Infuriating Send/Bus/Aux question

[massimoz]

Hi everyone, it's my first post on here even though I've been reading the forum for a while now. Read the dubstep bible pretty much from front to back, and can't honestly be thankful enough for everyone's generosity and want to help others on here. It amazes me.

So I was wondering if someone could help me with a problem I can't seem to find a solution for:

I want to be able to send lots of tracks to an aux where a side chain is activated, whether that's for a gating/stutter effect, or just for that nice pumping compression side chain. But when I do this, suddenly all those tracks are louder. And I know why, it makes sense that I'm increasing signal by sending them to an aux (with the aux track itself having to be turned up to the max to get the maximum 'wetness' of the effect on the aux).

So is there not a plugin/technique/secret that allows me to send everything to an aux, but the volume stays the same? I really don't want to have to automate the volume of each track so that it is lower for when I send them to a bus. I guess I could put a compressor on each track I want to have a SC on, but surely this will eat my CPU?

I've looked everywhere for a solution but I can't find one!

Thank you so much for sharing what is probably an obvious solution. I can't imagine every producer automating the volume to be lower.

[didi]

If you have a channel, and it's going to the master channel, and you also route it to a auxiliary send, which also goes to the master channel, the master channel is going to receive two copies of the music, increasing the volume.

Just balance how much you are sending to the master and the aux. send, so the total output is what you want.

[Kaslo]

You could try sidechaining the dry track to the return/aux that it's sent to - it won't be perfect but sans automation it's the only thing I can think of, make sure you make the send pre-fader if you do this.

[wizeguy]

I would just choose no output on the aux channel, it will still work for sidechaining as there will be a signal in

[massimoz]

I think I've found a solution which works for me: having no output on each of the tracks which are being sent to the bus track and then having the bus track on max volume.

Here's a screenshot of what I've done:



Any potential downsides to this?

[Sonika]

I think I've found a solution which works for me: having no output on each of the tracks which are being sent to the bus track and then having the bus track on max volume.

Here's a screenshot of what I've done:



Any potential downsides to this?

nope that works! I do that a lot after I've processed the tracks being sent to the busses to my liking, bus processing is a lot cleaner, smoother, and more efficient.

[Sharmaji]

why not just route the outputs of each track to the bus in question, rather than deal with sends, prefader, postfader, etc? much less complicated.

[massimoz]

why not just route the outputs of each track to the bus in question, rather than deal with sends, prefader, postfader, etc? much less complicated.

Do you mean like this? I can only hear a slight increase in volume. Maybe I'm missing something obvious, I can't see any advantage in doing this?

[massimoz]

Oh actually I think I see what you mean. To give an example: I've made a track, I've got it all mixed perfectly but then I realise that I want some tracks to have a gated effect at the end of a phrase. So if I route all of the tracks I want to gate to an aux with a gate on it, by making the output that aux/bus with the gate on it, then the volume goes straight to the aux. No extra or no less?