I find this to be particularly annoying, since I import omf projects from AVID editing systems quite frequently. Avid to OMF to VEGAS 5.0 causes the stereo music to arrive as two mono files on adjacent tracks, and I often use volume and EQ curves on the music....and find ithat I have to do them twice (one for each track, left and right). Being able to gang/group faders would be nice.......

Isn't "group" & "buss" on a mixer the same thing by definition?

Pretty much, yes.

geoff

>>Isn't "group" & "buss" on a mixer the same thing by definition?<<

Yes, thanks for this. I was getting somewhat confused about this thread and wondering if I was missing something. Perhaps the other posters can clarify between grouping and bussing?

drbam

No. Grouping faders is what we're talking about here, which is totally different from bussing - that's routing a set of tracks. Think of the grouping on an 02R or similar digital desk, for example. Generally useful for mixing.

Ben

not vca groups

Quite right - grouping locks faders together to give you simultaneous control of multiple tracks as you could on a physical desk. This allows levels to be changed in one movement. A good system will allow you to maintain different fader positions once grouped so changes are proportional and they don't all snap to the same position just because they are grouped.

Busses route multiple channels to a single fader - combining the audio itself.. not just setting the levels. That means you can apply EQ or other processing easily to all those channels in one go - just by applying it to the buss.

If what you want is to apply different processes to different channels but the keep the volume of all the channels consistently balanced, you couldn't do this with a buss since the individual processes would already be applied before the buss fader was reached. So it really depends on what you want to achieve.

In general I'm pretty impressed with the Vegas feature-set for routing - but grouping faders is definitely something that should be considered.

I guess my biggest gripe is that it appears you cannot route a buss fader to an auxiliary send (ie. to pass on to another buss). I wonder whether this is planned for a future release? It's a real shame to not have this feature since it leaves the Aux/Bussing capabilities incomplete.

drew

I guess my biggest gripe is that it appears you cannot route a buss fader to an auxiliary send (ie. to pass on to another buss). I wonder whether this is planned for a future release? It's a real shame to not have this feature since it leaves the Aux/Bussing capabilities incomplete.

Yes ... I totally agree with this statement and have argued this point in this forum previously stating that buss to buss routing is meaningless IMHO without the ability to defeat the "unprocessed" portion of the signal going to the 2 mix or simply providing an auxillary send function...

Quite right - grouping locks faders together to give you simultaneous control of multiple tracks as you could on a physical desk. This allows levels to be changed in one movement. A good system will allow you to maintain different fader positions once grouped so changes are proportional and they don't all snap to the same position just because they are grouped.

First of all, your explanation of this scenario is a functionality that only came to light with automation & only represents a visual stimulation of what occurs with busses and groups.

I totally disagree with the argument that busses and groups are different by definition or in functionality on a mixer, unless you are referring to what is a functional part of automation for the stimulation of the eye, not the ears or what is actually happening with your summed audio.

All of the functionality that is described concerning this type of grouping already exists in V5 with the use of busses and is not required when applied correctly in your template.

Groups and busses are absolutely, exactly the same by definition.

Even the infamous SSL and Neve consoles shared the terms loosley from console to console.

No. Grouping faders is what we're talking about here, which is totally different from bussing - that's routing a set of tracks. Think of the grouping on an 02R or similar digital desk, for example. Generally useful for mixing.

That's pretty funny.... An O2R has no busses, that is why this automatable functionality that you are describing was applied to this console...

So you guys are all talking about something that Yamaha invented as a work around to not having physical groups or busses...

That's pretty funny... LoL

I'm not knocking it, I use O2Rs in my main Control Room and this concept actually works very well, also.

...But it is not the De Facto standard by which the terms Busses & Groups were defined in the world of professional audio.

:~)

Hold down the ctrl key and click in the track headers of the tracks you want to group. The tracks — including those between the selected tracks — are highlighted. Now you can do the cahnges (volume, pan, and Fx) you want as a group. Make sure you don't click anywhere else.

