Cakewalk Sonar Bus Plugin Sound Difference

[thegaltieribrothers]

Hi,

I have a drum track going to a bus drum track on which I have a reverb, but usually I have the bus drum track picking up the reverb from another bus FX track via a send.

I find that the first scenario produces a better sound than the second, but I would like to know why as I assumed that the second method, which was my usual way of working, would provide the same sound results.

Any ideas on why the sound is different?

[Bass Guitar]

That’s obviously why. 
A send to a bus is a totally different signal path than a direct insertion of an effect in the signal path. 
This is why effects like reverb are often put on their own bus. 
The purpose of reverb / delay is to emulate a space like a concert hall. So it’s a common practice to share that space with all the sounds. This puts the listener in that space. 
 

Using a reverb / delay bus allows total control over the balance of wet to dry from all the tracks or sub buses. The effects will be set to max wet. Then we selectively send part of each track or bus to taste. We use this to create the “ space “ around the music. 

Putting reverb or delay directly in the signal path on the track is a different use of those effects. Example this is more common with guitar or snares and Tom’s. 
 

You rarely want reverb on a kick drum. 
 

So it is not common to use a global reverb on the drum bus. We use sends from individual kit pieces to avoid putting reverb on the kick. 
I said it is not common but if you want a certain sound then you might put reverb on the kick but it will need specific processing to avoid a muddy low end from happening. 
 

So the answer to your question is yes sending a track thought any effects pt in a track or bus effects bin results in a 100 % wet processing of the track r bus. Most effects have a wet/ dry mix control to dial in the desired amount.
On a bus it means all tracks coming in will have the same amount of processing applied to the sound. 
 

Using a send to a dedicated effect bus allows each track to have its own wet/ dry mix. 

[David Baay]

11 hours ago, thegaltieribrothers said:

I have a drum track going to a bus drum track on which I have a reverb, but usually I have the bus drum track picking up the reverb from another bus FX track via a send.

What Bass Guitar said about Insert FX vs. Send FX is accurate but it's not clear to me from the above terminology that this is what  you're talking about...?

FX in tracks are always working as Inserts (i.e. the entire signal goes through the FX), but FX on Buses and Aux tracks can be used either way, depending on whether the source track (or bus) is Outputting or Sending to the  aux/bus.

And in all cases the Return of the FX is to the Output of the track or bus it's on, so the description "I have the bus drum track picking up the reverb from another bus FX track via a send" doesn't really make sense.

You might want to have a look at Sonar's Signal Flow chart and re-phrase that.