Acoustica Mixcraft 7 - Manual (Page 42)

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ROUTING AUDIO TO A SEND TRACK
Add a Send Track to the project by clicking the +Track
button and selecting Add Send Track. You can also click
Track>Add Track>Send Track in the main window menus.
In this example, we’ve renamed the Send Track, “Reverb
(SEND).”
Click on the track you’d like to add reverb to. Display its
track automation by clicking the Automation button.
Click the Automation Type drop-down menu (by default it
will say Track Volume), then click beneath Sends to select
the Send Track effect. In this example, the number 11 is
the track number of the Send Track, and Reverb (SEND) is
the Send Track’s name.
To Insert or To Send Effects, That Is The Question
There are two ways to use effects in a mix environment:
insert effects, and send (or bus) effects. Both methods can
be used somewhat interchangeably, but each has its own
advantages largely dependent upon the type of effect, its
intended use, and, in the virtual DAW environment, use of
computer resources.
Insert Effects
When an eåffect is added to a track by clicking the fx
button, you’re using it as a channel insert. You can think
of an insert effect as being a part of an individual channel
strip. It also means that the dry-to-wet signal balance is
adjusted using the controls in the effect itself. Although
you can insert any type of effect, inserting is best suited to
gain and dynamics effects such as compressors, limiters,
EQs, distortion, etc., because their mix is typically set
“fully wet.” In other words, you don’t usually use a partial
amount of a compressed or distorted signal, although
some crafty engineers have been known to break this rule.
Conversely, time-domain effects such as chorus, delay,
and reverb are almost always mixed with the dry signal.
Send Track Effects
One good way to think of a send effect is as one or more
channels being mixed together and then being sent to a
standalone effects unit. The dry mix remains unaffected,
and the effect gets added to final mix. Because of this,
the wet/dry mix control of a send effect should always
be set to 100% wet. (Otherwise you’d end up with the
dry signal from the main mix plus some dry signal from
the effect itself, making it it difficult to mix.) Perhaps the
biggest benefit of send effects is conservation of computer
processing resources; if you’re using a reverb plug-in that
demands a great deal of computer overhead, send tracks
allow you to send many mix channels to just one instance.
And if you’re using an effect to process many channels
of one “instrument” (e.g., a drum kit, several vocal tracks,
etc.), a send effect lets you add different amounts of the
effect for each channel by simply adjusting the amount of
each track’s send knob. Send tracks also offer tremendous
flexibility with regard to stereoization; for example, a dry
track could be panned to one side of the stereo image,
with the effected side panned to the other.