How to Use the Sound Busses in Pro Tools

The following steps show how to use the sound buses in Pro Tools. Using your sound buses is a crucial concept to understand. By learning how to use buses, you can split your signal and send it practically anywhere you want within Pro Tools. Here's how to use buses to apply a reverb effect to an instrument track.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. Create an auxiliary track in Pro Tools by selecting "New Track" from the File menu. Pro Tools refers to an auxiliary track as an "aux" track.

2. Place an effect into your new aux track by clicking on the insert of the aux track. Insert a reverb into the track. If you do not have a third-party reverb plug-in, don't worry. Pro Tools comes with a decent reverb of its own.

3. Set the input of the aux track to one of Pro Tools buses. Click the input of the aux track and select "Bus 1-2."

4. Raise the volume fader of the aux track. Try raising the track to 0 dB as a good starting level.

5. Choose any of the instrument tracks in your session to send to the aux track. Click on the "Send" button for your instrument track. Make sure to set the send of this track to the same bus or buses of your aux track. For this example, set your send to "Bus 1-2," the same buses that we set our aux track to in step 3.

6. Raise the aux send level on your instrument track. The higher the level, the more effect you are applying to your track. Play back your track to hear the effect. That's it. Now, you know how to use buses in your Pro Tools sessions!

Tips & Warnings

• You aren't limited to sending only one track to your aux track. You can send as many tracks as you'd like to your aux track! For instance, you can send multiple vocal tracks all to the same reverb aux track by simply setting the sends of each instrument track to the same bus as your aux track.