12 Sends and Audio Effect Racks - How do you send?

[pinkpaint]

Hello,

I come from a more traditional style DAW where we have our effect sends and we have control of pre and post fader for each send on each track and what not. But in Ableton, there are only 12 sends and they can only be pre or post altogether from my knowledge. In Audio effect racks one can create a second chain and "bus" a signal but is this bussing? How do you use sends in ableton? Are there certain things you use the traditional sends for or then certain things you use a second chain in your effect rack for? Is there a difference in width/ any differences at all when you send to a bus track that is a seperate track versus bussing on the track (sounds so weird saying that lol)

Basically, what Im trying to ask is if ableton has only 12 sends there has to be a way of doing more considering it is considered the sound design DAW. I am just wanting to figure out the right way. Thanks for any help in advance.

[roringtonsmithe]

Reverbs and delays.

Consider this: any audio channel can in effect become a return track if you:

1. make a blank audio channel,
2. add a rack to it,
3. add the fx you want outside of the rack
4. add a compressor to your rack.
5. use the 'listen in' (headphone icon) on the side chain function, using the source as the thing you want sent.

Hope that makes sense.

[DangerousDave]

There are a few ways in which I typically handle the signal path in order to make efficient use of sends/busses/groups/racks.

1. For the standard sends I typically use them for time based effects that are global to the track, as well as a few effects like saturation, redux, etc. I have them set to post fader (probably obvious.)

2. For drums, where you would often use a drum buss I actually have them in a rack. This gives you control over each sound individually as well as the "drum buss" as a whole. Within a drum rack you have additional sends and returns so you can setup something like parallel compression, delays, and reverbs that are either specific to each drum sound, the group of drums as a whole, or the entire track.

3. for layering synths/instruments I will usually group similar elements like say put pads, strings, and keys together in a group as an example. This essentially "busses" them to the group track the same way a drum rack would, and the same way as a send only send/return path would. I think people that are akin to more analog ways of mixing often use sends/returns for their busses, or utilize the audio in/audio out function to route several tracks to one audio track. Basically a few different ways to skin a cat.

4. Effects racks work in a similar fashion, essentially grouping various effects within a "rack" and allowing you to control them as a group or individually. Again, similar to drum racks you can have sends/returns that are internal to each rack, so you can setup pretty complex effects signal routing if you so choose.

As far as I know (and someone can correct me if I am wrong) the only difference between summing to a bus vs. racks vs. grouping in Live is racks have the ability to have their own sends/returns which are different from the global sends/returns, and the way the signal path is visualized. For example, sending three audio tracks to a return is essentially the same as having them in a rack, but the way Live handles the actual interface of the faders is a bit different. I.e. in a rack they are all collapsed, if you are just using audio tracks they (obviously) appear as standard faders.

For my purposes this is all I need, some engineers seem to go pretty heavy into complex signal processing and paths, which you can certainly achieve in Live, but I typically stick to the above options.

[pinkpaint]

So there is no difference in summing between a traditional bus sends and in an effect rack making multiple chains?

[DangerousDave]

That is my understanding, just a little different way of doing things.