Sends on the mains: advanced use cases

Yesterday we talked about aux sends, with a digression into how it was weird that a DAW would even allow a scenario in which you could put a send on the mains that could result in a feedback loop. And then we talked more generally for a moment about how, in basic use cases, there’s not ever a time when you would even want to do a send off the master bus.¹

But this is not to say that such use cases don’t exist! From our dear friend Brian Steckler:

I use sends off my main mix bus to feed various outputs and/or print tracks … especially useful for printing both the main mix and also all the stems off subgroups in one shot in real time.

Separate outputs are for speakers with Sonarworks, headphones with VSX, and the “Print” set that I select when bouncing offline.

So, wait: Brian is using sends off the master bus extensively — something that I said just yesterday wasn’t something one would typically do!

The reason for that is that yesterday’s post was more of a “101” post, and today is more of an “advanced topics” post.

It’s important to me with Jamie’s list that I make things as accessible as possible to beginners, because there are a number of you reading this and you’re the ones who need the resources the most.

But I also know from my own experience that, when I was more of a beginner, it was inspiring and helpful to me to get occasional windows into more advanced methods and practices. These windows helped me continually redefine the horizon that I was riding towards — to expand my sense of possibility.

So, in the spirit of broadening our horizons, let’s break this down a bit! Why is Brian using so many sends off the mains, and why doesn’t that create the potential for catastrophic feedback loops?

Second question first: the reason Brian’s sends don’t create feedback loops is that they’re all what I might refer to as single-ended sends — i.e., sends without associated returns. This is something that you can do with sends! You can just send parts of signals off someplace, without them ever returning to the master bus.

Or, to put this differently: the fact that sends and returns are frequently referred to in the same breath sometimes obscures the fact that they are separate routing concepts, independent of one another.

So what Brian is doing on his rig is he’s using a bunch of different single-ended sends to route his mix, and parts of his mix, to different places for different purposes. Let’s break them down:

• Speakers with Sonarworks: Sonarworks is room-correction software (which I also use, and which I could not recommend more highly). So, one send off of Brian’s mains is going to a bus with the Sonarworks plugin on it, which then routes to a physical output on his interface which feeds his speakers.

• Headphones with VSX: This is the same basic idea as Sonarworks, but for headphones. So, a second send off Brian’s master bus is going to a bus with the Slate VSX plugin on it, which then routes to his headphone output.

• Various output and/or print tracks: it’s probably best to let Brian speak again in his own words here:

In Pro Tools, where I do the bulk of my record production and mixing, my main stereo bus feeds a few buses: one to my speakers with Sonarworks, one to the headphone output on my interface with Slate VSX inserted, and one that sends to outputs 5 and 6 on the interface with nothing on it. So, when I’m ready to print my final mix, I set the Pro Tools output to that “5-6 PRINT” bus so I’m not catching Sonarworks or VSX in that chain. 

Now, in Logic, where I do all my film scoring, I have a much more complicated scheme of sending auxes out of various buses.

On the main output bus, same as in Pro Tool, speakers and headphones are separated out via buses. But I also send an output out of Logic into Pro Tools (running simultaneously on the same computer) via the handy dandy Pro Tools Audio Bridge, in order to print mixes in real time locked to picture.

Logic will accurately chase Pro Tools … so if I hit record in Pro Tools, Logic starts up and plays locked to the same timecode position, sending that mix directly to an Audio Track in Pro Tools where it’s recorded as a stereo audio track at the right spot in the film.

Similarly, I run sends off of each subgroup aux track in my film template to a set of audio tracks in Logic, AND also out via Pro Tools Audio Bridge. This means that I’m ready at any moment to print a full set of stems either in Pro Tools (locked to picture!) or in Logic — all in one pass.

The subgroups I print as stems for film score delivery are things like effects, drums, bass, keys, synths, strings, brass, winds, etc. There’s a small tradeoff there because those subgroups don’t run through my master bus processing, so I have to treat each sub group with its own “mastering.”

This is all in a template, so once it’s up and running, it’s seamless for dropping cues into the film timeline and running stems for trailer cues in Logic in one pass. 

Does your brain hurt just reading this? That’s okay. Take from it whatever you can, and leave the rest. I told you this was an “advanced topics” post. 😂

Thank you dear Brian for this wealth of routing insight! — jamie

1. I use the more technical term “master bus” and the more colloquial “mains” interchangeably, in case you were experiencing confusion about the shifting terminology! And as you’ll note, Brian uses “main mix bus,” sort of a combination of the two. People use lots of different ways to talk about this, and they’re all fine.