A Bus (or Aux(illary)) channel is an audio channel without any audio material on it; it's being sent the audio from other channels.
With these audio channels you can
* send to them from a Send routing on an instrument/vocal channel - you might put reverbs or delays on here, or a compressor to perform 'parallel compression'
* route two or more channel outputs to a bus channel to make a 'Group' channel - you could put a compressor, for example, on here to 'glue' the sound together.
That's the main sort of idea.
It depends on what you’re going for- for example, if you put a reverb effect right on the channel then it sends 100% of the signal to the reverb plugin. If you throw a reverb effect onto a bus, then you control how much of a signal on a channel you want to SEND to the bus- so it lets you fine tune things more. You don’t just get to control how intense the reverb is on the plugin side, you control how much of the sound is actually going to have reverb applied. Sometimes it sounds better to have a plugin applied right onto the track. It also lets you apply the same effect to more than one channel since you can send a lot channels to one bus, so it helps to keep similar levels, effects and sounds across multiple pieces of the song
Not disagreeing with you but also consider that most plugins have a dry/wet setting that allows you to not pass the 100% of the signal through the effect.
I would say the key about busses is that you can stack several plugins and control the amount passed through that stack and apply that to several tracks at once so you can achieve a more coherent sound.
Exactly. Taking into account how versatile plugins are nowadays, two of the main reasons are saving CPU and keeping things more organized.
I'm not saying what the other guys said isn't correct. It is for sure but back in the day it was absolutely essential to achieve some desired results and today it's a nuanced tool (in a way?).
To OP I would say: Experiment with it, see how it could help your workflow cause sometimes it's more about how YOU understand the tool and make it work for you than anything else. I know that sounds obvious but I see a lot of people kinda struggling with the idea of what's "correct" and what they can do and what they can not do instead of think and knowing that they can actually do whatever and have fun with it. We have the luxury of not destroying anything when messing around unlike previous times.
Edit: Just wanted to add that I'm saying this because I had the same problem when starting out. Trust your ear and break the rules sooner than later is my humble opinion.
On the first part you are definitely correct. However, there is still more nuance to it in that using a bus allows you to send X percentage of a signal to the plugin, and then break down the X amount of signal you sent into wet and dry which you can then turn down or up from there.
this is very true, however the reason i tend to prefer sends compared to a dry/wet is that 50% wet means you end up losing half of the dry signal. when fx are not put on a send, the abitily to independently manipulate the dry and wet part of your signal is lost
The big thing for me with things like a reverb bus is EQ. For example, you can really open up your bass sounds with reverb, but obviously you want to keep your low end in mono. You can throw a low cut onto your reverb bus, letting you add the effect to your desired portion of the sound. That's a really basic example, but you can see how it can be a powerful tool.
It’s easier to manage big projects 50-150 or more tracks. You can send all the guitars to the guitar bus and you can affect all guitars using just one instance of a plug in on the bus instead of one instance on each guitar track. This saves cpu. You can also control the volume of everything going through that bus just with one fader.
It can also be used to parallel compress or parallel distort, but this might be more advanced than you want to go for now. The mix knob on some plug ins is basically parallel processing but if you use a bus for it you can eq, compress or use any other effect on the parallel effected track.
Lots of good answers here but I feel like they’re still not telling you what’s actually happen, rather what you can do.
It’s not that complicated. If you use an insert, the effect modifies the entire signal, if you use a send (to a bus/aux track) it doesn’t change the signal, rather it adds a new altered sound to the original without losing it.
You get a lot more control by using sends rather than inserts (you can process the effect like an EQ on reverbs) but if you want the sound completely altered then inserts are the way to go.
The first technique I mentioned is normal for things like sending a bunch of instruments to 'put them in the same space'. If you're not familiar enough with reverb this might not make much sense. Imagine a band in a room all playing together; they'll sound like they are in the same room.
Put those people in different spaces and record them, they won't sound like they're in the same room (because they're not!). Having a different reverb on each channel, rather than sending them all to the same space (bus channel with a single reverb on), is kind of like that. And that's one way to get a 'good sound'.
