck a Rhythm Guitar track with the  vocals. On that track's FX bin I have a Waves C6 multi-band compressor with a side chain input. So... I put a send on the vocal bus to drive the C6 side chain. And it seems to work except that, if I SOLO the rhythm guitar I hear both the rhythm guitar and the vocal bus. That can't be right. Or can it?

This happens even if I disable the C6. It happens even if I lower the send volume to -inf.  The only way to stop this is by routing the send to "none" or by muting the vocal bus. It seems the very act of  routing the vocal bus send to the c6 side chain causes the vocals to route through the rhythm guitar track such that you  hear it when the guitar track is soloed.

Here is what does work: I put a send on every vocal track to a common auxiliary track then route the Aux track output to the C6 side chain input. Then everything works as expected. No sound from the vocal bus appearing in the Rhythm guitar track and the Aux track volume works as expected to control the C6 side chain input.

The manual suggests a bus and an aux track are functionally the same. Apparently not in this case. What am I missing?

[Sailor55]

Okay.  Apparently, I'm the only one here who's ever seen this. I've discovered other projects of mine with the same problem. My takeaway is this: It's not a good idea to route a send from a bus back to a side chain input on a track effect (at least, not the waves C6 multi-band compressor).  Yeah it sort of works, but in my case, not very well since the bus "sounds" back through the track and messes up the mix. From now on I'll use auxiliary tracks for such things since that always seems to work.     

[Bristol_Jonesey]

I think this is exactly as designed. If you put a send to another track, you're essentially sending a copy of the original across - there is nothing in the routing which would mute the send.

[Sailor55]

That certainly makes sense to me. But in this case, I wasn't 'sending to a track' (from a buss) so much as I was sending to the side chain input of an effect on a track. The Waves C6 side chain input is intended to control compression of a specific band. And in fact, it actually does do that. However, it baffles me as to why that should also route the send  through to the track output as well.

[Xoo]

Are you sure that's what's happening?  Mute the track - do you still hear the bus?

[bitflipper]

On 9/1/2024 at 10:11 AM, Sailor55 said:

The manual suggests a bus and an aux track are functionally the same.

Functionally, they are - insofar as both are points where tracks get combined. The differences derive not so much from what they do, but when they do it.

A bus is traditionally an end-point, the last stop before going out to the world, in keeping with Sonar's (and most DAWs') model that is based on conventional hardware consoles. Except that If you were mixing on outboard hardware, you'd be able to route signals from the bus module back into a channel. You wouldn't want to, though, because that can create a feedback loop. In a DAW, that is simply prevented from happening. 

The solution is an aux track, which has all the functionality of a traditional bus but is processed beforehand, as a track. In practical use, they can pretty much be treated as tracks, e.g. moving them around on the screen, putting them in a track folder, freezing, bouncing, even recording. Internally, they are technically patch points rather than busses. If you've used hardware patch bays, you know that while they are technically busses in an electrical sense, they have their own capabilities and limitations.

This doesn't address why bus soloing doesn't behave the way you expected; that's a deeper subject. I just wanted to try and clarify how aux tracks and busses differ, despite both being functionally "busses".

[Sailor55]

On 9/8/2024 at 3:12 PM, Xoo said:

Are you sure that's what's happening?  Mute the track - do you still hear the bus?

When the track is muted the bus is still heard even though the track itself does not sound. Very strange. The only way to stop the bus coming through the track is to reassign the send to "none" or else to delete it.  Lowering the send volume to -inf and even disabling the send will not stop the bus from sounding through the track. You can't even stop it by disabling the effect to which it is sending.

On 9/9/2024 at 11:27 AM, bitflipper said:

This doesn't address why bus soloing doesn't behave the way you expected; that's a deeper subject. I just wanted to try and clarify how aux tracks and busses differ, despite both being functionally "busses".

Thanks for clarifying this. It is very useful to know.

Since there are two or three ways to overcome this issue, it's not really a showstopper, but  as far as I'm concerned you should be able to send from a buss to an effect input on a track.  I don't think you can 'send' to a normal track anyway. When you go to insert a send, normal tracks are never offered up as a destination. You only get the option of aux tracks, patch points or side chain inputs to effects.

[Xoo]

35 minutes ago, Sailor55 said:

When the track is muted the bus is still heard even though the track itself does not sound. Very strange. The only way to stop the bus coming through the track is to reassign the send to "none" or else to delete it.  Lowering the send volume to -inf and even disabling the send will not stop the bus from sounding through the track. You can't even stop it by disabling the effect to which it is sending.

To me, this implies the output of the bus is going to a (downstream) output.  What is it set to?

[Sailor55]

18 hours ago, Xoo said:

To me, this implies the output of the bus is going to a (downstream) output.  What is it set to?

The vocal bus output goes to the master bus which outputs to my Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 interface.

[Xoo]

This makes sense then: the bus needs to be active for the sidechain to work, so soloing the guitar track doesn't mute the bus.  I reckon you could do something clever with pre fades and multiple busses but I'm not sure what right now :-)

 

[Bristol_Jonesey]

Set your sends to pre-fader 

[Sailor55]

4 hours ago, Bristol_Jonesey said:

Set your sends to pre-fader 

Good suggestion, but it makes no difference, pre or post.

5 hours ago, Xoo said:

This makes sense then: the bus needs to be active for the sidechain to work, so soloing the guitar track doesn't mute the bus.  I reckon you could do something clever with pre fades and multiple busses but I'm not sure what right now 🙂

I think you are correct. It was wrong of me to think the bus was somehow sounding "through" the guitar track. In order for the the guitar track to be soloed, its effects must also function or it isn't truly a solo . In order for that to happen the vocal bus must be 'active' too. That means you will hear it through the master. I guess it's unreasonable to expect Sonar to know that when a track's effect is side chained to a bus it should be aware to also mute the bus (and yet, still feed it to the side chain) when the track is soloed.

I think the mystery is solved. The use of aux tracks is probably the best the way to go in these situations. My thanks to you both for helping me to think this through and improve my understanding.