People always say they bus their drums/kick to the same channel. Same thing I usually do. But people also say they bus their kick/bass to the same channel, which is also the same thing I usually do.

Just that sometimes I find it hard to squeeze the percussion into the kick/bass channel. Mainly because I think the "glue" is trying to stick too many different parts together.

Its hard for me to mentally analyze all the benefits/costs of both situations.
Like if you bus drums with your kick bass, they will sound more cohesive, but at times the bass will swallow the drums.
And when that happens I wind up seperating my drums into their own channel and notice they will come in clearer. But then they also seem to lose a bit of drive and bounce from the fxs I usually use with my kick bass.

I'm just curious how most people do this. Do you bus all 3 - kick, bass and drums to the same channel? Or do you have alternative approaches and what are they?

Thanks.

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Sequencers: FL Studio 9XXL & Reason 3.
Main Synth Bass GTs - Pro-53, V-Station, Sytrus, Subtractor, Trilian, Blue, Sylenth & Z3ta.
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Main FXs GTs - Waves Plugins, Soundtoys, Volcano, FL Native FX.
Hardware - Truths, Echo Audiofire, Virus Snow, & Novation Xio Midi-Synth.

I generally have kick & basses in a group. Occasionally I'll route the kick straight through to the master channel. Other drums in a group. Percussive elements/ loops in a group.

I don't generally compress these groups though. Sometimes I'll sidechain compress the loops group.

i don't think most of people on here would bus/route kick, bass and drums into one channel. i would imagine 95% of this board will do it separately, and whats the point really ? I would see a point in it if you would mix your production in mono this type of routing would be quite beneficialin that case or if you mix your gazzilion DAW tracks OTB on a small 4-8 channel mixer or onto a tape machine.

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Mr Kaizen on Soundcloud

kick into a seperate buss
All percussion into 1 buss which goes into the kick buss after processing
basslines joining into 1 buss

bassline bus joins kickbuss in mainmix.

I don't think there is 1 best way though. just apply what works for you.

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Analogue Mastering
Esoteric sound for the discerning ear

I generally have no buses.

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quote:

If less is more think about how much more more would be. -Frasier

I always separate the kick, low bass, hi bass, hi percussion (hats), snares and claps, and low percussion (toms) into separate channels.

Busing them into the same channel and applying compression for me tends to make things less 'organic' for me. I guess it is just a mixing choice, but I find it helps give my tracks a lot of dynamic range and gives it room to move up or down in terms of overall dynamics

quote:

Originally posted by Storyteller I generally have no buses.

Kick and main bassline into separate channels. Once I reached the perfect relation between the two I route them into one channel to control simultaneously their volume in relation to the mid/high frequencies of the mix.

It really depends on whether there are any elements you want to apply processing to as a buss. If you don't want to process them together, then don't buss them, and of course, whether or not you process two elements together will depend on the track itself. So it changes from track to track and there are no rules basically.

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i thing i forgot to add, i often bus for stems, especially when you got 50+ tracks going on.

so that you got 15 tracks or so into "percussion"
30 tracks or so into "vocals"
5 into "synths"
etc.

then u can also use them as "mute groups" which makes managing the mix a lot easier. not bussing means that u only can mute or solo induvidual tracks, in serious projects, this is not workable.

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Analogue Mastering
Esoteric sound for the discerning ear

New poster here to this forum.

My method - I always have each and every different sound on a separate track, so you can process individually (no drum loop samples here). Then I set up busses for drums & percussion, bass, pads, synths, vocals. All FX (delays, reverb, chorus, flanger, whatever) as sends and compressors / de-essers as inserts. Seems to work for me

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I just push buttons until it sounds right

this is like paralell compression vs serial compression, i think if your computer can hold all this fxs then go for different bus for every sound