The Use of Subgroup Faders in a Mix

[chaz]

A poster asked a question on another fiorum about the use of submix or subgroup faders. So, I thought I would share my response with forum members here as well, as it is an important part of the mixing chain.

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The primary purpose behind the "submix" or "subgroup" fader is to have more control over specific goruping of tracks, be they instrumental or vocal, once they are tweaked out at the individual channel strip.

One example of this would be background vocals. Once you have the individual tracks tweaked out and positioned in the stereo field, you would then send the related tracks to a subgroup fader. Once they have been assigned to a specific group fader, you can do any number of things to the combined tracks such as add a compressor, chorus, delay or doubler for fullness, etc., etc. You can also assign a verb to the combined tracks as well. You get the picture.

Again, that is only one of countless examples of using subgrouping faders in a mix. You can also assign all of your individual synth pad or string tracks to a subgroup to control the overall volume. Or guitar tracks. Or keyboard tracks, etc. The assignment possibilities are endless.

FWIW..... A common subgrouping is kick and bass track. You would compress or limit the combined tracks a final time here as well as at the individual channel strips.

BTW.... You could assign all of the channel strrips to a final master fader, but you woiuld be at a disadvantage as to what you could do from a mixing perspective.

The natural order would be channel strip fader > subgroup fader > master fader. Of course, you have to consider pre/post fader for aux sends/returns as well.

Hope this helps.

[main]

I use subgroups all day long. I work with hip hop where there are sometimes mutiple artists doing different verses, so I'll group everthing that is from eace verse to a seperate fader. So you'll have Verse 1 on 1 fader, hook on another, verse 2 on another, verse 3 on another etc. Then if there are backgrounds in the hook i'll put them on another fader to try and carve out different spots for the different voices. It's real easy to get a smooth flow from verse to hook to verse this way.

[tecnolover]

One very powerful use of busses or subgroups whichever name you prefer.... is for EQ'ing. When I'm doing trance/dance music I like to get my kick and bass sounding just perfect and then keep all the other stuff away from them. I route all my other tracks to a group and insert a parametric EQ with a HP filter or sometimes a low shelf set to say 200hz. This is so much easier than doing setting the EQ on each and every track. Keeps my lowend tight and clean and how i want it to sound. The uses of busses are many.

[cazzywayne]

Hi Technolover. Your statement confuses me a little. I was under the impression (from questions I had asked in previous discussions) that using equalizers during mixing was ineffectual. That they are not needed. When I had asked about this the statements were something to the effect of using equalizers during a mixing session was counter productive. Maybe I totally misunderstood when it was explained to me but that was the way I took it to be. So I guess my point is to stay with the current topis is how wouldthat then help you anymore than just using your tone controls on each channel?

[Big Tim]

Cazzywayne, I think you're confusing Equalizers and Tone Controls - they're the same thing. EQ, tone controls (high, hi-mid, low-mid, bass), same thing. The basic EQ's on a board use the pot values & electronics to specify what frequencies and "Q" they affect, a DAW mimics this with an algorithm but is generally more flexible. There are different types of EQ so even though you have the board's own ones, you may still want to patch in an outboard EQ. same goes in a DAW - an EQ insert will have different characteristics than the channel or group's built-in EQ.

Inside a DAW a sub group can have the same options as a channel strip - inserts, sends, EQ's etc. You can EQ on the channel, send it to the sub group and then EQ again there, or use an EQ plugin. On a real mixer, subgroups often don't have their own EQ's, so you may have to use outboard units through Inserts &/or Auxes to achieve the same things.

The statement about not using EQ in mixing is incorrect - it's a vital & integral part of the process. People often advise on using mic choice & positioning adjustments to help get a great, core sound so that things sit better from the outset of tracking, but that in no way rules out using EQ in mixing. Getting the right sound to start with helps immensely, but doesn't make EQ'ing any less useful or important.

[jar4ever]

The tools are there to be used.

I love buses, in all of their uses. Especially in the DAW where you have some crazy flexibility.

With sends, remember that you can do more then just sent up a reverb or delay bus. Send a track (or multiple tracks, like a drum set) to a bus and put a compressor on it and now you got parallel compression. You could even do parallel EQ, although I don't hear about that as much. Really any sort of processing can be run in parallel to one or more tracks by use of sends. Also, in a DAW you can send from buses (to another bus) which opens up even more options.

As far as subgroups, I'll almost always have drum set, guitar, keyboards, and vocals subgroups (if the song as any/all of those). It just makes things easier to work with. You could accomplish a lot of same things with VCA groups (or just called 'groups' in most DAWs), but you can't put processing on the whole group like you can with subgroups. And in the DAW, why not? Your system can surely support quite a few buses.

This doesn't mean you always have to use complicated parallel and subgroup processing, but it is a valid option to explore. You can't be afraid to do what it takes to get it to sound good.

[Neil Parfitt]

I use subgroups like crazy as I deal with a lot of virtual orchestra / electronica hybrid.. so dealing with 100+ tracks at a given time can be maddening when you go to mix, and it's quite easy to lose perspective of what's musically important when it's spread that much apart.

My 'generic' writing template right now is:

All strings subsections are grouped (violin, viola, cello, basses) as each instrument may need 4 or more tracks to create the single instrument (with proper articulations) and then these 4 faders are grouped to a stereo fader for "strings".

The above concept is used for each additional orchestra section - woodwind, brass and percussion. Percussion I'm not as anal with.. everything is dumped to together except cymbals/gong.

