Dedicated mix busses

Mike Goodwin · Post by **Mike Goodwin** » Tue Jan 27, 2009 2:06 pm

I would like to see dedicated mix busses. I know that you can simply send things to aux sends and set them to aux only but that is a work around as I see it. Busses are a very fundamental component to mixing. They are on every single mixing console in the world because working that way makes sense.

Here are some ideas.

1 Busses should be anchored to the right side of the session view just as the aux returns are.
2 There should be a "hide/show" button where the aux/send "hide/show" buttons are.
3 There needs to be some type of button system on the channel view. For example lets say there there are 8 busses that can either act as 8 mono busses, or 4 stereo busses. Picture that just above or below the aux sends there are little square buttons with numbers on them. The number of buttons would automatically change with how you setup your busses. For example if you used four stereo busses there would be four buttons. If you used two mono busses and three stereo busses there would be 5 buttons. Exactly the same way as the send amount "pots" work.
4 Last but not least when you send a channel to a buss the volume meters should have a unique color so you can quickly see what is bussed and what is not. Just the same as it is now when you have a channel set to "aux only".

I know I should have asked for this 8 months ago but this has only started to rely bug me over the last couple of months. It came painfully clear how much they where missing after working it the Sonic Core Scope mixers. I would never suggest that live goes as extreme as there mixers but mix busses are pretty basic stuff. That and people that did not want to use them could simply leave them hidden and they would never even be seen. And for people doing large mixes could work much faster and with greater ease.

Bunky Freaks · Post by **Bunky Freaks** » Tue Jan 27, 2009 3:01 pm

hmm, sorry if i miss your point here, but you know that a normal audiotrack can act as a bus track? You can move it to right most side in session view, collapse it to make it use up minimal screen space and routing is just plain simple and fast.

This way, the busses always runs in stereo (like all channels in Live) but why do you need mono tracks anyway besides saving a minimal amount cpu power?

I have never used sends as bus replacement, feels to clunky to me

Bunky Freaks · Post by **Bunky Freaks** » Tue Jan 27, 2009 3:06 pm

in case you wonder how the bus routing is set up. Hope this makes it clear:

Mike Goodwin · Post by **Mike Goodwin** » Tue Jan 27, 2009 5:47 pm

Bunky Freaks wrote:hmm, sorry if i miss your point here, but you know that a normal audiotrack can act as a bus track? You can move it to right most side in session view, collapse it to make it use up minimal screen space and routing is just plain simple and fast.

This way, the busses always runs in stereo (like all channels in Live) but why do you need mono tracks anyway besides saving a minimal amount cpu power?

I have never used sends as bus replacement, feels to clunky to me

I know that you can use audio tracks as makeshift busses. I thought I was pretty clear.

You need mono busses if you want to pan the left and right independently. It is not about cpu overhead. Also in your picture you are using an audio track as your buss. In that situation you can only rout a channel to one "buss". If you use fx returns you can get around that limitation. I understand where you are coming from there is not that much of a difference. Being able to open and close busses separately from aux returns would simply be handy. If anything look at it as a structural and work space upgrade. It would simply be easier on the brain. Color coded meters and clear send buttons that take up way less space on the screen than send dials. It is the little things. It is not a make it or break it type situation.

Put it this way you could say the same thing about aux sends. "we don't need aux sends, you just need to create an audio track and set it to IN and then put your fx on that channel and control the fx send about by using the wet dry mix on the fx. See live is so flexible!" Sure it can be done but it is not the best way to do it in regards to work flow.

Bunky Freaks · Post by **Bunky Freaks** » Tue Jan 27, 2009 6:06 pm

i have to severly enhance and sophisticate my routing schemes, as i seem to get along with very modest routings compared to others

But i get your point. i use live hardly as multi track recorder/ classic daw, where complex routing setups are more common. There it is more important not to loose the general view which can happen quite fast in Live as it is now. I assume that when more classic daw features appear ableton needs to take care of such issues in the future anyways.