I guess we are in some ways into a new paradigm

The best way I think to describe it is for those familiar with SSL's and call the "locking faders" VCA groups, though that is TERRIBLY out of place here

and call Vegas' busses " summing busses"

the locking fader groups do not summ together, we just ask that they keep a predefined and infinitely variable relationship between them

Lets say we had a drumset and the bass guitar in a buss with an EQ on it. We also have guitars. If we like the guitar vs bass/drum levels, then we need to be careful not to change the fader relationship between these 3 sounds

Throwing the guitars in the vegas buss could easily accomplish this, but what if you dont want the guitar going through that EQ?

Then we would use the VCA groups, locking all three sets of faders together, which works great

the problem the poster is talking about is that, you are going to need to adjust the level together of these three things constantly, yet vegas wont remember the VCA groups, as soon as you click on another fader, the vca group is gone

this was like a 3 or 4 page flame fest during vegas 1, and I'd love to see it dealt with, but Im MUCH more concerned about hardware input monitoring at the moment

Thanks Sari, but I know about that - I've been using Vegas since version 1.0.

< Make sure you don't click anywhere else. <

That's my point, I want to be able to make these groups stick. So, you'd select a bunch of tracks and I guess right-click on them and select an option to group them, much like one can group events. Now, whenever you click on one of those tracks, all of them are selected and any mix operations you do on one happen on another. I'd imagine then each of these sets of grouped tracks would have a number or letter assignment or similar so you know what's grouped with what.

Tmrpro - I don't have an 02R in front of me right now, but my 03D certainly lets me assign tracks to busses. From memory I also believe an 02R does, with 8 busses. These desks also let me group individual faders, as do many desks; why are you hung up on Yamaha? It was an example.

Ben

I'm glad this bus aux send issue came up! I've been struggling with this and I agree - what is the point of bus-bus routing without it?

tmrpro: What is your solution workaround?

My situation is probably very common - I have "stacked" tracks (either bg vocals or horns) and I want to use a common EQ and compression for the group. So I send 'em all to a bus and do it. But now, in order to use reverb, I either have to dedicate an insert reverb to the bus or send the individual tracks auxs to a reverb, thus having the reverb sends be un-eq'ed and uncompressed.

Anyone: what are the solutions you use for this?

Thanks. And I hope the busses have aux sends in the future!!

Tmrpro - I don't have an 02R in front of me right now, but my 03D certainly lets me assign tracks to busses. From memory I also believe an 02R does, with 8 busses. These desks also let me group individual faders, as do many desks; why are you hung up on Yamaha? It was an example.

Yamaha calls these busses but they are not, in fact, busses....

Where do you adjust the final level of these busses?

My point is: you can't adjust the final level on either of these console's busses without adjusting the individual channel's levels whether they are fader-grouped together or not. So, Yamaha calls these busses, but in fact they are not. They are actually Tape-Outs, because the O2R & O3D model's buss design is not a gain stage in the audio chain.

This is precisely why Yamaha addressed this issue with fader-grouping.

I'm not hung up on Yamaha, I brought it up because another post in this thread was referring to the Yamaha like it is the normal way to think of Groups and Busses, and it certainly is not the norm.

My situation is probably very common - I have "stacked" tracks (either bg vocals or horns) and I want to use a common EQ and compression for the group. So I send 'em all to a bus and do it. But now, in order to use reverb, I either have to dedicate an insert reverb to the bus or send the individual tracks auxs to a reverb, thus having the reverb sends be un-eq'ed and uncompressed.

There is no solution for this problem at the buss.

I agree that it is strange for us to use reverbs as inserts and throughput all of your audio through the verb.

The problem with this is you are using the Reverb's mix function (% of wet / dry) as your determination of how much reverb you want.

It would really be nice to put a verb on a buss, 100% wet and send varying levels of which instruments you want to have that reverb on ... This certainly is more representative of how ambience would occur by nature, acoustically.

Instead we have to add a different reverb for every variance in reverberated levels.

Although this works, it becomes very incremental instead of linear.

You could set up 8 reverbs on independent busses with varying degrees of Wet-Dry mixes. Although that would cover a fair spectrum .... it isn't how ambience works in nature.

