AUX...vs...BUS...vs...RETURN...???

C

Chew_Bear

New member
A little confused on what a aux track is, what a bus track is and what a return track is...

From what I have seen and used so far...They all seem to be the same exact thing...a track that you can send audio to. The only difference is what you prefer to call it...whether its aux, bus or return.

So for all intents and purposes...Is it safe to say that an aux, a bus and a return track is the 'same' thing and that all 3 terms are pretty much interchangeable...?

Or is there a distinct difference between all of these and I am wrong...?
 
All three of them are sound conduits for different purposes...
-Bus is for selecting different signals for processing and routing to one audio mix
-Aux is for feeding cue signals to performing stage and headphones, alongside bus.
-Return is the channel that receives the output of an effect (or more) processor.
 
Yeah, to elaborate a bit further...

A bus is *any* collection of tracks routed together for processing or to further route to another place. Basically grouping tracks in a DAW theoretically makes them "a bus" even if they're not really routed together - on a physical (analog) mixer you'd obviously have to route them to a single track to control them as a group. Your master track is also a "master bus": all your tracks are routed to it.

An aux/send track is a bus that can be fed from multiple tracks, and usually mixers have "send amount" controls for these. Again, a typical analog mixer would probably have 2-6 aux tracks while a DAW can have as many as your computer can handle.

Return tracks are also something that are a bit of strange concept in the DAW world - on a regular mixer, you'd often route the aux track back to a regular mixer channel (which then goes to the master), and this channel would be the "return track". But in the DAW world this is often not needed at all, and the aux is routed straight to the master.
 
The only reason this is confusing is because back in the day Pro Tools took the term "aux" which already had a very clear definition and gave it an entirely new definition that doesn't conform to the way ANYTHING else in the audio world works.

An aux is the term for sending a VARIABLE amount of a signal to a bus. Typically it's used for sending various amounts of signal from different tracks to an "axuilliary bus" that would then go to a reverb or delay and then it would "return" to effects return or a channel or pair of channels in the mixer. All DAWs to the best of my knowledge still adhere to this age-old definition from back when there wasn't ANYTHING digital in recording.

Then PT came along and screwed it all up. They call an aux track something that can play audio without being able to actually record audio. It's a multipurpose tool for running live audio (from within the DAW, or from outboard effects/instruments) in the mixer. So when someone says "aux" if they are a PT person they mean one confusing thing. If they are anybody else who has ever done any kind of audio, they mean the traditional auxilliary bus.

A "bus" is a signal path that is fed from multiple sources. Generally speaking a normal bus means ALL the signal from different sources is summed and fed to the bus. Thing "mix bus" or "drum bus" where ALL of the associated signals feed the bus. The aforementioned "aux" or "auxiliary bus" (for non-PT) is ALSO a bus, except that it accepts VARIABLE amounts of signal from each source track/channel.

It should be noted that in most DAWs they use the term "group" and "bus" interchangeably. Older consoles usually called them busses, and considered groups to be VCA groupings (no signal path, just control over the volume of the grouped channels AT the channels, like remote control over a "group" of faders with just one fader in charge). But in most DAWs when they say "group" they really mean "bus" and they use the term "VCA group" for the old-school groups.

Confused yet?!!!
 
I've never ran into that PT thing. Then again, I've never really used PT. Except once in 1999 or so.
 
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