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Is obviously very important. Would someone that knows a thing or two about this( especially in regards to midrange sounds) care to share what they know? For instance, if i decide that i want to throw some formanting, a short reverb and some light distortion on a bassline, why is it important that they be placed in a certain order? what are the benefits of placing these inserts in a send bus as opposed to not?

I'm no expert but I use sends for 2 reasons. Firstly so i can send only part of the signal to the bus for Fx so the sound is mixed in with the dry original so its not drowning in it. secondly if I use the same reverb or delay for lots of sounds in a track it saves having 20 reverbs open on every single channel.

When it comes to FX chains its all about what sound you are going for. U mentioned distortion and reverb. So do you want ur original sound to be distorted with a clean reverb or do you want your sound plus the reverb tail all to be distorted? Just work out what your going for and add effects in that order. I personally like adding crushers after delay and reverb so it crushes the effect as well. But its personal taste.

I was told once never compress reverb coz it gets messy but sure thats not gospel. As force of habit tho I always EQ and compress (if needed) first before adding other FX. You can always add another EQ or compressor after FX if needed

Signal flow is everything \o/

It will become fairly common sense with time, but try and think of it as a chain.

If you distort something before reverb, then it will be giving space to the distorted sound. If you distort if after the reverb, then the wet verb signal also takes that distortion (usually not ideal, but experimenting is always good).

If you filter before the reverb than any automation/lfo sound that comes of it will sound as if it's in the space. If you filter after than the verb sound gets filtered as well and ends up sounding quite different there as well.

Compressing after verb can give you a large sound (snares for example) but can also clutter a lot and is generally not the ideal.

As I was taught, it's generally it's not ideal to do any drastic EQing before compression as it can emphasize some of the phasing. It is however often a good idea to filter off the lows (or highs) before compression, then EQ afterwards.

Sends are great because you can EQ/effect the signal and alter it's level in the mix with ease, and on the flip side, alter the original signal without messing with the effected (ie. compressing the dry signal without messing with the wet signal) I also find they speed up my workflow a lot as I'm not constantly having to add plugins for simple things.

There's no ONE right way to do things, but for a basic starter...

Bass -> Distortion -> Filter -> Compress -> Verb (if not on send)-> EQ -> WubWubWubWub

When I send the effect, like Reverb for instance, it never sounds right. I always wind up turning it off and just putting one on the channel strip. Help?

Where in the chain do Sends take place? Really want to work this out...

Where do sends take place?

That depends on how you set them up, PRE will send the signal before it hits the fader and POST will send it after.

In logic/pro-tools (+probably most other DAWs)...

To set up a reverb as a send effect, set your send to PRE and route it to a spare bus (say bus1)
Put a reverb on bus1
Set your reverb to 100% wet.
Now you can use the fader on bus1 to control the overall amount of effect.

Hope that helps!

48k wrote:Where do sends take place?

That depends on how you set them up, PRE will send the signal before it hits the fader and POST will send it after.

In logic/pro-tools (+probably most other DAWs)...

To set up a reverb as a send effect, set your send to PRE and route it to a spare bus (say bus1)
Put a reverb on bus1
Set your reverb to 100% wet.
Now you can use the fader on bus1 to control the overall amount of effect.

Hope that helps!

OMG yes, finally some clarity. Will try this when I get home

rook wrote:Signal flow is everything \o/

It will become fairly common sense with time, but try and think of it as a chain.

If you distort something before reverb, then it will be giving space to the distorted sound. If you distort if after the reverb, then the wet verb signal also takes that distortion (usually not ideal, but experimenting is always good).

If you filter before the reverb than any automation/lfo sound that comes of it will sound as if it's in the space. If you filter after than the verb sound gets filtered as well and ends up sounding quite different there as well.

Compressing after verb can give you a large sound (snares for example) but can also clutter a lot and is generally not the ideal.

As I was taught, it's generally it's not ideal to do any drastic EQing before compression as it can emphasize some of the phasing. It is however often a good idea to filter off the lows (or highs) before compression, then EQ afterwards.

