Subject:Assignable effects confusion

Posted by: alltheseworlds

Date:5/9/2006 7:49:54 PM

I'm very confused about "assignable effects chain" levels. Unlike most things in Acid it just hasn't "clicked" with me. Here's the problem:

- For each track & chain combo there are four sliders:

1) The track volume
2) The track "multi-purpose slider" level
3) Effects chain input fader
4) Effects chain output fader

The manual on page 141 says:
"If you set the dry out faders in your effects chain to -inf, you can adjust the wet/dry balance using the volume and assignable effects settings on the multipurpose slider. The volume fader adjusts the dry signal and the assignable effect fader controls the effect signals."

Clear as mud and it doesn't do what I expect from that description.

What I want to know is where is my wet/dry balance ? It just doesn't make sense to me. There is nothing called a "dry out fader" anywhere in the manual or as a rollover tooltip. Is this fader 1,2,3 or 4 that I listed above ? And whenever I change the volume slider, that controls the level to everything. I just can't grasp why I have four faders and which fader controls what.

I just want dry and wet :-(

Help please !

Subject:RE: Assignable effects confusion

Reply by: alltheseworlds

Date:5/10/2006 12:23:35 AM

And going on from that: If you can route assignable effect chains to a bus, then why not just put all those effects in a bus to begin with ? Why put them in a chain first ?

Subject:RE: Assignable effects confusion

Reply by: jumbuk

Date:5/10/2006 5:31:11 AM

The "Assignable FX" busses are designed to emulate the "Send FX" on a conventional hardware mixer. Most DAWs call these "Send FX" - Acid is a little out of line here.

The main use for Send FX is reverb - where you want a single effect to be applied to every channel in different (controllable) amounts. If you add a Sony reverb to a new assignable FX bus, you will see it has a "dry out" as well as a "reverb out" and an "early out". Reduce "dry" to nothing. Now, when you slide the FX1 slider in an audio track, part of its signal will be sent to the reverb. You can control how much reverb it gets, and therefore how distant it appears to be. Typically, bass and kick will get none, with more for snares, cymbals and instruments etc.

Another reason for using a Send effect is to reduce processor overhead. It is tougher on your PC to insert a delay on every track.

Of course, some FX are dependent on being "in-line" on atrack - compression is one obvious candidate. No point in setting up an assignable compressor (unless you are into parallel compression).

Hope this is answering the right question!

Subject:RE: Assignable effects confusion

Reply by: alltheseworlds

Date:5/10/2006 9:26:47 AM

Thanks for the reply Jumbuk. I understand the concept, I'm just confused about the implementation. The really big questions are:

What do these two faders do in the effects chain:

3) Effects chain input fader
4) Effects chain output fader

And also: Why use an "effects chain" instead of a bus ?

Subject:RE: Assignable effects confusion

Reply by: pwppch

Date:5/10/2006 11:34:16 AM

>>3) Effects chain input fader
This is the equivalent of the master "AUX" send on a real mixer. You can control the overall amount "sent" to the input of the FX "box". A simple gain control to prevent overages when a number of tracks are feeding the same FX "send".

4) Effects chain output fader

The AUX "return" of a mixer. Allows you to control the amount of processed signal to be "mixed". Again, if the gain on the FX "box" is a bit high, instead of tweaking the FX "box" you can just lower the overall output of the "box".

>>And also: Why use an "effects chain" instead of a bus ?
In addition to the reason stated above, the FX on a bus (or a track) are insert FX. The signal is passed into the FX Box and the out. Any mix or gain control is in the hands of the FX "box".

Insert FX are useful in a different way.

Technically you could achieve similar results using a bus, but you would not have the routing flexability to produce only a processed signal and dry signal to mix indepedently. You could do this at the FX chain, but if you are combining a series of FX, the control would not be as easily' accomplished.

ACID exposes a very traditional way of working with FX and helps to work in the less is more aspect of using plugins.

Peter

Subject:RE: Assignable effects confusion

Reply by: jumbuk

Date:5/10/2006 3:54:11 PM

Thanks Peter - I think you are confirming what I was saying?

For someone of my age (50+), this all seems intuitive, since it is just like a traditional mixer. I wonder whether it isn't time to rethink the whole mixer paradigm now that we have generations of musicians who grew up with computers? I don't have an alternative to offer, but someone who has never used a trad mixer would probably come up with a completely different approach.

Subject:RE: Assignable effects confusion

Reply by: pwppch

Date:5/10/2006 4:54:30 PM

We have thought about the "I have never seen or used a mixer" approach. I guess I am too entrenched in the old ways also.

These tried and true ways of doing things make sense even in the "I can add as many FX and processes as I want" world we live in with the DAW. Following these basic mixing rules/approaches of ye-old days leads to better 'stuff'.

I have had soooooo many projects sent to me with 10 reverbs, 5 chorus, Gates, EQs, etc, etc etc, all fighting for "space" that in the end they were using FX and processes to fix what was caused by a FX/process somewhere else in the project.

Hey, I am all for experimenting with sound and today we can play to our hearts content - well at least as far as our CPU will let us - but I still believe that "fixing it in the mix" causes more problems.

If it sounds good with little or no processing, then gradually working in the "desired space" is an easier task.

Too much of a good thing as they say.

Peter

Subject:RE: Assignable effects confusion

Reply by: Ben 

Date:5/10/2006 5:05:55 PM

While we're on the subject Peter, both ACID and Vegas both desperately need the ability to send from busses to 'aux' or insert FX. Many people have mentioned this frequently, just thought I'd throw it in again here.

