Bus confusion

[Cobus Prinsloo]

I thought my mix was perfect until I noticed that sound from my Drums bus feeds into my Vox bus! The open EQ is from my Vox bus, but the sonic spectrum on display is coming from my drums.

I assume this is happening because both my Drums bus and Vocals bus have sends to the same Reverb bus to ensure that they share the same space. Is there a better way of sharing the same reverb among different buses?

[Amberwolf]

Don't send the reverb back to the orignal track or bus.   Send the reverb in parallel (just the wet signal, no dry) to the master bus (or whatever mixdown-busing you use before that).

So your structure would have your various tracks going to their various type-buses, and each track or bus would have it's send to this reverb bus. 

The reverb bus *and* the other buses all then feed your mixdown or master bus, etc.

 

That said, if your mix is exactly the way you want it, it doesn't matter what's "wrong" with the way the buses are setup, etc.  If it sounds like you want, it's done.  

Edited 5 hours ago by Amberwolf

[Cobus Prinsloo]

24 minutes ago, Amberwolf said:

Don't send the reverb back to the orignal track or bus.   Send the reverb in parallel (just the wet signal, no dry) to the master bus

Thank you, now for a potentially dumb question: how do I relay only the wet signal of Reverb directly to my Master bus?

[David Baay]

2 minutes ago, Cobus Prinsloo said:

how do I relay only the wet signal of Reverb directly to my Master bus?

I'm not exactly sure what you have going on because Sonar wouldn't  allow sending or outputting the reverb bus back to any source track as that would create a feedback loop, but the Reverb bus should Output to Master.

[Cobus Prinsloo]

1 hour ago, David Baay said:

but the Reverb bus should Output to Master.

I've got it like that now, thanks. How do I determine that it's only the wet signal going through?

[msmcleod]

1 hour ago, Cobus Prinsloo said:

Thank you, now for a potentially dumb question: how do I relay only the wet signal of Reverb directly to my Master bus?

In your reverb plugin, there should be either a Mix control, or separate Dry/Wet controls.  You want dry at 0%, and wet at 100%.

Once you've done this, you may have to reduce the send level from your tracks, and increase raise the output fader (because the dry signal is no longer being "added" by the reverb).

Having the dry at 0% / wet at 100% is standard practice when sending to an effect bus.  The only time you'd want a different mix of wet/dry is when you're using the effect inline.

 

[Cobus Prinsloo]

Thank you so much - now it makes more sense. I still use the old Sonitus Reverb. The Dry slider below is at 0 dB, which I assume should stay as-is. The Reverb slider is set to -7 dB. I don't know what E.R stands for.

Edited 2 hours ago by Cobus Prinsloo
Added a screenshot

[msmcleod]

2 hours ago, Cobus Prinsloo said:

... I don't know what E.R stands for...

E.R. means "Early Reflections".  Treat this as part of the reverb - i.e. you probably don't want this at 0.0db, but it may be less than the reverb level, depending on how loud you want them to be.