My only issue is I haven't ever used buses, I get concept but never bothered with them. Will need to dust off the Cakewalk guide and work it out. To date my tracking and mixes have been fairly simple.
Wow - you are about to discover a WHOLE new world of possibilities that will make transform your production and mixing world!!!
What version of Cakewalk Sonar are you running? As you may know I am a HUGE SONAR fan and the development of the product (currently Platinum) that has happened in the last 10 months or so is phenomenal and (IMHO) leaving other DAWs (even the big boys) playing catch up
It may be worth you checking out what your upgrade options are for lifetime updates - you pay once and get ALL future updates when they come out
Cakewalk have currently committed to monthly updates (
) which have been a good mix of bug fixes, enhancements and new features (including some really significant ones!)
Anyway, back on topic...
In the CONSOLE VIEW of SONAR you have your tracks in the left pane and your BUSSES in the right pane
It is likely that you will have some kind of MASTER BUS before your main outputs (if you haven't you just create a new bus and call it "MASTER BUS")
You then simply create as many busses as you want and just ensure that the OUTPUT of the bus or track feeds the appropriate bus
Eg - a lead vocal track may be recorded on a track 1
A doubled lead vocal is recorded on track 2
3 backing vocals may be recorded on tracks 3,4 & 5
I would set up the following busses:
LEAD VOX
BACKING VOX
VOX MASTER
I would then set the output of track 1 to feed the LEAD VOX bus (if you set the bus up first and name it you will see this name in the track output options (which is different from a SEND - we will get to that in a bit)
I would then set the output of the LEAD VOX bus to feed the VOX MASTER bus
I would set the output of track 2 to also feed the LEAD VOX bus (as I am treating the doubled vocal as part of the lead vocal) - and this bus is already set to feed the VOX MASTER
I would then set tracks 3, 4 and 5 to feed the BACKING VOX bus - in SONAR "quick groups" are your friend here as you can select tracks 3, 4 & 5, press CTRL and keep it pressed and then any changes you make to one track will be replicated across all the selected tracks - so you can change the output of all of the tracks to route them to the BACKING VOX bus in one go (which will be handy for your 10+ crowd vocals
)
I would then route this bus to the VOX MASTER bus
Finally, make sure your VOX MASTER bus outputs to your MASTER bus
This can take a little time to set up (especially when you do the same for drums, guitars, bass, keys etc.) but when you have done it once you can save the file as a template and all of this routing will be done for you
The biggest advantages of this approach are:
You can blend your vocals (eg the 3 backing vocals) with each other (levels, EQ, automation etc.) and then route them to the BACKING VOCAL bus. When it comes to mixing you can balance the level of the BACKING VOCALS with the rest of the tracks by just adjusting the BACKING VOCALS bus fader
This is very useful if you have 10+ backing vocals or a multi-miked drum kit / VST with different kit pieces on different tracks
You can also process the bus - eg slight compression on the BACKING VOCAL bus will help glue them together and also mean you only need to add 1 compressor to the bus rather than 3 compressors on each track, which will reduce the strain on your PC
If someone wants a version of your mix without vocals you can simply mute your VOX MASTER bus and voila - instant karaoke version with one click
You can make the mixing of complex projects very simple by clever routing and busses - eg if you have lots of guitars you can set up the following busses: ACOUSTIC GIT, CLEAN ELECTRIC GIT, DIRTY GIT, LEAD GIT - which can all be routed to a GUITAR MASTER bus, which is in turn routed/output to the MASTER BUS
Blend and mix the individual tracks into the appropriate bus and if you want a "Guitar heavy" version of a mix you can simply increase the level of the GUITAR MASTER bus, which will increase the level of ALL of the guitars - alternatively (or in conjunction with this) you may just want more of the dirty guitars - so you simply increase the level of the DIRTY GIT bus - rather than trying to remix the 5 or so tracks feeding this and risk upsetting the balance of these tracks
Notice I have been careful to use the terms "output" and "route" rather than the term SEND
When dealing with busses "output" and "route" typically refers to outputting the whole track or bus to another track or bus
A SEND typically outputs a part of the signal of a track or bus to another track or bus
REVERB is a great example
Now set up a bus called REVERB and add a reverb effect to this bus, ensuring the reverb plugin is set to 100% wet signal and no dry signal. Set the output of this bus to the MASTER BUS
You now have the option to insert a SEND into any of your tracks or busses, which will send an amount of the track or bus to the REVERB bus (the amount is controlled by the "SEND AMOUNT" control)
This means you can send some signal from lots of different tracks and busses to a single reverb bus, rather than having 10+ individual reverb plugins added - reducing computer strain
This way you can add an EQ to the REVERB BUS and remove some of the low end to ensure your reverb doesn't get muddy
If you want different REVERB types you can set up different REVERB BUSSES and simply use sends to send any track or bus to this reverb type. Each track & bus can have multiple sends
I typically have lots of effects busses set up as part of my template - eg: LEAD VOCAL REVERB, PLATE REVERB, BIG REVERB, AMBIENCE REVERB, SHORT DELAY, LONG DELAY
These all load up with my template (including the plugins on each bus) so I simply use the sends to feed some signal to these tracks
I hope this all makes sense - I will try to post a picture of my BUS structure to give you some ideas
It can be really fun setting up the bus routing, which will enable you to control large projects with just a few bus sliders
And the beauty of saving all of the routing as a template saves a lot of time and gets you up and running immediately