Ben

Subject:RE: Assignable effects confusion

Reply by: pwppch

Date:5/10/2006 5:14:57 PM

Well, I wasn't on that subject, but hey if you want to bring it up again, go for it.

Thank you for your feature suggestion. As usual, everything is considered for a future version of ACID.

Peter

Subject:RE: Assignable effects confusion

Reply by: alltheseworlds

Date:5/10/2006 5:16:29 PM

Thanks Peter, your detailed explanation is very revealing. And as Jumbuk rightly guesses, I've never used a hardware mixer so this is all foreign to me. Years ago, I played keyboards several times a week live, but the mixing desk was always the exclusive domain of the engineer & beware the engineer's fury if I started fiddling with it !

So if everyone can bear with me for one more question... I'm still mystified as to exactly where the wet & dry level controls are. From above, I have these four faders:

1) The track volume
2) The track "multi-purpose slider" level
3) Effects chain input fader
4) Effects chain output fader

- Fader 1 is the overall signal level. Although this is sort of a dry signal fader, I can't use it to mix the amount of dry signal because it also largely determines the amount being pushed "along the line". If I lower this then *everything* goes down.

- Fader 2 (multi-purpose slider). If this is up then signal gets to the effect chain. If it's on "inf" then nothing gets there. So to even get some wet signal this must be up. It can't be the dry amount either.

- Faders 3 & 4 as explained by Peter don't seem to be candidates that I can see either. Sure fader 4 is a wet signal, but if faders 1,2 or 3 are down then it doesn't get fed....

So, can someone tell me plainly how I set up a track & effects chain so I have:
- A dry amount fader
- A wet amount fader

Thanks very much for staying with me !

Subject:RE: Assignable effects confusion

Reply by: jumbuk

Date:5/10/2006 5:51:01 PM

Peter may want to weigh in as well, but here is my response:

- Fader 1 is the overall signal level. Although this is sort of a dry signal fader, I can't use it to mix the amount of dry signal because it also largely determines the amount being pushed "along the line". If I lower this then *everything* goes down.

* Yes, exactly. This is what your live sound engineer uses to control the "mix" between sources (mics, instruments etc)

- Fader 2 (multi-purpose slider). If this is up then signal gets to the effect chain. If it's on "inf" then nothing gets there. So to even get some wet signal this must be up. It can't be the dry amount either.

* Right again. This is what the live sound engineer uses to add varying amounts of reverb (or other FX) into the mix for each source channel.

- Faders 3 & 4 as explained by Peter don't seem to be candidates that I can see either. Sure fader 4 is a wet signal, but if faders 1,2 or 3 are down then it doesn't get fed....

* The FX send and return faders on a hardware mixer are typically used to match and optimise the gain structure for the FX box you are using. Typically, you would be sending signal out to a hardware reverb box, which would require a certain amount of signal just to work - but not too much or it will overload! Similarly, the FX return from the reverb box would ensure that the mixer is not getting overloaded.

So, can someone tell me plainly how I set up a track & effects chain so I have:
- A dry amount fader
- A wet amount fader

* There IS no dry/wet fader in the FX bus! You look inside the actual effect to adjust the wet/dry mix. Understand that a given effect can be used either as an INSERT effect (in Acid, this is in the track FX chain) or as a SEND effect (in Acid, this is an assignable FX bus). Let's say you are using a reverb effect. If you put it on the track FX chain, you are using it as an insert effect, so you want a mix of both the wet and dry coming through (otherwise you will have none of the original signal). So, you open the reverb plugin and set (say) 70% dry and 30% reverb to get the sound you want. However, if you are using the reverb plugin on a FX bus (ie as a SEND effect), you don't want ANY dry signal (because that is already going through the track) - you want 100% wet inside the FX bus FX chain (perhaps slightly less if it overloads).

So the answer is, wet and dry mix is inside the plugin, nowhere else.

This is easy to understand if you have a mixer in front of you, but comes out complex in print. Hope this helps!

PS Hope you can see why SEND effects (FX busses) are so useful. If you put a reverb plugin on every track, you would have to open each track FX chain to adjust the relative wet/dry mix for each track, and you would be making your PC do reverb calcs for every track at once. If you put ONE reverb plugin on a FX bus, you can select the type of reverb you want (large hall, small room etc) and apply it in varying amounts to EVERY track just by adjusting the FX send slider on each track - and you don't have to open any plug-in chains to do the adjusting.

Subject:RE: Assignable effects confusion

Reply by: alltheseworlds

Date:5/10/2006 6:38:52 PM

Jumbuk, thanks so much for that ! I now see that I've been using buses incorrectly this whole time.

What I've been doing is assigning the track to a bus using the drop-down next to the record button. I've then always wondered why I have so little control over the effect amount, and why when I then use the assignable slider on another bus, the effects are so different between tracks !

Now I just leave the drop-down alone and vary the assignable fader.

Suddenly the passage on page 140 I originally quoted makes complete sense !

I must say I feel like an absolute and complete idiot. You wouldn't believe I actually get paid for writing music would you ?

I think this should really improve my working. Sincere thanks to all :-)

Subject:RE: Assignable effects confusion

Reply by: jumbuk

Date:5/10/2006 7:31:34 PM

Glad to be of assistance.

Anyone can learn how to use a mixer or a piece of software, given time. If you get paid to write music, you have something that just can't be bought - so don't feel bad about it!