Then - all the orchestra section bus outputs are directed to a master 'orchestra' bus fader.

Then.. it's pretty straighforward outside of that I have a bus group for Rhythm, Meat+Potato, Melody, Misc 1 (Cymbals), Misc 2 (for weird synth/sweeps and beeps etc)

With this bussing setup I can quickly build mixes and bump and nudge levels, EQ, Comp to make all the elements 'glue' together.

And due to the timeline/pace of TV music - I can record ALL my bus outputs in one pass - and the music editor has 'mix-in-place' stems, plus a full mix and mix sans melody. Presto! Yay Busses!

Neil

[Neil Parfitt]

Yikes - I have to pay attention to the date on these threads!

[cristophles]

Glad you did post. It's an interesting one. Thanks

[d4rkst4r123]

What's the difference between sending a channel strip to an aux as opposed to actually setting the output of that channel strip to that same aux?

[MASSIVE Mastering]

Whuh?

[d4rkst4r123]

...can't really explain it any better. I mean, do you leave alone the output of all channels?

[MASSIVE Mastering]

Are you talking about sending to a buss or multing to an aux...?

[d4rkst4r123]

what exactly is multing to an aux?

[MASSIVE Mastering]

I don't know any other way to explain it... "Multing to an aux" is what it is. If you're sending a mult of a signal to an aux (such as to feed a reverb or a delay or what not), you're multing to an aux. Totally different than assigning to a buss...

[Neil Parfitt]

Assigning to a bus would be a pipe of water that is only fed to pipe A instead of pipe B etc

Wow how lame is that

[d4rkst4r123]

I don't know any other way to explain it... "Multing to an aux" is what it is. If you're sending a mult of a signal to an aux (such as to feed a reverb or a delay or what not), you're multing to an aux. Totally different than assigning to a buss...

Still confused. Isn't that exactly what sending to a buss does? Hold up, I'm going to get a screenshot of what I'm talking about.

[d4rkst4r123]

Ok, look at the following pictures, the first one is just sending through the usual send option, while in the 2nd situation, it's actually setting the output of the the channel to that buss. My next question is still, what's the difference between the buss and aux? Use my example to point me out (visuals help me). thanks!
Situation #1


Situation #2

[MASSIVE Mastering]

Wow - I'm going to modify Neil's observation if I can...

You have a bunch of pipes - A kick pipe, snare pipe, tom pipes, overhead pipes and you want them to all go to one 'master' pipe -- You would BUSS them all to the 'DRUM' pipe.

That's bussing.

On the other hand, you have a guitar pipe, (which may or may not be bussed to a main "GUITAR" buss) and you want to add a little reverb. So you hook up a small 'T' connector with its own valve to the guitar pipe and open it up just a little bit. That "auxiliary pipe" is feeding the REVERB pipe (aux) and everything that goes through that pipe is affected by that reverb signal. You also hook connectors to the snare, maybe the toms, the vocals - You split (or mult) the signals by adding pipes (aux sends) that you can send a small amount of the signal from those pipes to one common reverb pipe.

You're not routing the whole signal of a bunch of pipes to one pipe like a buss - You're sending a portion (a.k.a. mult, a.k.a. multiple) of the signal.

From what I can tell at a glance: It *appears* that the software you're using calls an aux send a buss (it's not untrue, but it's not exactly typical) and a typical mix buss an output (again, not untrue, just not typical). The INPUT on the REVERB is BUS 1 and the SEND on the GUITAR is BUS 1. So, "AUX BUS" in your case (although I see it also says AUX 2 on it as well).

Hmmm... In image 2, it looks like you're sending the signal (as opposed to sending an aux of the signal) to the reverb buss. Yeah, you probably don't want to do that. If for no other reason that an aux send is typically going to be 100% 'wet' (all reverb, all delay, all modulation, whatever). ROUTING the signal to it would be like inserting a 100% wet reverb.

[Tweak]

Just to throw more cents into the fray

Logic's "aux send" goes to a Bus (return) on which you put an effects chain. Works just like a classic send and return.

By outputting to the Bus rather than by send the signal ends up 100% wet. There are other ways to do that but this way won't hurt anything.

That is where the simple part ends. In logic there are also Groups AND Aux Busses, neither of which should be confused with the sends and returns-type bussing. The Auxilliary Busses are flexible and can be set to external inputs, rewire, single audio channels from multi out soft synths, and from fader groups. Because they have insert slots on the bus you can add FX to external sources without rendering to files.

[d4rkst4r123]

Yeah that clears things up, thanks for the help guys.

[Neil Parfitt]

Just remember that Logic's fader 'groups' have nothing to do with audio, but instead act like an old-school VCA fader group.

[Multiman]

Just remember that Logic's fader 'groups' have nothing to do with audio, but instead act like an old-school VCA fader group.

Just to confuse things even more, working in Logic, particularly if working on files created with older versions, its worth noting there are both 'Bus objects' and 'Auxiliary channel strips'. Both act as master channels for busses. Aux channels have more options and were introduced to Logic more recently. Bus objects seem to be included for backward compatibility but not much else.

[Neil Parfitt]

Logic Busses don't have sends, whereas auxes do.

[d4rkst4r123]

Excellent info here, one quick question, do you think it's worth for me to upgrade to Logic Studio? When I bought my macbookpro online, you could only buy it with Express pre-installed, or should I wait till possibly a Logic 9?