Logic Pro 9 setting up busses for reverb?

E

Edgold

Logician
I've been advised that instead of using a reverb setting for each track, that it's better to set it up in a send and receive auxilliary buss for greater CPU effficency.

But how do I do this?
 
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Edgold said:
I've been advised that instead of using a reverb setting for each track, that it's better to set it up in a send and receive auxilliary buss for greater CPU effficency.

But how do I do this?
Click to expand...

OK

Create an aux, e.g. with input bus 1 output to Stereo 1-2 out and insert the reverb there.

Then on your tracks you create a send to bus 1.

You can have as many auxes as you like, I start off with two: bus 1 and bus 2

Send 1 Bus 1 for a smallish room
Send 2 bus 2 for a longer plate or hall

Each track has 2 sends, I find it works well to give everything a little bit of bus 1 to the room, then use bus 2 longer reverb to taste.

This makes it very easy and visual to see how much reverb on each track, the more send, the more reverb.
 
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I've made some progress on this by viewing a few YouTube tutorials and I already have an auxiliary buss set up but since I'm sending everything to one buss, it sounds like a bathtub when I remove the reverb from all the tracks and set only one up in the aux.

So I gather that one does not wants to send all to one bus but set up similar reverbs only and send them to different auxs with the same stereo output? Is this correct?
 
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Pete Thomas said:
Edgold said:
I've been advised that instead of using a reverb setting for each track, that it's better to set it up in a send and receive auxilliary buss for greater CPU effficency.

But how do I do this?
Click to expand...

OK

Create an aux, e.g. with input bus 1 output to Stereo 1-2 out and insert the reverb there.

Then on your tracks you create a send to bus 1.

You can have as many auxes as you like, I start off with two: bus 1 and bus 2

Send 1 Bus 1 for a smallish room
Send 2 bus 2 for a longer plate or hall

Each track has 2 sends, I find it works well to give everything a little bit of bus 1 to the room, then use bus 2 longer reverb to taste.

This makes it very easy and visual to see how much reverb on each track, the more send, the more reverb.
Click to expand...

Thanks Pete, our messages crossed. You answered much of my questions already. I need to try this out and then come back.
 
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Edgold said:
So I gather that one does not wants to send all to one bus but set up similar reverbs only and send them to different auxs with the same stereo output? Is this correct?
Click to expand...

It depends very much on the music, so much depends on whether you are trying to make multitracked recording sound like a live recording, ie all in one space or whether you want to use different reverbs for effects.

Most of what I do is the former, and it works well for me to just have two reverbs, as I said, one is a room that kind of binds everything together. It's a smallish/medium room about 1.2 seconds. Then I have a 2 or 3 second plate for adding where I think something wants reverb. But very rarely do I like to actually hear the reverb, it's there and I'd miss it if it wasn't, but not usually a "slap you round the face" big reverb.

But of course many people want something different, but it's a question of getting the right reverbs and using the right amount for each track for what you want to hear.
 
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Pete,

I am a classical-style composer and want it to sound as realistic as possible.

But right now it still sounds like a huge echo chamber.

Frankly I've never understood the Sound Designer reverb window and I'm not exactly sure it's the one for me. You mention room size but which reverb do you use, especially to set buss 1 to room size?

And you also seem to say that the more sends to buss 1, the more reverb there will be. Which is hardly a smallish room sound!
 
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I see that I did have sound designer reverb set too high and I've reduced it considerably. I've set bus 2 to a higher reverb but to a lower output volume and this seems to be along the the right path.
 
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By Sound Designer, you probably mean Space Designer... That is the utmost, in my opinion, of the reverd plugins. Its name says what it does. It can reproduce the reverberation of a given space, such as a real (existing) church or concert hall, or your bathroom... It uses the Impulse Response technology to achieve the same. You could create your own Impulse Response of a specific venue, in order to calibrate your sound in advance (theoritically). There are also on the internet Impulse Responses files you can download and import in Space Designer; variety ranges from expensive sets to free ones, from open area to vacuum tube(!). Theoritically, almost any sound files could be used as such; result could however vary a lot. Space Designer can also be used as a regular reverb, but with a slew of parameters to adjust what will be reverberated and how... The best way, in my opinion, to use reverb, is to learn about the basics and listen to actually hear what all these mean and how you feel about them. After all, it's mostly a matter of taste... Nevertheless, reverberation being a natural part of the sound we hear everyday, hence its importance if you aim at giving your music a more vivid natural sound.
 
