Sends and returns??

[garethkillester]

Hi
I have a quick question regarding sends and returns in pro tools. Ok firstly i know how to set up a send and return but what is bothering me is this; I am sending all my individual drum trax to a stereo aux track with equipped with a reverb plug in. As an example i will explain the snare track. The panning settings on my snare track is set to to centre along with the kick and the rest are panned elswhere, whats bothering me is that what do i do with the stereo panning on the stereo AUX track itself when i have 7 different pieces of the kit with different pannins sent to it? Thanks

Oh and is there a way to return the effect to each track and not use the output of the AUX trax itself?

Gar

[dero]

Leave the stereo aux panned wide, left and right (as it defaults). Provided your sends are post-fade (again PT defaults to this), the stereo image will follow the channel pan controls. (ie snare, kick etc will be in the centre, toms will pan across the aux return) The pan controls on the stereo aux can then be used to narrow the stereo image of the aux signal if you so desire...

To route the sends back on to their individual channels - use an insert instead of an aux-send to begin with

[shackman]

I think the answer is much as Dero says.

The way I view such an aux bus is that it "places" the entire kit in the same "space".

To my confused way of thinking, fixing the pan placements of each individual drum is like setting up the kit. The kick's dead centre, the snare may be slightly right, hi hat slightly further right. That's the places where the drummer's sticks hit the skins/cymbals.

The reverb bus is the room the kit is sitting in so it should stay wide stereo.

The effect (in the mix is that whiole the power signal of the snare sits where you panned it, the signal also bounces off the same walls as the kick etc etc.

Every track I record includes a "kit" reverb bus - commonly a reverb setting I also use on acoustic guitars/piano's too.

Hope that makes sense!

[Audio~Geek]

An article I wrote to explain Sends, Auxes, and buses

The second picture shows the typical routing for a drum kit with a submix, parallel compression and reverb.

[shackman]

Originally Posted by Audio~Geek

An article I wrote to explain Sends, Auxes, and buses

I hate people who know what they're talking about!!

[garethkillester]

Thanks guys....
Gar