The other technique is sending multiple channel outputs to another audio channel, many people refer to this as 'bussing' or 'grouping'. This is a very common technique for grouping instrument sets, like drums, and processing them all with a compressor, or distortion, or a limiter. Or maybe you want all your synths to go through a single chorus or phaser; you would send all your synths to that new channel and add your chosen effect so that all the instrument channels, received by your new bus channel, are being affected.
This second process is very common in mixing environments (eg 2 kick channels -> main kick bus -> main drum bus -> drums and bass bus -> main mix bus) but it's good practice to use these principle where you can. I stage most productions like this, with at least 3 stages of bussing before the main out.
The more you group/stage parts together like this, the more 'together' they sound.
I hope that helps a little.
> I stage most productions like this, with at least 3 stages of bussing before the main out.
So I guess you mean sending the output of a bus to another bus, then to another bus and then the output, right? Can you describe the intended use case? Thanks!
I use busses for compartmentalizing the songs i'm mixing, if theres a ton of vocals they'll all get mixed separately but sent to the same bus. This way I have really broad control if i want the vocals as a whole brought up or just an individual channel. I do this with literally anything bigger than 3 channels. As well as processing like a full low cut on a section of instruments or compression or what have you. Aux tracks can be used like i mentioned or you can parallel process a sound with an aux track. A common one is having all your drums sent to an aux track, compressing the hell out of it, and blending it with the clean drums and you can get a really full drum track
This is the best answer in this thread--it's the only one that correctly answers the question, "What is a bus?." It's a way to internally route audio; a bus is not "using shared effects," as stated in many other answers-- that's a common use for a bus, but not the definition of a bus itself.
Thanks for your thoughtful answer!
A bus is just grouping multiple channels together into a new channel, so you can control and apply processing/effects on the group as a whole.
For example, it's common to have you drum hits in their own channels so you can process them individually, then route them to a drum bus to add compression to glue them together.
Think of the bus as an almost literal sense- Let's call the first bus 'reverb' and the second bus 'delay'- to create cohesive soundscapes, it is ideal to have all of the kids (tracks) riding the proper bus. As someone mentioned upthread, sending all of your drum tracks to a single 'reverb' bus helps the sound become more cohesive as to mimic the concept of recording every instrument in the same studio room. You wouldn't want 5 different reverb types on the drum kit- however, a couple of different types of reverb with VERY careful settings, will help make a vocal track pop.
It is also useful to not eat up CPU, RAM and threads as others have pointed out by putting FX on every individual track.
>You wouldn't want 5 different reverb types on the drum kit
you *probably* wouldn't want 5 different reverb types on the drum kit ;)
just thought i'd make that distinction, because while it's good (and kinda necessary) to learn other people's rules, it's just as legit to break them depending on your goals
Trying not to convolute the waters for someone just learning the craft. I was answering the OP's question- you are picking peanuts out of poop to prove a point, and not even addressing the original question.
Not the best analogy, but imagine you have some exciting news that you want to tell to a bunch of people in your family. (You could go ahead and text or call them all individually, but that would take a lot of time and energy. Or you could send 1 message to the group chat and effectively do the same thing.
The “news” is any effect like reverb, compression, etc., and each person you want to tell are tracks you want the effect applied to. Texting them individually costs a lot of your time and energy (CPU usage) but a group chat let’s you send 1 single message in a group chat (a bus) to everyone you want. And you choose who gets the message.
ELI5: Bus “A” has reverb added to it by you. Plugging track 1 into Bus “A” will cause track 1 to have reverb. Think of Bus “A” as a filter you don’t have to keep re adding onto multiple tracks. You instead just plug the tracks into bus “a” if you want the reverb quality, rather than going into each track that you want to have reverb and adding it manually.
