What effects to use in send tracks?

Hello friends.Another day another question.So tell me how to use the send tracks properly,
should i not add any effects in the track itself and add delay reverb only in send tracks?Should i eq/compress only in the send tracks?
How to distribute my instruments in the send tracks,one for synths one for bass etc?

And a plugin question,should i disable the reverb and delay in the plugin and use Renoise effects in the track or send track?

1 Like

any form of audio parallel processing or,
any form of wanting to achieve same effects on multiple tracks - without taxing the cpu

so for example, if you want to beef a drum group - to add parallel compression - (or any parallel processing, since there is no rule and there should not be any…)
or if you want same reverb/fx across the (multiple tracks) drum group and melody or some fx tracks, send the (amount to your taste ofc) to send track and you’ve got it

3 Likes

Unless you’re changing the character/imaging of a sound with a super short delay, I think delay is one effect that should always be put on sends. There’s almost no downside, and the upside is you can send any tracks in any amount and instantly glue them together sonically. It gets really interesting when you mix different sets of tracks to different length delays.

3 Likes

Yep, what @dspasic said. It’s basically to conserve computing power in the case that you might have an effect that you use on multiple tracks.

For example, I was doing this for one of my latest albums I’m working on. Some music that goes to vinyl needs to be able to heard in mono and stereo, and the bass (in particular, sub-bass) will disappear if the recording is converted to mono. So, I set up an effect send for stereo processing. That way, I can give stereo to some tracks and not others. Then my bass doesn’t disappear :slight_smile:

As for EQ, I’d say that’s a toss-up. If you need several tracks to have the same EQ, then yeah, that might be a good idea. I rarely (if ever) have that situation, but it would be a good idea. Otherwise, I’d just save the send tracks for more processor-heavy effects like reverb/convolver or VSTs that are for reverb.

1 Like

One use of sends I’ve played with is to have a small set of submixes. Percussion, bass things, vox, other stuff grouped by whatever quality (frequency range, or role in the song).

Often I just use groups for this but that only works for adjacent tracks.

Either way it makes it easier to balance out volume and EQ and such without going all over the place.

2 Likes

I do sends mostly for reverb, sidechain groups, multiband processing in mastering, or as muted analyzer tracks where I can send to from any point …

Especially I think working with reverbs (and delays) is real powerful with sends (or groups), and can make a big difference. You can process reverb/delay wet only, effect it, mix it with individual eqs, apply sidechaining to just the reverb. That can help you avoid the mud in a very strong way…

2 Likes

Either way it makes it easier to balance out volume and EQ and such without going all over the place.

Veering off-topic, but organizing tracks is an endless interest of mine. Things start out well, but I end up adding things quickly and before too long I’ve instruments and tracks scattered about where it gets hard to know what is doing what.

Color and naming and groups help, but only if I’m diligent.

Which, over time, I am not : )

2 Likes

in this case you must consider (when eqing group of track), that you are not achieving the same if you boost track 1 for 3db (let’s take example 2.5khz) or group for the same amount of the same frequency, because as a group, freqs multiply, or cancel out, depending on material… so it’s always good to eq tracks separately for specific/surgical eq task, but if you want to color stuff, then use sends to taste! :slight_smile:

2 Likes

one quick trick for “exciting the drum bus/group”
send drums to FX 1, setup highpass around 2-5khz (to taste), distort it a bit, compress the high frequencies with fast attack, and fast release. (you could play with stereo image after the chain also, to give the drum bus more space - so to speak, but it really depends on your taste, and that’s all that matters!)
now parallel inject to taste.
you could do also the same for bass but with opposite - lowpass… or mid range (basically you get the custom bands of the EQ range, similar to what you could do with multiband splitter, but in this case, you have similar control over a custom EQ band/range)
There are many possibilities really. You must realise what your track/group is missing, after you are aware what’s missing, you can do it in many ways… I used to parallel the sh*t out of my drums, like 4-5 track of drums, and like 8-15 parallel tracks, both for separate drums, both for groups. I can guarantee you that with this technique you can make sh%tty drum sounds shine and burst/pop (whatever term, really :D). But start at a good point, so you do not have to waste your creativity on fixing something you started with in the first place :slight_smile:

2 Likes