Why use a send?

[Ataxia]

Pardon the noob moment; it's just I'm wondering why people use sends? Why not just layer inserts? Is it that you can control the amount of "send" is being applied to the dry sound? Isn't that the sAme as using the dry/wet knob in your effect?

[Rubik]

I don't use sends much but from what I gather it's mostly an effects structure thing.
Say you have two sounds. You want ONE of them to have reverb and both of them compressed together. You set up a reverb on the first sound and then send to the second sound's effect channel which has a compressor on it.

[buttock]

sometimes you wish to use several instruments to appear beeing in the same "space" so you would route these to send with a reverb, which in some sense sets them in the same "position" .And you don't need to activated several instances of delay/reverb plugins, so you save CPU power.

[HighBot]

It's similar to layering the inserts like you mentioned, however using the dry/wet knob on an effect on the layer will effect all the sounds in that layer the same amount. With a send you can save CPU usage by using one reverb like with a layer, but also control individually the amount that is sent into the effect. This way you can control how much dry signal and wet signal you hear individually.

You can also do things like use a reverb for example on numerous elements in the track to give it a sense of 'togetherness' or 'room'.

Definitely learn up on sends! Very useful when you start using them.

[Genevieve]

There's tons of uses. Like different EQ curve for the effect, using the same dry signal for a number of different effects that you don't want affecting each other (different sends), and so on.

[samkablaam]

the idea comes from back in the day, all the way before vsts and shit. you have a limited amount of processing (usually only a couple of reverbs per session) and the best way to use them is to send each channel to them, rather than use it as an insert (which, without paralleling wastes a whole piece of a outboard).

but still, with unlimited sends and vsts, its quite a good way of saving cpu and its quite a good practise, helping you know whats going on. you might use 5 different reverb inserts, but I bet u dont know what each of the paramaters are on it. whereas, you use one reverb plugin and 5 sends, you are bound to know what is going on with that one plugin.

[Astrobear]

If your plug in has a DRY/WET setting you technically don't need to send it and can just use it as an insert since the dry/wet can have the same effect of bleeding the original sound through the effected sound or vice versa. However if your plug in does not have a DRY/WET you might want to consider sending it so that you can balance the levels of effected vs. unaffected in your mix. You certainly can use any plug in as an insert if that is the sound you are going for, but most producers will send effects like reverb and delay since they want a lot of the dry signal.

Also sending is an easy way to get consistency of sound in your tracks since you can have multiple sources of manipulated by the same plug in. This can sound more natural than having several different reverbs for instance since normally when music is heard it is all in the same acoustic environment so the convolution and reverb would be consistent across all of the instruments.

[Ataxia]

Thanks for the replies. My computer doesn't have too much RAM, so I'll definitely start practicing this. And as that one guy mentioned, I definitely forget the parameters of each reverb. Thanks for explaining that way.

Edit: forgot to ask, but while were on topic I might as well ask: how do I set up a send in ableton? For instance, one instance (haw haw) of massive and a drum rack going to the same reverb? Would I create a midi track with just a verb plus whatever other effects on it then how do I actually send?

[zerbaman]

I usually use them for drums, I EQ each hit separately then send everything to one track where I can do final compression, EQ & filter automating

[Stafford]

drag your effect on to a return track, then adjust the dry/wet signal with the send knobs. and make sure that your effect is 100% wet, since the send knobs now control the dry/wet amount.

[skimpi]

I usually use them for drums, I EQ each hit separately then send everything to one track where I can do final compression, EQ & filter automating

do you mean sending or routing? cos if you send all the drums to do final compression eq etc, then you will still have the original aswell, but if you mean routing then of course all the drum channels will be outputted to that compression bus

sending can also be good for distortion and stuff, that doesnt have a dry/wet so then it means you can distort something then have the undistorted aswell, or you can just distort the higher freqs etc

[amphibian]

It's nice for creating duplicates of sounds also, without any additional processing. It also means you can FX the same copy of a sound entirely differently. Quite often I'll have a synth setup on one channel, with no output - then have 2 other channels, both listening to the synth channel. One might be full 100% reverb/delay, the other is dry but has distortion.etc. on it. Another nice use is for panning the same sound hard left/hard right on separate channels, with separate FX. Creates interesting stereo FX/artifacts, especially if you mono the two again

[zerbaman]

I usually use them for drums, I EQ each hit separately then send everything to one track where I can do final compression, EQ & filter automating

do you mean sending or routing? cos if you send all the drums to do final compression eq etc, then you will still have the original aswell, but if you mean routing then of course all the drum channels will be outputted to that compression bus

sending can also be good for distortion and stuff, that doesnt have a dry/wet so then it means you can distort something then have the undistorted aswell, or you can just distort the higher freqs etc

Well, I send them to a single track. And cut them from the mixer.
So I guess routing is what I do. Learn something new everyday