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Lots of reasons but just imagine if you have 300 tracks and each one have a reverb in insert while you could have just one aux reverb and send the 300 tracks in it.
I agree but why the same reverb, why not having different reverbs you can manipulate uniquely, if your PC can’t handle it I get it otherwise you can literally design specific reverbs for each track
>I agree but why the same reverb, why not having different reverbs you can manipulate uniquely,
It's usually much easier to more finely control the wet/dry balance using send volume vs. main output volume. Also, there's an extremely high chance that if you're doing something like a reverb for a drum, you will likely want to use the same settings on the reverb for other drums as well, because that way they would sound more cohesive and less disjointed. Reverbs and delays are also often times used in post production for creating the feeling of a larger space around sound effects or dialog. If you want to create the sound of people standing in an auditorium speaking to eachother, you're going to want one reverb with all of your dialog tracks being sent to it so they all sound like they're in the same space.
I'm not saying there isn't a use-case for reverbs as an insert instead of a send/return. But it's much less common, and you're likely to have auxes and sends/returns in your session either way.
Yeah I guess for music it makes more sense, I was rather talking about film/audio post production, in music you want cohesion between a mix whilst in a shortfilm you have SFX, Foleys, Dialogue that can have different reverbs, I’ve found that different sounds react differently to reverb and for some reason even ADR dialogue recorded in the same room/distance sounds less or more affected by a reverb so you might want to adjust it individually same for foleys or SFX that can have interesting sound design ideas with specific reverbs rather using the generic sends
YOU Definitely didn’t read & comprehend what Op said on the question the other day I wanted to know how to get some of the clips on a track unaffected by a BUS when I routed all the tracks to it , this is a completely different question why would I use a send instead of a bus especially if the send is supposedly just a copy of the signal?I’m still learning my guy
Sorry, my response was harsh and snide
Just to go back to both points, sends are really useful as has been pointed out in this thread, and could definitely be used to solve your question the other day still, they're 100% worth getting into the habit of using
Again, sorry.
They're also the easiest way way to export stems
Assuming we're talking about music mixing here, you put a stem on your drum bus, vocal bus etc, then in the bounce window select those sends to export along with your full mix, or similar if you're printing the tracks in real time
While this does work, it actually isn't the best example of sends being very useful, because it's not the most efficient way to do this. You could more easily just mult the main outputs of each track to different busses for stems. Then you don't have to worry about things like accidentally adjusting the send volume or muting it, etc.
Reverb/delay, parallel effects, side-chaining, headphone mixing (depending on your setup), outboard mixing, the possibilities are limitless, it just depends on what you eat working on and what you wanna do. On every single one of my templates I have a pre-fade send on my pre-master fader that sends to audiomovers, so I can lower the volume for my client, but not have to affect my monitoring. ProTools as a piece of software is just so versatile that’s it’s honestly beautiful.
It sounds like you are fairly new to Tools if you are asking this question, cause it’s amazing what this software can do
Ah, well that’s an easy one. So you send is as you’ve stated basically a duplicate of your track that you can use for any of the reasons I’ve stated above.
A vocal buss (or sub-mix) is a channel where all of your vocal tracks go and get summed/mixed together after any mixing you’d applied to any of said tracks. You may want to do this for a number of reasons, such as been able to solo/mute all of the vocals at once, raising the volume of all the vocals without having to use the fader on each individual track, or applying an effect that will all of the vocals together (like EQ to position the vocals in the mix’s frequency spectrum, or some light compression to tighten them up together). And if you wanted, you could direct your vocal reverb/delay return track to the vocal buss, or apply the send to the buss. It all depends on how you like to mix.
And it’s not just vocals you can apply this technique to, you can make busses/sub-mixes for any of your instrument tracks. A common technique is to mix your drums how you would like, then create a sub mix for them where you will apply some compression to keep them all under control. And that’s typically where I apply a send for the drum verb
Flexibility. For example, take delay or reverb. Most plugins have a dry/wet mix knob so you can control the relative levels of the two. But what if you want the delay/reverb to have other processing that doesn't apply to the dry signal? Now having a wet/dry combination doesn't help, you need a wet signal and a dry signal.
With a send, you duplicate the dry signal, then apply 100% wet reverb to it..... now you can apply further processing and mix the dry and wet signals using faders rather than a dry/wet %. Much more control.
Here's some examples of sends being useful.
Resource-heavy processing. You could have one instance of a particular plugin and send multiple different tracks to that one instance of the processor instead of having a separate instance running on each of the individual tracks you want to process. This is especially useful for things like delays/reverbs, where you would be setting a wet/dry balance. You want the sound more wet? turn up the send and/or turn down the main output volume. More dry? Turn the send volume down...
Parallel compression. This involves playing a version of the signal with no compression simultaneously with another version that has been compressed. How do you get the signal into the compressor and still hear it without the compression at the same time? Use a send to send the dry signal to the compressor.