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Sorry, Space designer it is.

Yes, I've always been intimidated by that window, feeling that I don't have the background to understand most things in it. But will try to learn about it as well as I can.

Thanks.
 
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As a piece of advice, take it little by little, part by part, as the plugin Space Designer is encompassing many features layered one on top of the other. Loading presets could give you a good idea of what it can do. The two curved handles on the right are levels for the (top one) dry (un-reverberated) and the (lower one) wet (reverberated) signal. Have fun! 🙂
 
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Hi Atlas,

I started working with those presets yesterday after going the YouTube route and looking up Space Designer. The presets were a lot of help actually and gave me an insight into the settings.

As I understand it, and I haven't gotten too far into this, the dry setting gives you the amount of reflection that the room or hall walls return and the wet ones are the reverbs from the sound source. Since few or none of the resets seem to take off the dry to any extent, I assume there is a reason for this or I'm still misunderstanding The dry settings. More later.
 
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mixer

This shows my mixer for the piece I have now finished:

http://www.egoldmidincd.com/mixer.jpg

It will go online on or before October 1st as I understand it, and I'll add the link when it becomes available.

Aux 1 has the medium hall preset and 2 is largely based on the little room one. I don't understand why it insists on an aux 3 as I don't recall setting that up.

The samples are vsl which reside on a separate drive. I also don't understand why I'm forced to restart after a time as Logic freezes. Not enough memory for the Vienna instruments?
 
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My method: Set up my bus and aux track. chose my reverb and space Option click the send to hear 100% of the space, right click and lower the send until I only notice the reverb when its bypassed, a little goes a long way.
 
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Edgold said:
As I understand it, and I haven't gotten too far into this, the dry setting gives you the amount of reflection that the room or hall walls return and the wet ones are the reverbs from the sound source. Since few or none of the resets seem to take off the dry to any extent, I assume there is a reason for this or I'm still misunderstanding The dry settings. More later.
Click to expand...
Not quite...
The Dry and the Rev levels (on the SpaceDesigner plugin interface) are like two faders on a mixer.
The Dry level is the original unprocessed sound, without any reverb.
The Dry level adjust the output volume of the original unaffected sound, bypassing SpaceDesigner effects.
On the other hand, the Rev level adjusts the volume output level of the reverberated sound (SpaceDesigner-processed).

To hear only the reverberated sound, pull the Dry level all the way to the left (at 0), and push the Rev level all the way to the right (at Max).
Doing the opposite would yeld to hear the original unreverberating sound.

Setting the levels to hear only the reverberated sound (Dry at 0 and Rev at Max), eases the task to adjust the various SpaceDesigner parameters as you only hear the processed sound; once done you could adjust the Dry and Rev levels in order to obtain a partially reverberated sound.

In other situations, some would set the Rev to the Max and Dry to 0, and would use the "send to Aux" approach, allowing multiples (different instruments) channels sent to the same Aux-SpaceDesigner-instantiated. And one would adjust the reverb of each instrument by adjusting the Aux-Send level of its channelstrip.

In the various effects plugins interface, you will often find these Dry/Wet levels, either in a form of distinct levels (like in SpaceDesigner) or in the form of balance rotary knob/slider. These serve the same purpose...
 
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Edgold said:
This shows my mixer for the piece I have now finished:

http://www.egoldmidincd.com/mixer.jpg

It will go online on or before October 1st as I understand it, and I'll add the link when it becomes available.

Aux 1 has the medium hall preset and 2 is largely based on the little room one.
Click to expand...

I see that you are using the first Send on each channel to send to Bus 2 who brings their sounds to Aux 2 where is instantiated a SpaceDesigner.
However all these Sends levels are set to zero, so no sound is actually sent via the Sends. I understand that you circumvented the issue by setting each channelstrip output to either Bus 1 or 2. And I guess that in order to adjust processed/unprocessed sound levels, you added two other channelstrip, one with Bus 1 as its input and the other with Bus 2 as its input, and both without SpaceDesigner instantiated...