It really forces us to use the plugins at the channel level and unfortunately in the stacking scenario, you are also forced to apply independent channel dynamic processing and EQ .... then you don't have the advantage of overall dynamic processing and you have to still create a buss, at that point, for overall dynamics ...but be very careful, because now you're going to be compressing reverbs, which drastically changes their characteristics.

I suppose in software there could be a way to break apart the channels after they have been buss'd/eq'd/compressed together (for the sake of feeding a reverb). I've yet to see that happen in any program... seems like it would work the same way if you just had the same EQ on each channel, then have a massively-high-channeled linked compressor. I wonder if anyone goes about it like that in the hardware realm. I can imagine that, in software, it would be easy enough to construct such a thing, but even then, would you get that 'gel' effect that bus-EQing and compressing can introduce? Does that really occur 'in nature'?

Nevertheless, tmrpro's suggestion of having separate reverbs of differing dry/wet settings would certainly be more 'natural' then having it over the whole thing. I'm not sure how you could set that up in Vegas unless you could also link the compressors up (can you do this?) But for the previous poster, if you didn't care to be that bothered with it at this detail, you could simply bounce down that bus and reinsert it as a new track (probably obvious, I know...)

Hi (especially to tmrpro, who makes a number of interesting claims!)

* BUSS issue (& Yamahas):

I have to disagree - I don't believe a buss is only a buss if you can control its master level. The purpose of a buss is surely to provide an additional signal path which can be taken to a seperate physical output. If you can send the fader-level signal from multiple channels to another path with or without them going to the stereo buss too, then you have bussing capabilities.

The old O2R does this... and so I'm interested to know if others agree with your statement that this functionality does not constitute something that we can call "busses". Way before the Yamahas, busses were the way variable (and multiple) channels were routed to tape tracks - and I remember fairly big desks without master bus faders. Of course the Yamaha O2R96 has added a master fader layer for the eight busses so the "final level" point you mentioned has now been addressed - but I still can't see this as being relevant to the definition of a buss.

I also remember VCA fader-grouping being around on desks with great bussing architecture - and I have for years worked on ProTools which also has both fader groups and busses with levels so I reject the claim that Yamaha added fader groups just to make of for poor implementation of busses!!


FADER GROUPS being different from BUSSES::

Here is an example of why fader grouping is not the same as the buss routing concept.

Imagine this generic scenario - you have 4 channels.. each is routed to the master "stereo" bus and additionally the 4 channels have 2 post-fade aux sends.. all 4 channels are sending to those auxes at varying levels (say for reverb or other additive processing).

So - if you send the output of these 4 channels to a buss and use the buss fader to control the levels of all four, you are not changing the level of send to the auxes of those four 4 channels. Only moving the four original faders will do that (and you will have to move all four proportionally).

The only benefit is if you wish to control the collective output level of the four channels without changing post-fade aux levels.

When you group the fader movement you also adjusting the sends to the auxes - it is the same as having multiple hands on faders all moving perfectly in proportion. Please tell me you can see a difference between this and using a buss!

drew

The old O2R does this... and so I'm interested to know if others agree with your statement that this functionality does not constitute something that we can call "busses". Way before the Yamahas, busses were the way variable (and multiple) channels were routed to tape tracks - and I remember fairly big desks without master bus faders.

Your understanding of sub-groups & busses is very different than mine.

I appreciate your position, but I will tell you that your statement regarding; "Way before the Yamahas" ... is completely wrong and I totally disagree ... because De Facto standard recording consoles before the Yamaha's had both busses/groups and tape outputs which are two entirely different things.

Those of you who were using consoles that didn't have both, were not using what was considered to be a "true" recording console. You were using a live mixing board and using the sub-group/buss section of the console to provide your tape machine with the closest line level match that you could get out of this mismatched scenario that was not originally designed to be coupled with a tape machine.

So - if you send the output of these 4 channels to a buss and use the buss fader to control the levels of all four, you are not changing the level of send to the auxes of those four 4 channels. Only moving the four original faders will do that (and you will have to move all four proportionally).