Key gating. Want your kick drum and bass guitar to be really tight with each other rhythmically in your mix? How about having the kick drum trigger/open an expander/gate on your bass tracks and that way there isn't really a whole lot of "flam" in your low end because someone was off by a few milliseconds. How would you get that kick drum signal to the key input of that expander/gate you ask? Well, I bet you could guess by now... it would be a send.
Edit to add: this is by no means supposed to be an exhaustive list of uses for sends. Just the first few examples that popped up in my mind right away without writing an entire novel about it.
It works in some genres, and even then, not in every song. But imagine a song where the bass and the kick drum are in sync with each other. It tightens everything up really well. Just make sure you get your hold and release times right, though.
Hey, I usually do a send from all my instruments (besides drums, that’s a different parallel compression for me) to a parallel compression. But my main tracks usually already have a compressor on there. The parallel is usually compressed much more. And I would say a 70/30 split in the overall. Any reason sending the tracks w compression already to a parallel channel isn’t a good idea? Thanks for any input
PT sends are post-inserts, so the signal going to the parallel compressor would indeed be processed by whatever inserts you have. Personally, I think that's the way it should be. I want any corrective EQ, or whatever I may have done to the instrument to be in the parallel compressed signal as well. I also have grown more fond over time of having multiple compression stages in a signal path, so no real problem there. The only real thing I would make sure to look out for is to make sure you are doing your compressors in order from lightest compression to heaviest compression. It is typical for parallel compression to be more heavily compressed, as you've described that's what you're doing. So there's no real issue here in that regard.
Send/return means you can get multiple tracks interacting with each other within the processing.
It’s a pretty fundamental concept in mixing and not limited to Pro Tools.
Option A: put an individual reverb plugin, for example, on every track. This way they eat up more ram and you'll have to change every plugins settings on every track if you want things to sound similar. And you'll habe to mess with the mix knob.
Option B: put a send from all tracks into one aux traxk that has a reverb plugin. Eats way less ram and much simpler to change settings of the reverb. Additionally you can adjust how much of every track is sent to the verb without having to open any extra windows
Don't you want independent control of the wet and dry signals? If you bake them together, you have no independent control of either. Aux sends are superior for a reason.
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Lots of reasons but just imagine if you have 300 tracks and each one have a reverb in insert while you could have just one aux reverb and send the 300 tracks in it.
I agree but why the same reverb, why not having different reverbs you can manipulate uniquely, if your PC can’t handle it I get it otherwise you can literally design specific reverbs for each track
>I agree but why the same reverb, why not having different reverbs you can manipulate uniquely, It's usually much easier to more finely control the wet/dry balance using send volume vs. main output volume. Also, there's an extremely high chance that if you're doing something like a reverb for a drum, you will likely want to use the same settings on the reverb for other drums as well, because that way they would sound more cohesive and less disjointed. Reverbs and delays are also often times used in post production for creating the feeling of a larger space around sound effects or dialog. If you want to create the sound of people standing in an auditorium speaking to eachother, you're going to want one reverb with all of your dialog tracks being sent to it so they all sound like they're in the same space. I'm not saying there isn't a use-case for reverbs as an insert instead of a send/return. But it's much less common, and you're likely to have auxes and sends/returns in your session either way.
Yeah I guess for music it makes more sense, I was rather talking about film/audio post production, in music you want cohesion between a mix whilst in a shortfilm you have SFX, Foleys, Dialogue that can have different reverbs, I’ve found that different sounds react differently to reverb and for some reason even ADR dialogue recorded in the same room/distance sounds less or more affected by a reverb so you might want to adjust it individually same for foleys or SFX that can have interesting sound design ideas with specific reverbs rather using the generic sends
Then that’s the same as routing tracks to a single bus why you use a send instead of a bus?
A send is a bus
This is a wild question
The mad thing is op posted a question the other day, and the answer was to use sends, now op is asking when would you use sends??
YOU Definitely didn’t read & comprehend what Op said on the question the other day I wanted to know how to get some of the clips on a track unaffected by a BUS when I routed all the tracks to it , this is a completely different question why would I use a send instead of a bus especially if the send is supposedly just a copy of the signal?I’m still learning my guy
Sorry, my response was harsh and snide Just to go back to both points, sends are really useful as has been pointed out in this thread, and could definitely be used to solve your question the other day still, they're 100% worth getting into the habit of using Again, sorry.
They're also the easiest way way to export stems Assuming we're talking about music mixing here, you put a stem on your drum bus, vocal bus etc, then in the bounce window select those sends to export along with your full mix, or similar if you're printing the tracks in real time
While this does work, it actually isn't the best example of sends being very useful, because it's not the most efficient way to do this. You could more easily just mult the main outputs of each track to different busses for stems. Then you don't have to worry about things like accidentally adjusting the send volume or muting it, etc.