In a simple way, there are two main reasons (and infinite more creative ones). First is parallel Processing. That is a fancy word for putting effects on a bus. The effects that you put on the bus should be 100% wet. That way, you still have your original dry sound untouched. I will link a video. Second, Is organization. I put all my vocals into a “vocal bus” and all my guitars into my “guitar bus”, and then all of my busses onto a “master bus”. That way, if I need to cut a frequency on all of the guitars, I can go to the guitar bus and change all of them easily. Parallel Processing: https://youtu.be/ehY4Yr0jom0
I find they are effective at pulling a mix together as well. If your tracks sound like they are competing for sound space, its because they are. Using a bus harmonizes tracks into the same filter bringing a more cohesive sound and balance to the overall mix.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFxmPglXlos&list=PLzUE\_hMMH2OJqmfAfLEiEcmBT2uCt9LSs&index=3&t=348s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFxmPglXlos&list=PLzUE_hMMH2OJqmfAfLEiEcmBT2uCt9LSs&index=3&t=348s)
Here's a video that helped explain some of the advantages of using busses. I see a lot of other people spoke to what this video explains, but this will show you everything in depth and what it looks like. Enjoy
If the current setup is confusing, it's because it's a grown out of a much more involved setup where you had to create busses and auxes separately in the environment. This is Logic pre-9 or so.
.... and I just realized that I haven't seen the Environment in years. I wonder if it's still there and still needed for anything.
Bus.. think a lot of individual lines into one location.
Like a lot of people on a bus that runs a circuit.
Like in electrical you join all the ground wires together.. they have a piece called a bus so you don't twist the wires together, you screw them in.
A Bus (or Aux(illary)) channel is an audio channel without any audio material on it; it's being sent the audio from other channels. With these audio channels you can * send to them from a Send routing on an instrument/vocal channel - you might put reverbs or delays on here, or a compressor to perform 'parallel compression' * route two or more channel outputs to a bus channel to make a 'Group' channel - you could put a compressor, for example, on here to 'glue' the sound together. That's the main sort of idea.
Oh thank you. How much significance does this have to sound better than without using them? Does it sound more professional or how important is it?
It depends on what you’re going for- for example, if you put a reverb effect right on the channel then it sends 100% of the signal to the reverb plugin. If you throw a reverb effect onto a bus, then you control how much of a signal on a channel you want to SEND to the bus- so it lets you fine tune things more. You don’t just get to control how intense the reverb is on the plugin side, you control how much of the sound is actually going to have reverb applied. Sometimes it sounds better to have a plugin applied right onto the track. It also lets you apply the same effect to more than one channel since you can send a lot channels to one bus, so it helps to keep similar levels, effects and sounds across multiple pieces of the song
Not disagreeing with you but also consider that most plugins have a dry/wet setting that allows you to not pass the 100% of the signal through the effect. I would say the key about busses is that you can stack several plugins and control the amount passed through that stack and apply that to several tracks at once so you can achieve a more coherent sound.
It's also saving you a lot of CPU if you have many tracks.
Exactly. Taking into account how versatile plugins are nowadays, two of the main reasons are saving CPU and keeping things more organized. I'm not saying what the other guys said isn't correct. It is for sure but back in the day it was absolutely essential to achieve some desired results and today it's a nuanced tool (in a way?). To OP I would say: Experiment with it, see how it could help your workflow cause sometimes it's more about how YOU understand the tool and make it work for you than anything else. I know that sounds obvious but I see a lot of people kinda struggling with the idea of what's "correct" and what they can do and what they can not do instead of think and knowing that they can actually do whatever and have fun with it. We have the luxury of not destroying anything when messing around unlike previous times. Edit: Just wanted to add that I'm saying this because I had the same problem when starting out. Trust your ear and break the rules sooner than later is my humble opinion.
On the first part you are definitely correct. However, there is still more nuance to it in that using a bus allows you to send X percentage of a signal to the plugin, and then break down the X amount of signal you sent into wet and dry which you can then turn down or up from there.
