I am confused about reverb and delay...
I understand you can...
A. Put reverb and delay 'directly' on a track/channel.
B. Create a bus/group channel and than put reverb and delay on the bus channel, and than send all the tracks that you want to this bus/group channel.
C. Make separate Return tracks for both reverb and delay and than send whatever track/channel to whichever return track you want.
So...
1. What's the difference between these 3 workflows and why do they exist...???
2. What's the difference in sonic sound properties/characteristics...???
3. Of the 3...Are you supposed to use a different workflow depending on what your trying to accomplish or what your working on...???
Say...(C) for mixing, (B) for arrangement/composition and (A) for sound design/recording/tracking...right...???
Or...is it simply that you can use any or all of these workflows in combination with each other at any stage/process of music production...as long as it accomplishes the sound/mix/stereo spread/spectrum your after.
Any other concepts/principles that I don't know or missed...???
A) DAWs take input, process input and output the result of the process. An insert effect on an input instrument track modifies the input to the next process further down the chain, so that its output is indirectly impacted by the insert effect in front of it. For instance if you have two insert effects, insert 1: EQ, insert 2: Comp, and you boost the mid range on the EQ, then the compressor will touch the lows and mids less, in other words the output of insert 1 is impacting the output of insert 2. If you put reverb and delay as inserts on a track - in PT inserts are pre-fader - you want the audio on that channel to be processed with the perception of the instrument and the room as a whole kit - as if it would have been recorded so, you don't care how that is going to impact the performance of the processes after it. This means you no longer have a "dry" signal available for applying other effects on that sound source. So for instance if you find the snare to be top heavy, but that this comes from the dry sound of the snare rather than from the dry sound of the snare and the ambience, now you cannot correct that in isolation from the room, your processing model has made it impossible to work at the desired isolation level, which in turn means you need to now lower the top end but balance how much against when the reverb starts sounding too dull.
B) In PT sends are Post-Fader, but you can make them Pre-Fader if you want. The setup of having an aux with a time adjuster as insert 1 and a reverb as insert 2, serves the purpose of making the transients be perceived separately from the perception of the room and to allow the reverb to kick in when the natural sustain of the sound source kicks in. By having various delay settings for the reverb on the various tracks you can find room for reverb perception of many sound sources even when the arrangement is quite dense. It also helps to make the mix less muddy, the compressors will not act to indirectly increase the volume of the reverb, since it can be adjusted to have been released before the reverb kicks in. And since the fx chain sits on a send, it is routed in parallel with the original track, so that you can process the two differently further down the chain. So for instance you might want to route the reverb to a dry stereo bus in parallel, and the original track to a comp stereo bus in parallel. This is a quite common scenario among pros - ambience effects are treated separately in stereo, while a lot of other processes are left mono, the combination causes great stereo perception. But the overall configuration is basically to have the reverb as the main effect and use effects before it as "pre-effects" to tailor the performance of the reverb towards a certain sweet spot by modifying/massaging the incoming signal.
C) This setup is done when you don't want the output of the delay to impact the perception of the reverb, you want to keep them detached. With the additional volume and pan fader that you get, you can now achieve things that are not possible when you keep them on the same track. You can for instance use the panning to reinforce the sound source at the same pan position (on either side) in order to thicken the stereo image or have it slap back on the other side on some other pan position, maybe because that will allow you to fill out the stereo field more effectively. This kind of setup is good in the sense that it makes you able to work in more isolation with each fx (reverb/delay) in isolation relative to how it should impact the original sound source, but because it sits in parallel it scales towards a potentially phase inefficient mix.
You can and should be open to each of these methods as valid methods to address in various scenarios. But keep in mind that the pan knobs are very important, also the pre-/post-fader settings. If you pan a track to a certain location in the stereo field, but all your effects tied to this sound source have all kinds of pan settings, then it means it lowers the focus of that element in the stereo field, that creates a "weak"/"blurry"/"unpresent" stereo image. If you have 5 mono aux tracks (100%L, 40%L, C, 40%R, 100%R) and 1 stereo aux track (100%L 100%R), now you can depending on where in the stereo field a certain sound source should sit well, use the fx processing as a means to indirectly "strengthen" the position of the sound source in the stereo field, rather than losing it in the stereo image. Another reason why this is important is so that you have more control over the contents of the mid and side components and so that you can fill out the stereo image using these additional pan knobs.
> Any other concepts/principles that I don't know or missed...???
When it comes to reverb, delay there are many ways you can use and route these to achieve various effects. When it comes to parallel processing this works great in a hybrid setup where you can do this routing with hardware at lower phase costs. Both reverb and delay shine in parallel in a context with great phase, but can cause serious amounts of mud in a less than great phase context. When you learn the art of mixing I recommend that you learn things like monitoring, panning, mid, side really well, before you start working with complex delay/reverb parallel processing chains. Once you then go advanced do not be afraid of trying new things, for instance side chaining a delay/reverb bus for a greater impact when it kicks in. Don't lose grip of the routing as a whole, try to stick to a layered approach that gives you a volume control that allows you to balance out unwanted side effects. It helps for instance to have all delays and reverbs unifying at the end on a single stereo bus that you can mute and unmute while you mix, partly because these kinds of effects can also be distracting while you work to resolve various issues in the mix. It is also important to be aware that some of these techniques work great in the hardware domain, but might not work to the same extent in the software domain. Try to focus the heavy lifting when it comes to the stereo image, to hardware. It is also important to not become afraid of the complexity of the signal routing, even when you have great ambience due to great reverb and delay, you still will need to address the balance and dynamics of the mix for the whole to be good enough and those are much more demanding in terms of routing... So take your time to get this right.
