There are many times when mixing when you want to route a track to two separate places at once. A track will always have a main track output, and that's what we use to set up a submix or that we send to our main output. Kind of the IO section of the mixing board configures that. But often, we want to send a track to an additional or auxiliary location. And that is what aux-sends are for. Aux sends give you a second volume fader that lets you route the same signal to a different place, but in a different amount. And sometimes even with a different pan position. Now the send section of a mixing board is probably the most complicated part of the mixing board, and the one you're going to want to take a little bit of time with to figure out how it works. The great part about it is it really does open up many creative possibilities if you really understand how it works. The tricky part about the sends is they're not in the location you'd expect if you're assuming the signal's entering the top of the channel strip and going to the bottom. Sends aren't where they look like they are. You have the knob in one place, but the send might actually be happening in a different location. In fact, sends can be moved between two different locations. They can end up before the fader, which means that the amount going to the send is totally independent and unreliant on the track fader. Or, the send can be after the track fader. In which case, if you reduce the track fader, it also going to reduce what's going to the send. We call these two different locations pre-fader and post-fader sends. And they have two very different uses. Again, a pre-fader send, the level of the pre-fader send is totally independent of the track fader. But a post-fader send is dependent on the track fader. Meaning, if I change the level of the fader, it's also going to change the amount that's going to that send. So we have two main uses for auxiliary sends, and they relate to the pre and post. One great usage for a track send is to configure a monitor mix. And we'll start with a, a live sound example. If I'm mixing a live show, I'm going to have one main mix, my track faders are set up to control what the audience hears. The fun of house mix coming out of the big speakers toward the audience. And I'll mix those faders so that it sounds great out you know, in the house. But if you look on stage, there are a variety of other mixes going on at the same time. In front of the singer, is a monitor. And he might want to hear specific things. maybe a lot of himself. And maybe the drums so he can keep in time, and the guitar so he can have his harmony just right. He might not want to hear a lot of the bass. Maybe the bass is loud on stage. He doesn't need to have it out of his, out of his monitor. The drummer might want to hear completely different things. He might need to hear a lot of the bass. We can lock in with that bass line. And the guitar player, he might want to hear a lot of the vocals. So in that instance, the engineer is actually configuring multiple mixes. He has one for the front of house, which is his big faders. And he has multiple monitor mixes, which are all configured with auxiliary sends. In that case, we would want to use pre-fader auxiliary sends, because we don't want his changes of the front of house mix to change the settings in his monitor mixes. The monitor mixes will have been configured during sound check, so they sound just what the band want to hear, and as he changes the mix as the audience comes in changes the acoustics of the room, and the engineers changing the front of house mix, it shouldn't change what they've decided on during sound check. When setting up effects like a reverb or a delay. We'll also use sends, but in this case, we'll use post fader sends. One of the great usages of sends is to configure our reverb. And the reverb is kind of the sense of being in a space. It's how we fool the listener into thinking that all the different elements were recorded in the same room. Have a, have a certain ambiance around them. So, we use post fader sends because if we bring down, say, the level of the drums, it should also bring down the level of the reverb. If it didn't, we could bring that track fader all the way down and still hear the reverb of the drums, which would make no sense at all. So typically when we set up effects in kind of a send and return structure, we use a post-fader send. And a post-fader send is really the default in your DAW in most cases. And you'll see if you right click on a send knob, or maybe there's a p-button that you can click to switch that send from being in either of those two places. Now in the case of setting up a parallel effects with a reverb we'll need an aux track where we can place that reverb and, and adjust its level individually from the individual tracks. When setting up monitor mixes, we might also use an aux track to configure the overall level of what's going to those headphones. And we can call that aux track a return track. and on a mixing board it's often called a return. So you might hear someone refer to a return track, and you configure that in your DAW with an aux track. Remember an aux track is simply a routing point, but it can also have insert effects. Which is where we put that reverb. So again, we use sends for two primary kind of signal flows. The first one is to configure a monitor mix in which case we'd use pre-fader sends. And the level of the sends is not related to the track fader level. We use post fader sends when setting up parallel effects like reverbs or delays, and the track fader level will actually change what is being sent to the reverb aux track. Now that we've looked at the concept of a send and return structure, I'd like to look specifically how we would set up parallel effects within a DAW. Now this is an essential technique, because it allows you to use a single reverb plug-in and apply it to the entire mix with. Different levels on each of the different tracks. We're going to talk more and more about reverb