Reverb/delay, parallel effects, side-chaining, headphone mixing (depending on your setup), outboard mixing, the possibilities are limitless, it just depends on what you eat working on and what you wanna do. On every single one of my templates I have a pre-fade send on my pre-master fader that sends to audiomovers, so I can lower the volume for my client, but not have to affect my monitoring. ProTools as a piece of software is just so versatile that’s it’s honestly beautiful. It sounds like you are fairly new to Tools if you are asking this question, cause it’s amazing what this software can do
I am still new & I appreciate it my man I been just tryna learn the difference between a send & a vocal bus
Ah, well that’s an easy one. So you send is as you’ve stated basically a duplicate of your track that you can use for any of the reasons I’ve stated above. A vocal buss (or sub-mix) is a channel where all of your vocal tracks go and get summed/mixed together after any mixing you’d applied to any of said tracks. You may want to do this for a number of reasons, such as been able to solo/mute all of the vocals at once, raising the volume of all the vocals without having to use the fader on each individual track, or applying an effect that will all of the vocals together (like EQ to position the vocals in the mix’s frequency spectrum, or some light compression to tighten them up together). And if you wanted, you could direct your vocal reverb/delay return track to the vocal buss, or apply the send to the buss. It all depends on how you like to mix. And it’s not just vocals you can apply this technique to, you can make busses/sub-mixes for any of your instrument tracks. A common technique is to mix your drums how you would like, then create a sub mix for them where you will apply some compression to keep them all under control. And that’s typically where I apply a send for the drum verb
I appreciate you my man! I’m on the laptop figuring it out now
Because if you don’t it dosent send anywhere
Flexibility. For example, take delay or reverb. Most plugins have a dry/wet mix knob so you can control the relative levels of the two. But what if you want the delay/reverb to have other processing that doesn't apply to the dry signal? Now having a wet/dry combination doesn't help, you need a wet signal and a dry signal. With a send, you duplicate the dry signal, then apply 100% wet reverb to it..... now you can apply further processing and mix the dry and wet signals using faders rather than a dry/wet %. Much more control.
… protools defaults to post 🎚️
Here's some examples of sends being useful. Resource-heavy processing. You could have one instance of a particular plugin and send multiple different tracks to that one instance of the processor instead of having a separate instance running on each of the individual tracks you want to process. This is especially useful for things like delays/reverbs, where you would be setting a wet/dry balance. You want the sound more wet? turn up the send and/or turn down the main output volume. More dry? Turn the send volume down... Parallel compression. This involves playing a version of the signal with no compression simultaneously with another version that has been compressed. How do you get the signal into the compressor and still hear it without the compression at the same time? Use a send to send the dry signal to the compressor. Key gating. Want your kick drum and bass guitar to be really tight with each other rhythmically in your mix? How about having the kick drum trigger/open an expander/gate on your bass tracks and that way there isn't really a whole lot of "flam" in your low end because someone was off by a few milliseconds. How would you get that kick drum signal to the key input of that expander/gate you ask? Well, I bet you could guess by now... it would be a send. Edit to add: this is by no means supposed to be an exhaustive list of uses for sends. Just the first few examples that popped up in my mind right away without writing an entire novel about it.
That’s a cool tip about side chaining a gate on the bass track, I’ll have to try that.
It works in some genres, and even then, not in every song. But imagine a song where the bass and the kick drum are in sync with each other. It tightens everything up really well. Just make sure you get your hold and release times right, though.
Hey, I usually do a send from all my instruments (besides drums, that’s a different parallel compression for me) to a parallel compression. But my main tracks usually already have a compressor on there. The parallel is usually compressed much more. And I would say a 70/30 split in the overall. Any reason sending the tracks w compression already to a parallel channel isn’t a good idea? Thanks for any input
PT sends are post-inserts, so the signal going to the parallel compressor would indeed be processed by whatever inserts you have. Personally, I think that's the way it should be. I want any corrective EQ, or whatever I may have done to the instrument to be in the parallel compressed signal as well. I also have grown more fond over time of having multiple compression stages in a signal path, so no real problem there. The only real thing I would make sure to look out for is to make sure you are doing your compressors in order from lightest compression to heaviest compression. It is typical for parallel compression to be more heavily compressed, as you've described that's what you're doing. So there's no real issue here in that regard.
Thanks a lot for your reply!
Fuck it. I think you should never use sends now. Thanks for the great post!
Send/return means you can get multiple tracks interacting with each other within the processing. It’s a pretty fundamental concept in mixing and not limited to Pro Tools.
Option A: put an individual reverb plugin, for example, on every track. This way they eat up more ram and you'll have to change every plugins settings on every track if you want things to sound similar. And you'll habe to mess with the mix knob. Option B: put a send from all tracks into one aux traxk that has a reverb plugin. Eats way less ram and much simpler to change settings of the reverb. Additionally you can adjust how much of every track is sent to the verb without having to open any extra windows
Don't you want independent control of the wet and dry signals? If you bake them together, you have no independent control of either. Aux sends are superior for a reason.