Surround Bus

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Surround Bus

In order to work with surround configurations, you need to create surround buses beforehand. Creating surround buses is done the same way you create other types of output or input buses, with the exception being that you choose a surround configuration instead of a mono or stereo bus configuration in the VST Connections panel.

After you have created a surround bus (input or output), you can associate each channel in the bus with an ASIO device port. How many ASIO device ports you need depends on the surround configuration you choose. For example, a 5.1 configuration will create a 6-channel configuration while an LCRS configuration uses only four (Left, Center, Right, and Surround).

When you want to assign an audio channel to a surround bus, you can decide to route the output through one of the multichannel surround buses or to all of the channels at once. Figure E.2 displays a channel that is being routed to the center channel of the surround bus. As you can see, the pan area of the channel does not offer a surround panning option since the signal is sent to only one output channel within the surround bus.

Figure Figure E.2. An audio channel routed through a single channel of a surround output bus.

After a surround bus is created, you can also create child buses. A child bus offers a convenient way of routing an audio channel through a set of outputs within a surround bus. For example, you can create a stereo child bus within a 5.1 surround configuration where the left and right channels are grouped within the surround bus. Routing an audio channel through a child bus allows you to control where the sound will occur in that child bus, so you will have a stereo pan control rather than a surround pan control. In other words, creating a child bus can make it easier to route audio through a surround bus, yet keep a stereo control ( affecting both channels) when adjusting the pan and volume for this channel. For example, if you are creating a surround input bus to capture a multichannel performance or surround atmosphere, you can create child buses to represent the left/right pair and then a left surround/right surround pair,. When adjusting the level of the inputs, changing the volume for the left side will also affect the right side as they are being grouped inside the surround bus configuration.

How To

To create a child input/output bus (SX only):

1. Select the surround bus in which you want to create a child bus. This is done inside the VST Connections window (F4 being the default key command).

2. Right-click(PC)/Ctrl-click(Mac) on the selected surround bus and choose Add Child Bus and the appropriate Child Bus suboption that you want to create. In Figure E.3, selecting Stereo would create a child bus for the left and right channels within this surround bus.

Figure Figure E.3. Creating a child bus within a surround bus.

You will notice that the ASIO device ports assigned to the newly created child bus will be the same as those assigned to the surround bus. Changing these ports in the child bus will also change them in the surround parent bus.

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