as the course goes on. But one of the important aspects of reverb is, it gives you the sense of the space that all the instruments are in. If you want to give the sense of something being further away from the listener, it helps to have a little bit more reverb, and a little bit of less of the dry, unprocessed signal. So as I'm trying to apply reverb to my entire mix, I need to have it different amounts on the different elements. I might want to have more reverb on my keys to put them in the background, and less reverb on my bass, to pull it up front close to the listener. But, we still want to use a single plug in. So, that is where this send and return structure comes in. This is also known as parallel effects. So let's see if we can set it up here. We have our drums, and our drum sub-mix configured as we did in the previous video set up the same way, even though I'm in a different DAW now. And I have Bass and Keys in the track. Let's hear this to remind ourselves what it sounds like now. [MUSIC] So I like what we have so far, but I'm feeling like it's a little bit too dry. I'd like a little bit more of a sense of a space around us. The first thing we'll need to create is a bus. And I'm going to my audio assignments here to configure that. I'm already using one bus for my drum submix, so I'll use another bus for my reverb bus. Now, in my DAW, I'll create an aux track. And I'll make it stereo, because I want to use a stereo reverb, and I'm going to set its input to be that newly created reverb bus. I'll now go to all my other tracks and configure a send going to that bus. [NOISE] . Now it's not necessary to configure all the sends. We could just configure the sends that we were going to use. But if you look at an analog mixing board, there's a row of sends that all goes to a specific location, and it's a great thing just to setup for yourself to make looking at your mixing board easy. Notice that the send levels on all of these are all the way down, so we're not really going to be utilizing the reverb in there, yet. But I have configured the signal flow and then I have a send, routed to the reverb bus, I have an aux track whose input is that reverb bus. The next thing we needed to configure is a reverb on this track. When we add this reverb, I'd like to immediately set the Dry Wet to 100% Wet. Now, there's two ways you may see a Dry Wet section in a reverb. One way is having two separate faders. One for Dry, and one for Wet, as we see here. Another variation that you may see is having a single knob that just cross fades between Dry and Wet. If we're putting a reverb in aux track, it's essential that the output of the device is only reverb and none of the Dry. That makes it so this track is entirely reverb and doesn't affect your dry mix at all. It also avoids the chance of having a doubled up set, and dry sounds, giving you the chance of phase cancellation, which we try to avoid. I can choose a preset that is similar to what I really want. And I'll choose big room. Now if we listen, [MUSIC] we're not yet using that reverb at all. But when I increase the reverb send on my keys, we should start hearing it. [MUSIC] And we hear, even when I stop, we hear that reverb hang on a bit. So we've created a much bigger, roomier sound just by increasing the reverb on that one track. Now I want to point out some things. What I'm going to do is mute the other tracks, so all I'm hearing are the keys right now. [MUSIC] If I reduce the reverb, very dry. Increase it. We get that reverby sound after. Now, if I was to decrease the track fader for the keys. [MUSIC] Everything vanishes. We lose the dry signal and we lose the wet. Because, this is a post fader send. Because it's a post fader send and it's set right there, as I, as I reduce the track fader, it also is reducing what is going to that other track. In effect, this send is actually coming. After the track fader, down here. Even though it's being shown, in this point, in the channel strip. If I were to change this to be pre-fader, if I reduce the track fader, we get a different sound entirely. Let's hear. [MUSIC] Now, the only thing we're hearing is the reverb. And we're hearing none of the dry, as I bring this up, [MUSIC] we hear more and more of the dry. So it makes sense for reverbs to use Up post, Fader, Send. This way, as you reduce the track fader, it also reduces the amount of reverb. If I wanted to add reverb to my drums, I would go about bringing up the reverb send on the drums. Let's hear how that sounds. [MUSIC] And now I have reverb on multiple things of my mix. I have more on my keys than on my drums. Now one thing we can do with this that's quite nice is reduce all the reverb in the entire mix with one fader. Because. I had the reverb only in this track. And the output of this plug in is only reverb. This is controlling the level of reverb on the entire track. Let's hear it. [MUSIC]. If I reduce this, the mix becomes very dry. And as I increase this, [MUSIC]. [MUSIC] The mix becomes roomier. So we have a wonderful Dry Wet control for the entire mix, and if I want to change the, the type of room on the entire mix all at once, I can do that by adjusting this one plug in. If I want to give it a really crazy, long room sound, I can do that like this. And let's hear it. [MUSIC] And that's changing the reverb over the entire track. So you can see the benefit of using a reverb and an aux track. I have a single plug-in being applied to multiple tracks in different amounts controlled by the reverb sends. That's reducing CPU using from having multiple plug-ins, it's making it easier to change the setting on the entire track, and I have a beautiful Dry Wet control over the entire mix. I'd like you to go to your DAW and see if you can configure this type of parallel affects. Its a very important type of signal flow, it is a bit confusing at first, but in the long run you'll find it's an essential technique and you'll find it's a common thing among mix engineers, so you want to be able to understand how the signal flow works.
