D8B Bus Help

[felix]

Hi, Im still kind of new to the board and I was wondering, because ive just started using the mackie a lot and havent figured out how to do it yet, but can you route buses to your main mix instead of having them go out the back of your console and having to resend them back in? It seems to me like you should be able to do this but maybe im wrong.

[Crash]

What are you trying to accomplish? It seems odd but you can't assign the busses 1-8 to the master L/R bus.

[felix]

Im trying to accomplish a sub group kind of track. Like i want to route all my drum tracks toi be controlled by 1 fader instead of like 8 so that i can easily adjust the volume of the all the drums with that one fader.

[Crash]

Virtual Groups are what you seek.

http://www.sonido-7.com/d8b/files/userg ... Bv5_OM.pdf

Chapter 2, page 38.

[Bruce Graham]

Hi Felix & Crash;

Felix, did the "Group" do what you wanted it to do? I think I know what you want to do and I have yet found a way to do that. To be clearer, asign more than 1 thing to a single track on the 1 to 24 buss side of the console. I have as yet not found a way to do that in any versions of the software. It can be done using the "Surround outputs".
I wanted it for reason that relate to doing PA (ie. assign all the background singers to a group, then route that group to the Stereo Out). In your case I think you want to do the same thing with a tape machine (hard disk digital recorder) between the bus out and the Tape return. Is that correct?

Crash, I think doing it that way only allows 1 fader to control many faders but the routing issue isn't addressed. I think.

Hope you found an answer that worked.

Bruce

[Crash]

I am not sure what you mean by the routing.... By using the virtual groups in your scenario with background vocals, all of those faders are routed to the stereo bus. I have done this with the d8b in live scenarios before.

[Casey_Pittman]

In a live scenario these types of groups would be called VCA's. Leave the channels assigned to the L&R bus but also assign the desired channels to the group(VCA) of your choice. Set the mix of the channels then adjust the over all level via the group(VCA).

Now, if your wanting to put processing over the whole group then that's a different thing all together. I can't be sure, cause I'm not sitting in front of the d8b right now, but can you not use the pre insert section to send the bus channels back to the input channels? Like you would do if you wanted to insert the spdif to channels.

-Casey

[FrankH]

Actually, with V5.1, there is a way to send any number of channels to all 8 busses and feed those busses into the 2 mix....all within the D8B.

How, you ask?

All it takes is having two UFX cards and either the Acuma 31 Band EQ, Drawmer Dynamics, FinalMix or Massenburg EQ plugins and you've got the ability to use all eight busses as submixes directly to the 2mix.

In the Plugin Configuration window, load any of the above mentioned plugins into UFX slots and assign their Input Sources to Busses. Assign the Destinations to the same Busses as the Input Sources. Then, assign the FX returns to the 2mix and set their faders to 0dB and the pans hard left and right and leave the faders alone. From this point on, the bus faders could be considered the subgroup masters. Or not. These FX returns could be considered subgroup masters as well. And they have a bit more versatility to them than the Bus faders: Panning and additional FX sends.

For a neutral unity gain starting point I usually bypass the plugin effect to start with.

To me, there are two major advantage to subgrouping this way over using Virtual Group Masters: the ability to widen and narrow the submix with the FX panners and, if you have (in addition to a pair of UFX cards) an MFX card or two, you can use the Sends on the FX "bus" returns to feed the MFX cards....to get reverb, chorus or delay on the submixes.

And of course, you can use the EQ and/or compression the plugins provide on the submixes.

EDIT: After reading Andy's response below, I realize, I should have listed the two disadvantages I can think of. One being that you have to tie up one (for four busses) or two (for eight busses) UFX cards to do this. The second is that subgrouping this way puts a delay of a few samples (sounds like 6 to me) on the "bussed" tracks. Easily heard if you pop the source tracks into the 2Mix. This delay could pose a problem with live recording leakage...or not. Depends on the leakage I guess.

To be thorough, I guess I should mention that this technique can't be done properly using MFX cards/plugins because the effects can't be bypassed like they can with the UFX.

[OscarPro1]

Frank,
Just tried this, and it works fine! Man...we must be crazy doing this on New Years day..
But I suppose if you've been touched by the D8B bug then it comes naturaly. Coming back to the routing Bus issue, the only foreseeable downside would be tying up the FX boards for this reason. I'm going to experiment a little more with the this and see what happens. In any case have a great start to the New Year everyone...

Andy

[Creative69]

this could be what i was looking for