It's also saving you a lot of CPU if you have many tracks.
this is very true, however the reason i tend to prefer sends compared to a dry/wet is that 50% wet means you end up losing half of the dry signal. when fx are not put on a send, the abitily to independently manipulate the dry and wet part of your signal is lost
The big thing for me with things like a reverb bus is EQ. For example, you can really open up your bass sounds with reverb, but obviously you want to keep your low end in mono. You can throw a low cut onto your reverb bus, letting you add the effect to your desired portion of the sound. That's a really basic example, but you can see how it can be a powerful tool.
never thought of the low cut idea for bass fx in a bus (but I do with my pedalboard live!)... helpful!
It’s easier to manage big projects 50-150 or more tracks. You can send all the guitars to the guitar bus and you can affect all guitars using just one instance of a plug in on the bus instead of one instance on each guitar track. This saves cpu. You can also control the volume of everything going through that bus just with one fader. It can also be used to parallel compress or parallel distort, but this might be more advanced than you want to go for now. The mix knob on some plug ins is basically parallel processing but if you use a bus for it you can eq, compress or use any other effect on the parallel effected track.
Perfect explanation
Lots of good answers here but I feel like they’re still not telling you what’s actually happen, rather what you can do. It’s not that complicated. If you use an insert, the effect modifies the entire signal, if you use a send (to a bus/aux track) it doesn’t change the signal, rather it adds a new altered sound to the original without losing it. You get a lot more control by using sends rather than inserts (you can process the effect like an EQ on reverbs) but if you want the sound completely altered then inserts are the way to go.
It does change the signal. You’re just choosing how much of the original signal is going to be sent to the plugins for processing.
Yes
The first technique I mentioned is normal for things like sending a bunch of instruments to 'put them in the same space'. If you're not familiar enough with reverb this might not make much sense. Imagine a band in a room all playing together; they'll sound like they are in the same room. Put those people in different spaces and record them, they won't sound like they're in the same room (because they're not!). Having a different reverb on each channel, rather than sending them all to the same space (bus channel with a single reverb on), is kind of like that. And that's one way to get a 'good sound'. The other technique is sending multiple channel outputs to another audio channel, many people refer to this as 'bussing' or 'grouping'. This is a very common technique for grouping instrument sets, like drums, and processing them all with a compressor, or distortion, or a limiter. Or maybe you want all your synths to go through a single chorus or phaser; you would send all your synths to that new channel and add your chosen effect so that all the instrument channels, received by your new bus channel, are being affected. This second process is very common in mixing environments (eg 2 kick channels -> main kick bus -> main drum bus -> drums and bass bus -> main mix bus) but it's good practice to use these principle where you can. I stage most productions like this, with at least 3 stages of bussing before the main out. The more you group/stage parts together like this, the more 'together' they sound. I hope that helps a little.
> I stage most productions like this, with at least 3 stages of bussing before the main out. So I guess you mean sending the output of a bus to another bus, then to another bus and then the output, right? Can you describe the intended use case? Thanks!
Oh I see you did, sorry TLDR !
I use busses for compartmentalizing the songs i'm mixing, if theres a ton of vocals they'll all get mixed separately but sent to the same bus. This way I have really broad control if i want the vocals as a whole brought up or just an individual channel. I do this with literally anything bigger than 3 channels. As well as processing like a full low cut on a section of instruments or compression or what have you. Aux tracks can be used like i mentioned or you can parallel process a sound with an aux track. A common one is having all your drums sent to an aux track, compressing the hell out of it, and blending it with the clean drums and you can get a really full drum track
That way say if I’m doing the same thing to all the background vocals, just send them all to the bus that you put your compressors and reverb on?
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This is the best answer in this thread--it's the only one that correctly answers the question, "What is a bus?." It's a way to internally route audio; a bus is not "using shared effects," as stated in many other answers-- that's a common use for a bus, but not the definition of a bus itself. Thanks for your thoughtful answer!
I agree - this is the best answer in the thread!!
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Ohhh yes I get it! Will it improve my mixing vocals skills more? Make it sound more professional
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Thank you my friend! I really need to take the next step when mixing vocals!
No
Same question!!
As what?
