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"Solo" and Sends / Returns / Busses - what behaviour do you prefer?

edited January 2020 in Other

I'm currently having an audio-engineering philosophical trip and wondering what the best behaviour of a mixer is regarding "Solo" and Sends / Returns / Busses.

For "normal" channels that are routed to the master only and have no sends, "Solo" works perfectly in any case.

However, if a channel is routed to a different Bus / Sub-Group (whatever you like to call it), "Solo"ing it the naive way would make it silent because the destination Bus isn't included in the Solo. So, should "Solo"ing a channel automatically solo any busses that channel is routed to as well?

Likewise, if some of a channel's signal is tapped to Send effects, "Solo"ing it will make it dry. So, should any effect returns that the channel sends to be "Solo"d as well?

What if you solo a Bus or effects Return? Should any channels routed to / sending there be soloed as well?

What do you think?

Comments

  • @SevenSystems said:
    However, if a channel is routed to a different Bus / Sub-Group (whatever you like to call it), "Solo"ing it the naive way would make it silent because the destination Bus isn't included in the Solo. So, should "Solo"ing a channel automatically solo any busses that channel is routed to as well?

    Yes, IMO soloing a channel should also include any busses that it goes through, otherwise the channel will be muted, so what would be the point of soloing it?

    @SevenSystems said:
    Likewise, if some of a channel's signal is tapped to Send effects, "Solo"ing it will make it dry. So, should any effect returns that the channel sends to be "Solo"d as well?

    I think so, you want to hear the channel and the send FX, generally.

    @SevenSystems said:
    What if you solo a Bus or effects Return? Should any channels routed to / sending there be soloed as well?

    Again, for me this would be a yes - after all if you solo the Bus on its own (without the channels feeding into it) you would surely only hear silence, so all the channels being routed into that bus should be included IMO.

  • edited January 2020

    Thinking about this sent my head spinning! What does AUM do? That always seems to do as expected to me. Shouldn’t it matter if the send is pre or post fader?

  • When soloing a track, I want to hear it solo’d all the way through to master, including any send effects for that track.

  • On a philosophical level, solo is just a convenient way to mute all sources except the channel you want to hear. Busses aren’t a source so don’t mute them. One can always solo something and mute a bus, like a reverb bus effect, if they want to hear it dry.

    In general for audio production (Different for live sound) you want solo to be post inserts, post fader, so you can hear what your processors are doing. You probably want solo to respect your mutes you have in place, like if you solo a muted channel, when you un-solo it it goes back to being muted. If a bus is muted you would want it to stay muted when you soloed a source that has a send to that (muted) bus. When you solo a bus all sources to that bus are included, but other buses are not active. That way you could hear your reverb 100% wet, or monitor a separate headphone mix or something.

    In a DAW it is a nice touch to have a “solo safe” option for channels, if you want them to remain un-muted when you are going through soloing stuff. I’ve used that for channels that have no output, but are used for sidechaining, that way when you solo the thing you are trying to sidechain, the source you are keying off of isn’t muted.

  • Thanks for the insights guys, that roughly coincides with what I had envisioned as desirable behaviour as well!

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