How to use Vocal Bus correctly?

[Fornicras]

Hi all,

I just switched from FL to Studio One and even though it was possible in FL it wasn't that great to use buses. In Studio One I feel like I might benefit using vocal bus more and I understood what are they, why they should be used etc. but I couldn't understand a couple of things.

What inserts should I use for individual tracks and for buses?

My initial thought was to do this, I'm not sure if it's correct or not:

I have 3 tracks, Main Vox, Double Vox, BG Vox.
1. Do corrective EQ, Auto-Tune, and DS'ing and maybe a compressor to get the volume right on individual tracks.
2. Send them to Reverb bus, as I want a different level of reverb for each track. (BG Vox has more reverb than Main Vox).
3. Route these 3 tracks to Vox Bus and in the bus channel, add some additive EQ, compression, and other effects that I use for each Vox track normally. This way I will save some CPU power too.

Now the problem arises here,

Should I route Vox Reverb and Delay Buses to my Vox Bus? If I do that Reverb behaves very differently because of the compression and other FX in the Bus channel. It becomes louder in volume too.

Should I keep Reverb and Delay Buses' out to Master Bus? If I do that Reverb sounds so weak and less dense and also when I move Vox Bus volume Reverb volume stays unaffected.

I know it's a very long post but I wanted to explain it clearly.

TL;DR: What effects should I put into individual tracks and Vocal Bus and should I send my reverb and delay bus to Vocal Bus or they should output to Master Bus directly?

[antic604]

I know it's a very long post but I wanted to explain it clearly.

...and it's in a wrong place, too. It has nothing specific to do with S1. There's separate sub-forum about production techniques.

[jancivil]

"Should I send my reverb and delay bus to Vocal Bus or they should output to Master Bus directly?"
obv., unless you want to dirty up the result of the reverb, it "should" go to the master directly.
EG: noticed in Cubase, thinking about a similar question asked here, the reverb channel may *only* go there (or another FX bus. Don't know why.).
Generally the other thing is special effect territory, the clean way is what's done, reverb as the last stop.

but a separate delay is another question, it might desirably route separately; I place it typically in the reverb-containing channel as its bus, before determining that output. (from VE Pro, which is apparently a bit more flexible).
But that delay in eg., Cubase may go out to another FX bus, or Master. So the question may entail what the host's architecture provides for.

[Fornicras]

I know it's a very long post but I wanted to explain it clearly.

...and it's in a wrong place, too. It has nothing specific to do with S1. There's separate sub-forum about production techniques.

Oh I'm sorry I'm new to this forum, didn't notice there was a subforum for this. I will post this to there.

@jancivil,

Thanks for your reply. I thought the same about reverb and delay, because when you send them to same bus you can hear how it affects, and it sounds bad. Still I have questions about which processes should I do to bus channels.