Why not using the Send levels of each of your channelstrips to adjust the reverb of each of your tracks? This way you could decrease the number of channelstrips (by two), add discrete control of both reverbs for each channel, add more discrete control over possible automation.
To do so:
-(Facultative)Delete the channelstrip Audio 1 and the channelstrip Aux3.
-Set the output of you all your channelstrips to StereoOut.
-Add a Send to Bus 1 (under Bus 2) on every instrument (VSL) channelstrip.
-Ensure that all your Sends are set to post-fader. That way, decreasing the track volume via its channelstrip fader will decrease its reverberation proportionnally, (which sounds more natural).
-On each channelstrip, use the little round dial at the right of the Send (corresponding to Bus 1 or 2) to adjust the amount of sound that track to be reverberated by each SpaceDesigner.
-(Recommended) Adjust both SpaceDesigner fully wet (the Dry level set to "0" and the Rev level set to "Max"). That way you get the reverberation control of each VSL instrument track using only via the corresponding Send (little round dial).

To summarize, with the above described method, you can:
-Control the level of each instrument track volume (including its reverberation) via its corresponding channelstrip fader.
-Control the level of each instrument track discrete reverberations types via the corresponding channelstrip Send little round dial (to Bus 1 and/or 2).
-Control the global level of reverberation of each SpaceDesigner by the use of the corresponding Aux channelstrip fader.
 
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Edgold said:
... it insists on an aux 3 as I don't recall setting that up.
Click to expand...
Aux 1 and 2 are already in use and Logic creates a new Aux track (numerically incremented) when using the "+" button at the left of the mixer...

Edgold said:
The samples are vsl which reside on a separate drive. I also don't understand why I'm forced to restart after a time as Logic freezes. Not enough memory for the Vienna instruments?
Click to expand...
You are using 20 instances of the VSL player plugin, 2 SpaceDesigner plugin instances and a ChannelEQ instance, which is overwhelming your CPU, I reasonably assume. Check your CPU readout on the Logic Transport bar...
Try using the Freeze on the tracks you don't intend to work on. This should help reducing the number of times Logic hangs:
http://documentation.apple.com/en/logicpro/usermanual/index.html#chapter=9%26section=16%26tasks=true
 
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trying to understand the replies here but a further question

Thanks all for your replies especially Atlas' and sorry to be so dense. Maybe I'm beginning to understand them but a further question concerns recording: I'm trying now to record to an Audio 1 track (as opposed to a regular bounce which does give me the reverb I've set up) and, until my last two attempts, was unable to get any reverb at all into the recording to Audio1.

By adding space designer inserts into the Audio 1 track on the mixer I can do this but I don't see how I can mix more that 1 reverb and edit their relative strengths.

I did upload a bounced version of this file to SoundClick (play only.) just today.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=429281&songID=11960082
 
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I should add that I've upgraded my memory to 16 GB because of the heavy demands of the Merlyn score and the VSL samples and am now running Mountain Lion as well.
 
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As I understand it: each track can have an unlimited number of sends but 1-3 is normal. The amount of each send is shown by clicking within the circle next to the bus name and moving the mouse up or down.

Upon choosing a new bus, a new aux track is created. The reverb can be set here and the track sends will use these reverbs. Other effects and filters may also be set here including the compressor.

Under the instrument number, the circles indicate the right (+) or left (-) stereo panning. Underneath that is the volume levels and these can be changed separately or all at once by choosing a group of instruments as long as they are all set to "post fader". Of course, these volume events can be changed by changing the CC7 controller in the MIDI list.

And in the inspector, every track has as it's input bus 1 and output is stereo out.

These settings all seem correct as they all show up in the proper auxs.

But I can't record these settings so far to a single audio track. Yes, bouncing them works fine but, assuming these settings are correct, how do I set up the Audio 1 track for recording these multiple tracks into one track making sure the correct reverbs and balances are transmitted as they are in the regular bounce protocol?
 
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