What's your take on the Bus methology?

[Rednroll]

I'm just wonder what people think of the current way to set up buses and how they work as far as UI. Maybe I'm overlooking a benefit of having them work this way, so please feel free to point out some benefits.

What I don't like about them?
It seems a bit unintuitive. You create a track and push the "Bus" button and that track becomes a bus, then the tracks underneath that new bus track get bused to it. When I did this for the first time, I had 2 guitar tracks, and then I decided I wanted to run them to the same bus. So I create a new audio track, and it gets inserted under my guitar tracks and now I have to drag the new bus track above those tracks. If I decide later I want to bus additional tracks, then I have to always pay close attention to the vertical order the tracks are in.

I come from the days of using hardware mixers and I like the method of just creating a bus in the mixer section, and then to freely "route" individual tracks to it using a routing button assignment on the track header. I really like the way SSL's do this via their "routing" matrix, where you can route a track to multiple busses by enabling the button corresponding to the bus within the track routing matrix.

I also don't like that track faders and buses get grouped in the same mixer section. This is actually something that I dislike about Cubase and Sonar, because I don't feel it's necessary to have 2 different views of the same fader doing the same thing, taking up valuable screen space. But then I know, there are people that prefer a traditional mixer type of environment instead of having them in seperate spaced apart views. My personal preference is to have the track faders next to the track, then JUST the group buses and master fader, and other output buses in the master mixer section. It gets too confusing for me when track faders, bus faders,and master faders are all group together. They where never grouped together on mixing consoles, they where always seperated and if they where in the same general vacinity of each other, there was a definate distinquishable difference in the color of those different types of faders (ie track faders WHITE, Bus Faders Blue or Yellow, Master fader RED.)

[shane]

Well, I don't (can't) have the app in front of me, but here's what I've been doing...

You have the option of excluding regular tracks from the mixer section, so there's that one. Then, I just create a bunch of bus tracks, drag them all below the regular tracks (out of the way), and the sends of other tracks to them. With the new routing system you don't need to have a bus/track hierarchy anymore.

Just for visual simplicity, maybe there should be an option to exclude the busses from the track view (like the current exclude tracks from mixer view)?

[pipelineaudio]

Rednroll, the paradigm here is that a track can be a track, a buss, an aux send, a hardware in, a hardware out, an aux recieve, and most unintuitively, ALL at once

It seemed very weird to me as well, but I think the possibilities it offers, once you really really think about it make it pretty awesome.

Remember this, through his aux send system, you can actually route to as many "busses" as you want, and unlike with any app Ive ever seen, with FULL CONTROL over send level and pan to each one. This alone to me justifies the whole system.

What gets tricky is to remember that there is ONE buss path for the channel volume fader. And I think that path, you should think of more as a "folder track". In fact, if you click the top left of the buss track header you will see it collapses the whole deal as a folder track would

One thing that I think would help is if there were truly a button at the end of the track header, which chose whether the channels volume fader went to the master or WHICH buss

But I REALLY dont want to change the paradigm any yet, really check out the possibilities

As mentioned above, you can choose not to show channel tracks in the mixer

[Rednroll]

I'll check it out more. So far, the functionality seems good, but my concern is really with the way the GUI is layed out. I would prefer an output routing matrix as seen on an SSL Console channel strip. I've explained this to Sofo many times to overcome the mess that you have run into. Guess what, it never got implemented like many things that I've described.

See this diagram for reference of what I'm talking about and look at the output routing matrix section.
http://recordinginstitute.com/y2kplus/ARP/sslstrip.html

What this allows me to do is to route the output of a Track to the Master bus along with any other bus at the same time by simply enabling the buttons on the matrix. The buses are all Mono buses. If I want a stereo bus, then I route the track to bus 1 and 2 by pressing buttons 1&2. I then press and enable the "Pan" button, and the the Pan has an "Odd/Even" configuration. In other words, if I pan towards "odd" then the signal get's panned towards Bus #1. If I Pan towards even, then the signal gets panned towards bus #2. You also see the same type of thing for Left and right for the master bus.

[pipelineaudio]

You think maybe a popup routing matrix that looks similar called up by one button oin the track header?

My issue with this is that in the SSL case, the signal will go to those busses at the same level. With the routing we have now, you can go to all those busses, with individual control over level and pan, OR all at the same level and pan if you choose.

I know this is some sort of bizarre role reversal, with me being the one linking the software implementation over the hardware one, but this system allows SO MUCH flexibility, its frightening

[Rednroll]

You think maybe a popup routing matrix that looks similar called up by one button oin the track header?
Yeah, that was my thought, but you make a good point. Maybe it just seems too confusing to me as of right now. Maybe there's a better solution someone else could suggest? Maybe a similar routing matrix solution with the ability to add an FX insert and add the something like the Vegas DX Volume fader, or DX Pan Control, so you have a best of both worlds scenario.

[pipelineaudio]

http://www.cockos.com/forum/showthread.php?t=283

on one of the earlier posts I had proposed sticking it in the plugin chainer, but now at this point, I really am having a hard time finding something I cant do with this routing so Im pretty nervous about it getting broken LOL

But maybe the chainer idea like you say is the valid one, but I beg you to futa around with this some more and see just what it can do, this is pretty much myh dream routing system, functionwise, maybe the gui could get better for it, but please dont break the functions

[malcolmj]

I really am having a hard time finding something I cant do with this routing so Im pretty nervous about it getting broken LOL


Same here. I think the routing system Justin has come up with is extremely flexible, but it takes some thinking to get your head around if you're coming from a traditional console background like me. :)

I actually find the bus button redundant with the new routing options and would be happy to see it go. I definitely don't like the way it's implemented at the moment with the vertical track hierarchy.

One thing I'd really like to see in the future is the option to create, save and load custom mixer setups. :)

Cheers,

Malcolm.

[pipelineaudio]

I actually find the bus button redundant with the new routing options and would be happy to see it go. I definitely don't like the way it's implemented at the moment with the vertical track hierarchy.
Malcolm.

Before the buss track gets chucked, I DO like it as a folder track. Make sure you mess with the button on the top left of the buss track and check it out

[malcolmj]

Before the buss track gets chucked, I DO like it as a folder track. Make sure you mess with the button on the top left of the buss track and check it out

The function of that button is nice, but the vertical hierarchy prevents me from being able to flexibly group selected tracks into busses. It would make more sense if we were able to individually select groups of tracks and assign them to a bus, rather than "all tracks below here".

Cheers,

Malcolm.

[pipelineaudio]

I agree. Some way to define the bottom of the buss would be good