Bussing Signal Flow

When most of us think of a bus, we usually refer to our local public transportation system, and in reality
these busses perform much the same function as an audio bus would in our D.A.W. or mixing console. Think
about how a bus works, it has a specific path it follows and at any time someone can get on that bus and ride it
to its final destination. Furthermore, there are many different busses each following their own path with their
own passengers. This is exactly the same purpose of an audio bus. Only instead of people, the passengers are
audio signals. Also, if you think about it, a bus is only effective to get people from one point in the city to
another. It generally doesnt take you outside the city. For our purposes, the city is our mixing console. This
is where the concept of an audio bus came to be. As recording started to get more complex and users were
offered more audio tracks to work with, there was a need to be able to easily have control of those tracks. For
our purposes, we will be looking at using a bus and return to control a sub-group of tracks. In our next article
we will look at how to use busses for effect sends.

Notice how my highlighted tracks on the left have the output of Bus 1-2 and the input into the Aux track is Bus
1-2? Thats signal flow at work. Outputs feed inputs, which feed outputs, over and over again.

Everything we do with audio is based around this basic concept of signal flow.
Now we have the output of all our background vocal tracks going down a bus path, through an Aux track, then
to our man output 1-2 so we can hear it out of our speakers or headphones. Ta-da! If we want to increase or
decrease the overall level of our bus 1-2 element within the mix, all we have to do is use the volume fader on
the Aux track since it is controlling all of the assigned tracks.

So.basically. Output(audio) Input(Aux/Bus) Output (Master)

Creating Send and Return Tracks (step by step)

1. On an existing track, click

on an Output selector for a
send

2. Select "new track..." from the pop-up menu. The New Track dialog will appear.
3. In the New Track dialog, set the Channel Width to Stereo, the Track Type to Aux Input, and type
"Reverb" in the Name field. (You can leave the other settings at their default values.)

4. Click the Create button.

Pro Tools will automatically create a new Stereo Aux Input and name it "Reverb." Then Pro Tools
creates a new stereo Internal Mix Bus and names it "Reverb" as well. Finally, Pro Tools assigns both
the Send Output and the Input to the Aux Track to the new "Reverb" bus. All that's left to do is assign
your desired reverb plug-in on the new Aux In
 Parallel Chains/Parallel Compression

Parallel compression has long been a part of the arsenal of engineers the world over, traditionally used on drums
but can be used to great effect on just about any manner of audio signal. Today we will look at using the Bomb
Factory 'BF76', which comes standard with Pro Tools to get some great compressed drum sounds.

Step 1
In the following screen shot we can see 8 audio tracks of drums.
Step 2

Create two new stereo Aux Tracks, using the shortcut Shift+Command+N, name it something appropriate like
'Drums' and 'Para_drums'. Then set the input to a free bus. In the screen shot below, I am setting the input of my
tracks to 'Parallel 1', which is really just Bus27-28. I have renamed certain busses to allow quicker navigation
throughout large sessions
Step 3

Set the outputs of each of your drum tracks to the bus you have just selected on each of your Aux Tracks. You
have now created two Aux Tracks receiving the same drum signal.
Step 4
Now insert a BF76 compressor on the Para_drums track, solo the track, and set the attack, release and ratio as
seen in the diagram below.

The BF76 is a virtual recreation of the vintage '1176' compressor. This compressor had some idiosyncrasies,
such as the higher the number the faster the attack and release, and for some reason when you slam all the ratio
buttons in, it produced this creamy splatter of massive compression. Obviously the BF76 isn't going to be as
good as the real thing, but for a plugin that is standard with Pro Tools, it is very impressive.

Step 5
Before we start compressing, put all of your drum tracks into 'solo safe' mode, by holding the command key and
left clicking on the solo button of each drum track. This ensures that when we have our 'Para_drums' track solo-
ed we will still hear drums.

Now turn your input all the way down and press play. Slowly bring the input of the BF76 up until you are
happy with the compressed drum sound, remember you can get away with a bit more compression than usual as
we are going to be mixing the parallel compressed drums under the original.
Step 6

Now unsolo your 'Para_drums' track, turn the volume fader all the way down and then bring it up under the
finished drums until you are happy with the sound.

Listen to the final mix. The effect is subtle but gives the drums extra punch that they perhaps lacked before.
You can achieve much more dramatic effects with some time and patience!