Hi Jon,
Well, the documentation is sparse right now and people are just starting to use them, but let me see if I can help. Someone (maybe me) will probably make a video soon.
A 10,000 Foot View
The modules use red, orange, and blue stereo bus routes for your audio. The red bus is usually considered your master audio bus (although you can use the buses however you want). All your sounds travel on this master red bus and you adjust the levels with the red knobs in the mixers.
The orange and blue buses are usually meant for effect sends. For example, the orange bus could be connected to a single reverb effect. You can then adjust the amount of reverb on each sound with the orange knobs on the mixers.
A 10 Foot View
- Route a kick sound to the input on a Mini Bus Mixer.
- Route a snare sound to the input on a Mini Bus Mixer.
- Add a Bus Route module and a Bus Depot module.
- Connect everything up. (This step is easier than it sounds. It’s a modular environment and everything has to be connected.) Connect one Mini Bus BUS OUT to the other Mini Bus BUS IN. Connect the next Mini Bus BUS OUT to the Bus Route BUS IN. Connect the Bus Route BUS OUT to the Bus Depot BUS IN. Connect the LEFT RIGHT outputs of the Bus Depot to your left and right audio outputs.
- Connect up your master bus (with no effects) by connecting both red outputs to both red inputs on the Bus Route module (you could add EQ, a limiter, or other master effects on this bus later).
- Connect the orange outputs of the Bus Route module to a reverb effect. Connect the reverb effect outputs back to the orange inputs on the Bus Route module. Adjust your reverb effect to a fully wet signal. (If it’s not a stereo reverb effect, you can create two outputs with the CTRL key and connect them back up to left and right orange inputs of the Bus Route module.)
- Mix down your patch. Now when you adjust your red knobs for each instrument, you adjust their master levels. When you adjust the orange knob for each instrument, you adjust the amount of reverb. The kick should probably have very little to no reverb, but you might want a lot of reverb on the snare.
With these modules you can do quite a lot more. For example, you can route everything in your blue bus to an effect and then route it back into the orange bus to go through the reverb. You can mix down drum sounds along three buses, with a drum room reverb, mix down your bass and other instruments along buses with another reverb, and route your drums to an empty bus or to the AUX inputs on a Bus Depot module. And obviously, to really take advantage of the stereo space, you would use the pan controls on the School Bus Mixer instead of using the simple Mini Bus Mixer. And an upcoming module will give everyone some powerfully fun stereo control over polyphonic instruments.
Anyway, I was just wanting a modular way of adjusting effect sends. Whatever I came up with using existing modules was overly complicated or didn’t make sense when I looked at it the next day. After a few different designs, I came up with these modules that use the red, orange, and blue bus concept. It makes everything simple for me.
If you’re really new, know that effect sends make your patches more efficient. With sends, for example, you can reuse a single reverb effect for all your instruments, even though some instruments need much more or much less reverb. Using common delays and reverbs on multiple instruments also helps give glue to your mix (instead of having different effect chains, with different sounds, for each instrument). I can’t live without effect sends.
I hope this helps. I think if you see these modules in use one day in a video, you will also see that it’s really quite easier than it sounds in writing. But the above text should be useful to move you in the right direction. Let me know if it helps.
Best,
Paul