buses and assignable effects

adihead wrote on 9/2/2003, 3:29 AM

what exactly are busus and assignable effects? and what are the differences between the two. i'm going through the manual, reading about buses and effects and cant really figure out how they are different from one another.

thanks,
adihead

Comments

Geoff_Wood wrote on 9/2/2003, 6:01 AM

Busses are audio 'channels' to where tracks on the timeline can be routed and combined into a common signal, which is then combined with the 'Master' buss.

Assignable effects are effect plugins that are, um, assignable. They can be inserted (assigned) in a track effects insert point, or assigned to a buss, or master buss.

The purpose of assignable effects in busses is to allow the inclusion of a single plugin effect (or series of effects) that a group of tracks will be treated with similarly (with the actaul levels adjsted by the buss send slider). This is easier and more CPU effecient that putting a separate instance of the same effect on each of a bunch of individual tracks.

Assignable effects on busses are mostly suitable for 'blendable' types of effects, where a proportion of the effect signal is mixed back with the uneffected signal. Like reverb, but unlike compression where the 'whole' signal is effected.

geoff

pwppch wrote on 9/2/2003, 4:23 PM

Geoff pretty much described it. I will add only a point of convention:

The Assignable FX bus in ACID/Vegas are basically a combination of a hardware mixer's Aux Send and Return buses. That is the channel or "track" can send any amount to an AUX bus (pre or post fader as well). The First set of faders on the Assignable FX bus is the master "AUX" send level. This level is sent into the FX chain. The ouput of the FX is then "returned" to the second set of faders and then routed to a bus.

A Bus treats its FX chain like "inserts" on a hardware mixer. There is no gain stage and the FX are processed "pre fader", like most hardware mixer buses.

Also, you will note that the Assignable FX buses are only exposed on tracks in the multi-purpose fader control. This is done to indicate their "AUX send/return" design/usage model. Buses can be assigned to a track as the main destination or as an aux "send". The real intent is to permit the track to send to a different hardware bus, but it can also be used very much like an Assignable FX send, just with out a "Return" gain stage under user control.

Peter

MyST wrote on 9/2/2003, 7:57 PM

I'll come back and re-read Peter's definition when I'm not so tired. ;)

M