Sends are great because you can EQ/effect the signal and alter it's level in the mix with ease, and on the flip side, alter the original signal without messing with the effected (ie. compressing the dry signal without messing with the wet signal) I also find they speed up my workflow a lot as I'm not constantly having to add plugins for simple things.

There's no ONE right way to do things, but for a basic starter...

Bass -> Distortion -> Filter -> Compress -> Verb (if not on send)-> EQ -> WubWubWubWub

never knew that eq before compression could cause phasing, good stuff right here.

rook wrote:Signal flow is everything \o/

It will become fairly common sense with time, but try and think of it as a chain.

If you distort something before reverb, then it will be giving space to the distorted sound. If you distort if after the reverb, then the wet verb signal also takes that distortion (usually not ideal, but experimenting is always good).

If you filter before the reverb than any automation/lfo sound that comes of it will sound as if it's in the space. If you filter after than the verb sound gets filtered as well and ends up sounding quite different there as well.

Compressing after verb can give you a large sound (snares for example) but can also clutter a lot and is generally not the ideal.

As I was taught, it's generally it's not ideal to do any drastic EQing before compression as it can emphasize some of the phasing. It is however often a good idea to filter off the lows (or highs) before compression, then EQ afterwards.

Sends are great because you can EQ/effect the signal and alter it's level in the mix with ease, and on the flip side, alter the original signal without messing with the effected (ie. compressing the dry signal without messing with the wet signal) I also find they speed up my workflow a lot as I'm not constantly having to add plugins for simple things.

There's no ONE right way to do things, but for a basic starter...

Bass -> Distortion -> Filter -> Compress -> Verb (if not on send)-> EQ -> WubWubWubWub

nice post!

jsills wrote:

rook wrote:Signal flow is everything \o/

It will become fairly common sense with time, but try and think of it as a chain.

If you distort something before reverb, then it will be giving space to the distorted sound. If you distort if after the reverb, then the wet verb signal also takes that distortion (usually not ideal, but experimenting is always good).

If you filter before the reverb than any automation/lfo sound that comes of it will sound as if it's in the space. If you filter after than the verb sound gets filtered as well and ends up sounding quite different there as well.

Compressing after verb can give you a large sound (snares for example) but can also clutter a lot and is generally not the ideal.

As I was taught, it's generally it's not ideal to do any drastic EQing before compression as it can emphasize some of the phasing. It is however often a good idea to filter off the lows (or highs) before compression, then EQ afterwards.

Sends are great because you can EQ/effect the signal and alter it's level in the mix with ease, and on the flip side, alter the original signal without messing with the effected (ie. compressing the dry signal without messing with the wet signal) I also find they speed up my workflow a lot as I'm not constantly having to add plugins for simple things.

There's no ONE right way to do things, but for a basic starter...

Bass -> Distortion -> Filter -> Compress -> Verb (if not on send)-> EQ -> WubWubWubWub

never knew that eq before compression could cause phasing, good stuff right here.

It's not so much that the compression causes the phasing, but rather the EQing does and then the compression makes it more audible. :]

Pretty much the only time i use sends is when i want to alter the volume of lots of things at once, e.g The entire percussion section. This is normally because i lay down some drums first, but then need to change the volume so as to accomodate for the rest of the track...

The importance of order is really just to understand whats gonna happen to your sound, (in FL) the effects take place from top to bottom, so if you want a clean reverb wack it at the bottom, and if you want your sound EQed then Distorted, put em in that order...

well i still dont get it...
most vsts have a dry wet knob, and i dont understand if i wanna an insert effect with lower wet vs send effect with 100 wet on the send buss, and then turn the amount of the sent down..

i just dont understand the differences, can someone help out

nvr mind i got it )

Solid thread, will check back for more and maybe throw in my 2 cents once I'm off work

LOTS of great info here. I'm still a bit confused with working with busses, but after reading this thread it seems like busses are the way to go to have complete control over a sound.

bookmarked.

You should insert a flanger in you bumhole.