Filtering Different Busses Question

[karimk]

Hi guys,
I'm wondering what's the best way to filter different busses in my mix at the same time. Example:

I have an EDM track where I want to filter everything but the kick and bass. That means that hihats, toms, synth leads, etc are filtered, but they are bussed differently (drum bus, synth bus, etc).

Should I apply a filter plugin to each bus and automate them equally or should I bounce the tracks that I want filtered, filter the new bounced track and buss that directly to my stereo out?

The problem with the latter is that I don't have bus control anymore over the elements (can't mute drums or synths, since they are all bounced together).

Can anyone help?

Thanks!

[Zexila]

So you have your kick bus-ed with drums and bass in another, doing bus filtering obviously isn't possible and automating filters on every single channel is little too much work I guess.

Solution, don't know really, but if only thing that you want filtered in your track is everything except kick&bass, than bus kick&bass and everything else separately and do filter bus automation, problem solved, so do creative stuff first, than bounce stems and do your mixing bus-ing and mixing.

I hope you understand, leave mixing bus-ing decisions for mixing process and be creative now in creative process and bus things to suit that creative needs.

[ghettosynth]

In software this is known as the tyranny of the dominant decomposition. It means that you are decomposing the complexity of your track in one dimension, e.g., buses for processing normally, and this competes with your ability to decompose in another dimension, the need to group the kick and bass for filtering. Solutions for this problem come in the same form as you observe, e.g., something called aspect oriented programming cuts across a class hierarchy, but I digress. What you can take from that though, is that you need to cut across the dominant decomposition, and you've already stated how to do this, you insert filters that use a common control.

What you want to do is simplify this idea, and you won't get away from the tyranny of the dominant decomposition, so you have to use it to simplify your cross-cutting concern.

Separate your drums with another sub-bus. put everything but the kick on that bus. Now, send the kick and this sub-buss to your main drum bus. Your problem has been now reduced to applying a filter to the drum sub-bus and the bass buss. I would draw one automation lane and map the two filters to a common control.

[Zexila]

Separate your drums with another sub-bus. put everything but the kick on that bus. Now, send the kick and this sub-buss to your main drum bus. Your problem has been now reduced to applying a filter to the drum sub-bus and the bass buss. I would draw one automation lane and map the two filters to a common control.

Nice, guess he have his bass in synth bus (if not, never mind), so yeah, same thing applies to them too

[ghettosynth]

Separate your drums with another sub-bus. put everything but the kick on that bus. Now, send the kick and this sub-buss to your main drum bus. Your problem has been now reduced to applying a filter to the drum sub-bus and the bass buss. I would draw one automation lane and map the two filters to a common control.

Nice, guess he have his bass in synth bus (if not, never mind), so yeah, same thing applies to them too

Sorry, yes, you're right, he doesn't want to filter the bass. Still, as you say, the same solution applies. Just separate out the elements that need to be filtered as a sub-buss. If it's just the other drums, then my solution as presented does it without the need to use multiple filters.