Hopping on the bus!

[MIDI Life Crisis]

No, I'm not leaving the forum so don't get your hopes up! lol This post is about bussing and what I didn't and don't know about that.

First. It is BUS, not BUSS. That has long plagued me. The double s applies to variations of the word, such as bussing and bussed. It also applies to a Nazi secret service, but I digress...

I've used bussing before without realizing I was doing it. All it means is routing a signal from one place to another. Duh! For example, one might route certain tracks to an AUX track for separate processing. That's a bus.

So why now? Why is MLC bringing this up at all now? I'll tell ya, why.

Now that we're in shelter-at-home mode, I've been doing a lot of online stuff. A few live gigs with theater and comedy folks, jamming with my trio on Saturday nights, and most recently, playing modern dance classes in Indianapolis while in L.A. And that's where things got tricky.

If I use my Kurzweil into my mixer or Track 16, I can kill the speakers and wear headphones. This is particularly useful for the Saturday night midnight comedy gig and the 8am (Pacific time) dance classes. But If I want to use my VIs, I have to turn the speakers on and use a mic. Not only does that annoy the neighbors (who don't complain because I manage my building) but the quality of the audio kind of sucks being pumped thru a mic. Ideally, I wanted to kill the speakers and still be able to use the VIs. Impossible... until today. I woke up with a thought about how to accomplish this and it worked. It's all about bussing.

What I realized was that if I created a bundle assigned to a different output than my main outs and bussed the output of the VI to that bundle (analog out in my case) I only had to connect the analog outs to the mixer. I tried connecting the main outs directly to the mixer but there was horrible feedback as the audio looped around. Duh! By bussing to the analog outs of the Track 16, the VI doesn't send a signal to the main out. The mixer sends the clean signal back to the Mac (Track 16) and I can monitor it with headphones while sending it to Zoom, Facebook, JamKazam, OBS, or other online entities. The only lagging issue is Instagram, which is a total waste of time for streaming, IMO. But that's another story for another time. (Hint: iRig Stream.)

OK, I'm done. NO WAIT! ... Nah, I'm done.

I hope you Streaming Mimis' find this helpful in your pursuit of online work. If there's a bright lining to the Covid-19 sequester, it's figuring stuff like this out. BTW, the dance class (a paid gig) is now twice a week and when this is all over I'll be playing their classes in the studio the same way.

Stay safe. Wear your mask in public. Wash your hands. Play music!

[HCMarkus]

BUSTED!

[MIDI Life Crisis]

BUSTED!

[mikehalloran]

But If I want to use my VIs, I have to turn the speakers on and use a mic.

If you say so. I'm going directly from DP to the internet with my wife playing through either my 828mkII or MTP AV USB and triggering the VIs there.

When conducting, I monitor off my MBP through the internet. In the Zoom videos, monitoring in sync with with the direct audio from my host makes me appear to be too early.

I may try your approach. We'll see what happens. My M4 is supposed to get here on Thursday and I have a Yamaha P121 with a weighted keyboard showing up later this week—Sylvia's complaining that the Casio herts her wrists (Shhhhh... it's a surprise!).

Anyway, glad to see you are making it work.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Thanks, Mike. One fringe benefit of my method is I can ride levels from the board as well as apply board fix and eq on the fly. I’m also mixing with the other outboard hardware and with everything in an all in one place is convenient when streaming.

[stubbsonic]

My mixer has an FX SEND (post-fader) and an AUX SEND (pre-fader), and I have those mixer sends going into inputs on my RME FF800. These sends give me the option to send my vocal/speaking mic into my Zoom/Skype feed-- with or without it being in my speakers/cans. I generally use the post-fader send and cans.

The FF800 includes it's excellent TotalMix software mixer/router which provides flexible options to route amonst inputs, software outs, and hardware outs. The problem is that Mac OS (or the driver?) doesn't provide in-application access to all of the software playback channels.

Enter Loopback. I'm still getting my head around it, but it does allow me to patch things. It doesn't always work as I expect. For example, I run an app into a pass-thru, but the volume slider on the pass-thru doesn't have any affect.

I think between my hardware mixer, TotalMix, and Loopback, I should be able to get everything I need, but it is nice to know that lurking in DP is another set of tools to route audio around. My brain's fans are already blazing.

[mhschmieder]

Are you sure that's not spelled "bussted"?

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Are you sure that's not spelled "bussted"?

[labman]

You don't need to be coy, Roy
Just get yourself free
Hop on the buss, Gussss

[MIDI Life Crisis]

You don't need to be coy, Roy
Just get yourself free
Hop on the buss, Gussss

I post a serious thread and it revolves into a game of Simon said.

[mikehalloran]

[mhschmieder]

This was a serious post? Oops, I must have gotten on the wrong buss.

[mikehalloran]

This was a serious post? Oops, I must have gotten on the wrong buss.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fK9hK82r-AM

[bayswater]

Where I come from, buss=kiss.

[mhschmieder]

Given the nature of the discussion, you missed an opportunity for fair and balanced reporting, as you should have named this topic, "Hoping on the buss". One word loses a consonant to compensate for the other word gaining one. Is there a ticket surcharge?