What is the difference between sends and inserts

What are they, and where do you place them in a DAW during a mixdown project? Examples of insert effects are EQ, compression, gating, and de-essing. A SEND effect is inserted into an effects bus, which is a separate channel or an aux track in Pro Tools in the recording project. Examples of send effects are reverb and echo. In a send effect, the processed signal like reverb is mixed or blended with the original dry signal.

A send effect has a parallel signal path, while an insert effect has a series signal path. Figure 1. Top: Signal flow for an insert effect. Sign up for our newsletter and get tutorials and tips delivered to your inbox. This article references previous versions of Ozone.

An insert is like putting a plug-in directly on the track. With a send, you take the track, and you route a sort of copy of the track to an auxiliary channel, and put your effects there, on that channel. There are no hard and fast rules—this must be said outright. Before we dive in, make sure you have a solid understanding of audio signal flow within a DAW. Reverb, delay, compression, modulation, distortion—these are some effects that often wind up on auxiliary channels.

You send some of your track to a reverb aux, and dial in as much as needed. Say you have a background vocal that needs a bit of saturation, and you want to hear it in stereo, surrounding the main vocal. You might use a combination of stereo delay and stereo EQ to achieve this effect. Or perhaps as you work you find the distortion works better when it comes after the delay and EQ—the slightly darker left hits the saturation differently from the brighter right, for example.

A different order of events would yield a different sound. It certainly sounds different from this, with the delay bussed, after the rest of the processing:. In effect, the track now punches a bit more. Here, it is better to send to an aux, and apply compression to that auxiliary track. Doing any extra work to the track itself might upset the balance of your mix, and might make the mix feel more clouded and constricted when all the instruments come in.

The send, however, gives you the ability to ride the level of the parallel compression. Here are some interesting ways to use parallel processing in your next production.

Many plug-ins now sport the ability to mix compression right in the module itself for parallel effects. If you were to parallel-compress within the track, and then add another plug-in, you are now compressing into that new effect, which may not be what you originally intended. Most of the time, this sort of compression should be handled the typical manner, with a plug-in used as in insert. As famed mastering engineer Bob Katz noted , when you route a compressor in parallel, edging the compressed aux into the mix, the effect of that compressor is often masked during the loud parts of the song.

The process is, in some ways, the opposite of typical downwards-compression: while the range is still constricted, the quiet parts are now a bit louder.

For our purposes, modulation is an umbrella term for anything involving a tiny, fluid amount of frequency or time-based trickery. Modulation includes chorusing, phasing, flanging, and other processes, and has many applications. It can thicken, widen, pan to some extent and most importantly it can indicate.

For example:. When employing modulation like in Iris 2! One goal is to develop a sound within an existing track. The other goal, more macro in its scope, is mix-based: to help a track stand out amongst many others. Something as dry and in your face as a punk bass might not need this bold modulating statement, but it still might need a phaser, a chorus, or some other piece of modulation. Imagine a dry punk track, the kind where no sort of glammy, unnecessary processing should be audible.

The bass part, going up the middle, blends into the frequency range of the guitars, and gets a bit lost in the process try these bass mixing tips if this is a common issue for you.

Here you can send that bass to an aux track, apply some compression strategically! The effect will be focused on the high-midrange frequencies, where that pick attack lies. The result is a kind of reinforcement. Sometimes we want to put sounds in the same physical space. A couple of guitars, a vocal, and the drums could all go to the same reverb in order to create a live, coherent feeling—something like a stadium verb for example. In this case, it makes sense to send these elements to an auxiliary, one with a reverb that helps them all cohere.

Rules can be broken, for example, can I use a compressor as a send effect? Yes, you can. So, this way you send a copy of your unprocessed signal, to an effects channel track that has a compressor on it and you blend the compressed signal with your dry signal, and you have parallel compression.

That is a well known mixing technique. So, that started by breaking the rules in a way. Now, can you use a time-based effect as an insert on a channel? It might not be common practice, but you definitely can, depending on the occasion. So, let me give you an example on what I have right here in front of me. On this channel okay, on my vocal track right here. Let me go to the project window instead, and look on the left.

So now, I have a mono delay straight as an insert on this channel. This is not something that I do all the time, to be honest with you, but in this case, it sounded pretty good.

So, I decided to keep it this way. But I would say, take the freedom to experiment and you might be surprised on the results. I have a mono delay. Now, I decided to add this Mono delay straight as an insert on the lead vocal track. And, I wanted that slap back delay to be part of the original sound, that is then going through some de-essing, EQ, compression, and so on.

So, this is what I have. Now, something very important though, is when you do so, when using a slap back delay straight as an insert on a vocal, you need to bring down your mix knob to a level that is going to work.

So, in my case, I had to bring that down to 7. And, this is the balance between the dry signal and the delay itself, so very important to check that out.

And, this is what it sounds like. Very nice. Then, I added some other long delays and reverbs and stuff as send effects.