Are Busses at the App or Session level?

[KierONeil]

First of all ... I'm just a hobbyist at this.

Pro Tools 12
Windows 8
2015 Dell Laptop

I see the same busses no matter what project I'm working on and now I need more than the thirty that I see. This Leads me to think that they are stored with the Pro Tools app instead of the individual project. This makes me nervous about changing the existing bus names and breaking other projects.

Any guidance would be appreciated.

[JFreak]

Just create more if you need more, don't worry about it.

[KierONeil]

How do I see more than 30 busses?

[JFreak]

Go to i/o setup and create some new ones

[KierONeil]

Well, that was easier than expected.

Thanks.

[deafguy]

Just curious, what do you do with all those busses? I have a hard time using up 8 or 10 in a normal session. spill the beans!

[ShiftStudios]

Originally Posted by deafguy

Just curious, what do you do with all those busses? I have a hard time using up 8 or 10 in a normal session. spill the beans!

I use 14-20 in an average session.

Bass, Drums, Guitar, Vox, BGV, Piano, Reverbs, Parallel Comps. They all add up!

[JFreak]

Well everyone has their own technique, I guess.

I don't know how seasoned you are, but usually in this kind of a discussion I kindly suggest thinking about analog console. A good one back in the day had 8 mono groups and 8 mono sends. You had to be able to produce can mixes with the sends while you recorded, plus all the effects you wanted to use in your rough mix. After everything was recorded, naturally the can sends were freed to extra effects but basically that was it.

So, I suggest limiting yourself to that idea for a while and try what you can come up with it. Most often (if not every time) people who have never mixed with analog consoles have found out that this is a better starting point than creating a digital can-do-everything template.

After all, every buss means summing and the less summing you do the more open sound you will get.

[ShiftStudios]

Originally Posted by JFreak

Well everyone has their own technique, I guess.

I don't know how seasoned you are, but usually in this kind of a discussion I kindly suggest thinking about analog console. A good one back in the day had 8 mono groups and 8 mono sends. You had to be able to produce can mixes with the sends while you recorded, plus all the effects you wanted to use in your rough mix. After everything was recorded, naturally the can sends were freed to extra effects but basically that was it.

So, I suggest limiting yourself to that idea for a while and try what you can come up with it. Most often (if not every time) people who have never mixed with analog consoles have found out that this is a better starting point than creating a digital can-do-everything template.

After all, every buss means summing and the less summing you do the more open sound you will get.

Was that directed at me?

[b1daly]

This topic is more complex than you might think, it's really worth it to read the manual. I/O settings (of which busses are one) can be stored in the project or application level, and can also be saved and recalled as presets.

I'm finding that in PT12 it seems like by default my I/O is always restored from the session. I'm not sure if there is a preference or something. So I'm missing something here, as the manual talks about the option to click the button at the bottom of the I/O window, but the system I'm on right now, it's always grayed out, and it seems like it happens automatically.

But that's usually how I want it. Then you don't have to worry about deleting busses. If you try to delete one that is being used in your session PT will warn you. If you delete busses that are being used in other sessions, when you open those up your busses will be restored.

Where it can get hairy is moving projects from different systems. You can start to acquire extra busses, and wind up with situations where you have both "Bus 1" and "bus 1" in your session. I've had times when it's been that pattern of extra busses with a lot of this closely named busses (differing only by the capital letter), and it can get confusing a complex project, wondering why in the world the track you just assigned to your reverb using "'bus 1" is not showing up in your reverb channel, which has an input of "Bus 1"

You can also wind up with similarly named busses like "vox verb" or "Vox Verb" if you are naming your busses

So prefer to keep an eye on my bus list, and delete busses I'm not using in the session. It also makes it easier to navigate the drop down bus selector menus. Again, PT will warn you if you try to delete any path/bus that you are using in your currently opened project. (You can still do it, then you have to reset any outputs that were using the bus.)

One thing to note, on any output assignment drop down menu, you have the option to create a new track, and have the send/output automatically sent to your newly created track (you choose audio or aux on the next screen).

This can be handy. A lot of times I like to bus my drums. So you select your drum tracks, hold down options + shift, and select new aux track. Name it Drumzzz or whatever, and now all of your drums are bussed there. The interesting thing is that whenever you do this, it creates a new bus in your I/O, which sometimes I don't want. Meaning, I would rather be able to automatically route outputs to new tracks, but pick existing bus as inputs (which unless I am missing something, you can't do, you always get the new bus).

Originally Posted by JFreak

After all, every buss means summing and the less summing you do the more open sound you will get.

JFreak, you can't really mean this? The summing in Pro Tools does not change the sound and has no effect on how open your mix sounds.

You can be liberal in your use of busses. For example, if I have a track with a bunch of groups of backing vocals, I might give group its own bus, and then bus all those to a master "Backing Vocal" aux track. This can be handy if you need to make stems of various levels of flattening.