This is why recording consoles (as opposed to live mixing boards) have the option for pre/post fader switches at the busses with auxillary sends and buss to buss routing capabilities. Furthermore, the typical recording console design was an inline design where each channel strip was also a buss and could be routed in combination to any other channel/buss including your choice of several master configurations.

The other typical design was a split console design which seperated the buss section as independent fader groups that had the same fuctionality, but provided another (and some considered meaningless) method for physically approaching your mixing needs.

Regardless, in either case, you have completely the same functionality that you would have as Drew described in his rebuttal without having to do it across a number of physical tracks...

There are a few of us here who use to be limited to 24 tracks (not too long ago) and bussing was a necessary means to conserve tape tracks. Thinking of a console's buss section as only being a routing method for assigning channels to tape tracks is a little bit vague & ridiculous.

I really want to stress this point primarily because this is a very good thread for our developers to see, and the biggest drawback to mixing in Vegas 5 (I personally love everything else from a mixing standpoint) is the inability to utilize auxillary style effects sends & returns. It would really be great if this could be designed to be effective for outputting this functionality as an effects send/return assignment to soundcard output/input.

Well - I'll agree with you there! We're certainly on different wavelengths but I'm keen to keep this friendly which is surely the key to making it a constructive discussion.

Just to clarify:
1) We are talking about fader groups, not channel sub-groups. IE - the grouped movement of multiple faders - not sub-grouping channels to a signal path. Fader grouping does not group signals.

2) Auxiliaries, tape sends, headphone feeds, pre-fades and the master path are all types of busses too.

3) Whilst I bow to your knowledge of big "true" recording consoles I'm disappointed you've not been able to understand how my example did not relate to busses. We're talking about a change of levels on multiple channel faders affecting the level of their individual post-fade auxiliary sends.

Just to check I'm making this clear - and with no intention to patronise anyone - if you have a kick drum on channel 1 and a snare on channel 2 but you only want reverb on channel 2, then fader grouping allows you to adjust the levels of both whilst keeping the relationship between them consistent.

If you were to send these two channels to a buss then surely the reverb would be applied to both?

drew

If you were to send these two channels to a buss then surely the reverb would be applied to both?

Thank you for staying friendly...

:)

You are absolutely correct, if the reverb was applied at the buss ...and this is precisely why I'm saying that it doesn't matter, because Vegas does not currently offer the following functionality:

Your request for it to coincide with auxillaries, tape sends, headphone sends, etc. does not exist and could not be achieved without the use of redundant reverbs on individual channels.

Creating a "snap to" or recall function for fader-groupings would still require the user to add the redundant reverbs to individual channels if you wanted to use the same ambient effect for several instruments with varying degrees of wetness. This is a big CPU muncher.

I added this to my previous reply because I really think it is important to address these things in a method that doesn't have developers going around the block to get across the street:

I really want to stress this point primarily because this is a very good thread for our developers to see, and the biggest drawback to mixing in Vegas 5 (I personally love everything else from a mixing standpoint) is the inability to utilize auxillary style effects sends & returns. It would really be great if this could also be designed to be effective for outputting this functionality as an effects' send/return assignment to soundcard output/input.

"I want to group two or more faders so that moving one of them moves the others simultaneously "

keeping it real... well said,, Sonar and cubase offer this feature,, it's a simple right click function,


I work with an extremely creative singer, when we are working on harmonies , grouping the faders works like a charm,,,,,,,,

Exactly jardeano!....

So just to tidy this up (since it would be a real shame for those who had asked for this feature and justified why it would be useful to them if the thread resonated more to the sound of users who don't care for it but want another feature instead):

Let's just say - there are a number of people here who would love to see a Fader Grouping feature as seen in ProTools, SADiE and the Yamaha desks implemented in a future release of Vegas.

Those who have requested *can* see why it would be useful and there are probably many more who would instantly see why it would be a useful feature to allow multiple channel volumes to be altered whilst keeping the aux sends from each seperate yet related to the level of that channel's fader.