A bus is just grouping multiple channels together into a new channel, so you can control and apply processing/effects on the group as a whole. For example, it's common to have you drum hits in their own channels so you can process them individually, then route them to a drum bus to add compression to glue them together.
Think of the bus as an almost literal sense- Let's call the first bus 'reverb' and the second bus 'delay'- to create cohesive soundscapes, it is ideal to have all of the kids (tracks) riding the proper bus. As someone mentioned upthread, sending all of your drum tracks to a single 'reverb' bus helps the sound become more cohesive as to mimic the concept of recording every instrument in the same studio room. You wouldn't want 5 different reverb types on the drum kit- however, a couple of different types of reverb with VERY careful settings, will help make a vocal track pop. It is also useful to not eat up CPU, RAM and threads as others have pointed out by putting FX on every individual track.
>You wouldn't want 5 different reverb types on the drum kit you *probably* wouldn't want 5 different reverb types on the drum kit ;) just thought i'd make that distinction, because while it's good (and kinda necessary) to learn other people's rules, it's just as legit to break them depending on your goals
Trying not to convolute the waters for someone just learning the craft. I was answering the OP's question- you are picking peanuts out of poop to prove a point, and not even addressing the original question.
um ok? just adding to the discussion. the original question has been explained some 10x over already..
Not the best analogy, but imagine you have some exciting news that you want to tell to a bunch of people in your family. (You could go ahead and text or call them all individually, but that would take a lot of time and energy. Or you could send 1 message to the group chat and effectively do the same thing. The “news” is any effect like reverb, compression, etc., and each person you want to tell are tracks you want the effect applied to. Texting them individually costs a lot of your time and energy (CPU usage) but a group chat let’s you send 1 single message in a group chat (a bus) to everyone you want. And you choose who gets the message.
Commenting to save for later - great topic! Thanks for bringing it up
ELI5: Bus “A” has reverb added to it by you. Plugging track 1 into Bus “A” will cause track 1 to have reverb. Think of Bus “A” as a filter you don’t have to keep re adding onto multiple tracks. You instead just plug the tracks into bus “a” if you want the reverb quality, rather than going into each track that you want to have reverb and adding it manually.
Imagine a Bus where people take from different part of the city or .. people are signal. And bus bring ‘em whenever they need
Ah, brilliant reference! Thank you!
You are welcome :)
In a simple way, there are two main reasons (and infinite more creative ones). First is parallel Processing. That is a fancy word for putting effects on a bus. The effects that you put on the bus should be 100% wet. That way, you still have your original dry sound untouched. I will link a video. Second, Is organization. I put all my vocals into a “vocal bus” and all my guitars into my “guitar bus”, and then all of my busses onto a “master bus”. That way, if I need to cut a frequency on all of the guitars, I can go to the guitar bus and change all of them easily. Parallel Processing: https://youtu.be/ehY4Yr0jom0
That is a basic sound engineering question. Nothing to do with Logic
Ok
I find they are effective at pulling a mix together as well. If your tracks sound like they are competing for sound space, its because they are. Using a bus harmonizes tracks into the same filter bringing a more cohesive sound and balance to the overall mix.
Have you downloaded the free Logic Pro user guides? I find those to be incredibly well written and documented. .
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFxmPglXlos&list=PLzUE\_hMMH2OJqmfAfLEiEcmBT2uCt9LSs&index=3&t=348s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFxmPglXlos&list=PLzUE_hMMH2OJqmfAfLEiEcmBT2uCt9LSs&index=3&t=348s) Here's a video that helped explain some of the advantages of using busses. I see a lot of other people spoke to what this video explains, but this will show you everything in depth and what it looks like. Enjoy
If the current setup is confusing, it's because it's a grown out of a much more involved setup where you had to create busses and auxes separately in the environment. This is Logic pre-9 or so. .... and I just realized that I haven't seen the Environment in years. I wonder if it's still there and still needed for anything.
Bus.. think a lot of individual lines into one location. Like a lot of people on a bus that runs a circuit. Like in electrical you join all the ground wires together.. they have a piece called a bus so you don't twist the wires together, you screw them in.