Changing bus assignments.

[Terry Wetzel]

Good morning. When organizing tracks in preparation for a mix I sometimes change bus assignments on certain tracks. When I do I get, "Changing this bus assignment will result in automation being lost. Do you really want to change it. Yes/No"? Why does this happen and shouldn't I have the option of changing busses if I choose to do so? Should I wait until all bus assignments are as I prefer before adding automation? Thanks.

[albee1952]

I recommend ironing out bus assignment before mixing if you can, and maybe create some template sessions that have all routing ready to go. Having said that, SHOULD automation be lost? Probably not, but if you are changing, say from a mono bus to a stereo bus(or the other way), then yes, that automation would likely disappear. How often do you find yourself changing this, and why? Just wondering if we can steer your methodology for better efficiency

[Terry Wetzel]

Thanks albee. Normally I start using busses in order to instantiate inserts on aux. tracks.
On drum tracks which are all stereo I usually use bsses 1 & 2. If the track I want to add an insert to is Mono, I create a mono Aux track, say buss 3 or 4. Normally I try to keep the busses in numerical order but sometimes I find a need to add a track and then I have to jump ahead and use higher numbered busses. Does that make sense? I probably should map out my bussing strategy ahead of time but how would I know what's going to happen during the entire process of completing the song? By the way. When I have changed the busses it doesn't seem to affect anything.

[albee1952]

Not sure if you knew this, but you can customize and name buses just as you can with inputs and outputs. You can even rename buses that are in use. While I certainly use my share of numbered buses, I have quite a few(built into my template sessions) that are named for their purpose, such as:

DrumComp(for drum bus compression)
DrumRoom(for my stereo drum reverb/room sound)
AccVrb(reverb for acoustic guitars)
VocVrb(vocal reverb)
MonoVrbL(and MonoVrbR) for mono Dverbs used with electric guitars)
BassAmp(to send my DI'd bass track to a mono AUX with an amp sim plugin)
and a few more I can't think of.

The AUX tracks that are fed by these buses are named accordingly
I've been using these for so long, I couldn't even tell you what bus numbers they represent

BTW, My session templates have all these in place, and I also have track presets(assuming you have heard/seen that hack) and I have AUX tracks that belong together with audio tracks as part of those track presets. Example; my Acc GTR track preset has 2 audio tracks(with plugins and sends) and a stereo AUX track(with a reverb plugin) already color-coded and grouped.

[Terry Wetzel]

Wow Dave, albee. Sounds like you've got a real handle on track organization! I'll need to re read this several times before it sinks in. Are these named busses listed that way in your I/O buss page. If so, how did you accomplish that? It sounds like the way to go and when I'm finished with the song I'm working on I'll give it a try.

[Drew Mazurek]

Simply right click on an input or output assignment or send and you can rename it.

[albee1952]

The more I know, the more I can confuse myself

[Terry Wetzel]

Good one Dave. That's me to!

[Terry Wetzel]

Thanks Drew. Good info for a slow learner!