Hi,

I'm doing a mixbus processing right now but need to loop recording a track effected by the processing instead of rendering it. Due to gain staging procedure, it has to have a right amount of gain to get the plugins work and that means I have to feed the mixbus with all the tracks's signals. I can't feed it with only one track because the level has been balanced relative to other tracks and that doesn't send enough input. So, I need all the signals but that also means everything is gonna get recorded. Soloing the said track doesn't get the other signals through although I can see the meters are pumping.

Any thought?

 

analog mixers usually have pre- and post-fader sends, or selectable, or all of them.

your DAW software either has that, too... or not.

if it does not have that feature, you could simply route the channel in question to the otherwise unused "group 17" (instead of master channels), and then set the faders to zero on that group.

 

Reaper tracks can send pre fader post fx. But in the mixbus routing settings, it doesn't have an option to send the receives individually.

 

I'm not sure if I understand you correctly ... but in the top left corner of your tracks you can get to the "Sends, Receives and hardware output options" ... there you can just disable "master send"

 

Already done that so I can directly send multitrack to the mixbus. But after mixbus processing I need to send the signal back to a new track to loop record. But I only need one track from the multitrack to be heard.

 

Why not just add some gain to the solo track so it hits the right spot ?

In any case, I doubt it will sound the same way it would if it went through the processing as part of a group of tracks.

 

Yeah, pretty much that.

 

The new FX track with your plugin on it can be set to Receives from the other channels, right? So your audio channels are being bussed to that one FX plugin on one channel. If you then send the output of that channel to another channel and capture the sound there by bouncing, etc.; you should be capturing only the effected audio.

I want to learn REAPER, but seeing stuff like this has me looking at the Logic icon with some serious doubt about my determination.

 

A send effect does not process individual channels separately. It processes the sum of the signals you put in. You can't record only one of the channels you put in, unless you only input a single channel in the first place. If you want to only process a single channel, use an Insert Effect, as Insert Effects are injected in the signal chain of a single channel. This means you have to duplicate the effect. You can also mute all the other channels and adjust the send level of the one channel you want, so you get the required input gain and record the result.
It is not possible to split the input after it has been processed to record just the effected signal of one of the channels you send to the send bus.

 

But how about pre fader sends? If I can send all the tracks pre fader except the track I want to record and route it to a new track and mute that track, I can have a split. Right? The problem is I can't find the option to route the pre fader signal from the mix bus---and secondly, the sound changed when I turned pre fader.

 

So that you are never getting only the delta of the effects plugin? I think you are right. You would need to be able to subtract the waveform from itself bounced with the effect.

 

If you're bus processing a bunch of tracks, you can't extract solo tracks after the bus processing.

Your compressor (or whatever) cannot be set to "compress as if you're receiving 6 tracks, but output only the guitar sound"

 

If you put a send in pre fader mode, it means that you send the signal before it passes the channel fader. The fader of the channel does not affect the amount of audio that you send to the effect. If you have it post fader, it means that if you turn down the fader, you send less signal to the effect. It does not change anything regarding the summing of the signals when it comes to the actual send effect. All the signals are summed before the signal gets processed. Pre and Post Fader only change the signal flow within the channel. They don't change what happens at the effect.

Sure you can put all the other sends on post fader and turn them all down completely, but that is the same as only sending one channel to the effect in the first place. You will still have your input level problem. Then again, in most cases that will not be too much of an issue. You could just try it and record it and check the recording afterward to see if the result is ok.

I think, the easiest way to record just the effected signal would be to duplicate the effect and use it on the channel you want to record as an insert.
If you are recording on an actual mixing console, reroute it. Adjust the level that goes into the effect and then bounce it from there with 100% wet. After that you can delete the insert, turn it off, or patch it back to the bus in case of an actual console.

 

If that's my mixbus track and I send two track signals into it, the mix bus can be set to send pre fader and post fader. That means it should send my tracks in split. But there's no option to choose which track because it's only built with one pipeline to sum them all before they get to fx chain which means a bummer. I guess I'll just keep the fxs on the mixbus and continue with individual track processing. Thanks, mate.

 

yeah i see what you mean. most DAWs do not have dedicated "receive" channels, so my proposal does not really solve the problem in a straight forward way - all you can do is to use insert effects with them, which mean you can not balance between multiple sources.