Do I need my Aux-Inserts?

Hi Guys,

I'm currently wiring up my second patchbay. The setup is an analog 32 Ch. Console with a Pro Tools Mac. I dont have a recording room. It's mainly a project studio for electronic music and the desk is for mixdown.

Today I was wondering If I should route the Inserts of my 8 Aux-Sends on the patchbay. Will I ever need them? The Aux-Sends are on the patchbay already. As my patchbay is nearly full, I would have to buy a third one for the Aux-Inserts. At the moment I can not imagine a significant situation, where I would need an insert in the Aux-Send instead of routing the signal through some gear, after the Aux-Send Output.

What do you think?

Best,
Adrian

Well, the insert send would theoretically be pre-aux-master fader so one less gain stage and you could return a different signal through the return if you needed a level control where you didn't have one.

But how often does that need arise?

What kind of console is it?

Cheers,
jb

Hi jb,

yeah, I'm aware of the difference in gain staging, but I think if its only about mixing, there are very few situation where that would be important. As I don't have the extra space right now, I'll leave it out of the patchbay.

Its a Crest X-Eight. A live console, that I got cheap in a very good condition and it fits very nicely in my project studio setup. (Actually, I have built my whole new setup around it  )
- 24 Mono Ch
- 4 Stereo Ch
- 8 Busses
- 8 Sends (5-6 / 7-8 optional stereo)
- Left-Center-Right Panning
- Matrix Mixer. From the busses into 4 mono outputs (I thought a lot about how that could be usefull in the studio.. You could use it for headphone mixes...)

Even though its not a high end console, the schematics show some discrete transistor input stages that don't look bad.. I have built a larger studio frame around it, with leather armrest, a rack and computer workspace. I'm about to build some extra modifications, like a better monitor control module. If you're interested, I can post some pictures in another thread.

Best,
Adrian.

I guess the obvious question is what do you use the AUXes for? When tracking I would expect them to be used pre-fader for foldback. When mixing I would expect them to be used for FX sends and hence be post fader. Can't think of any obvious situation where those sort of sends would need an insert. I can see an argument for inserts on AUX returns but not sends.

Cheers

Ian

12dbLow said:

At the moment I can not imagine a significant situation, where I would need an insert in the Aux-Send instead of routing the signal through some gear, after the Aux-Send Output.

Click to expand...

For tracking, some talent may ask for more bass or treble, or to fix some frequency he doesn't like, so patching an EQ is a common occurence.
For mixing, you may also want to EQ or compress the reverb sends or insert an additional delay. This was very common in the 70's and 80's, before the advent of usable digital reverbs. Plate and spring reverbs needed some consistent processing.
But you're right, there's no obligation to do it pre-fader.

If I ever feel the need for the Pre-Fader Aux Insert, I will put it on a third patchbay then

I remember visiting quite a few studios in the 70s and many of them had a Revox A77 patched into reverb sends as a pre-delay.

Cheers

Ian

Also a very nice idea!

12dbLow said:

If I ever feel the need for the Pre-Fader Aux Insert, I will put it on a third patchbay then

Click to expand...

On one side, I see very little use of a pre insert on the aux send master in a studio, I guess those would be used live to eq some monitor wedges, also because as you said, if you needed something you'd usually go for the actual post out.

On the other side, in studio use it always turns out that the more stuff is going to the patch bay, the more elastic your setup becomes, and in the end you'll always find yourself in a situation where you're like "why didn't I patch those too???".

I thought about this a bit and My opinion is that if it's on the console you should patchbay it. Also on the patchbay should be all of your monitoring and cue-feed I/O (with sends to any amps) normalled so that when you pull all the patches you get your default signal flow....

Is there an "INSERT" button in the aux-master section which enables the return into the path? If there is and it gets "pushed" and the send isn't normalled to the return you will get silence. In that case you could re-label it as "AUX-MASTER-MUTE".

Just my $0.02

Cheers,
jb

0dbfs said:

Just my $0.02

Click to expand...

Thanks 0dbfs, for the reply after a while! I always appreciate the interesting input that you get from this forum.

I think I will have very little need for more than one seperate headphone mix (or a HP mix at all), since it's a small project / mix studio for creating electronic music, or mixing acoustic stuff that I recorded at other studios. If I had a seperate recording room, I would probably normal HP amps to Auxes. That sounds very convenient.

No, there are seperate AUX-Mutes, but sadly no switchable inserts on this console. I already thought about adding a relay box that provides switchable inserts for all channels, or at least for the groups and masters. But that would probably take days or weeks of soldering... Not important enough right now. But maybe someday.

Best,
Adrian.