Music & Audio Advice DAW Signal Flow and Routing 2

Question 1

You want to apply one reverb to several tracks at once. What is the standard way to route them?

Accepted Answer

Send each track to a shared aux/bus with reverb on it

Answer

Sends route a copy of multiple tracks to one aux/bus carrying a shared reverb, saving CPU and unifying the sound.

Question 2

On an aux send, what does choosing 'pre-fader' instead of 'post-fader' change?

Accepted Answer

The send level ignores the channel fader

Answer

A pre-fader send taps the signal before the channel fader, so moving the fader does not change the send amount.

Question 3

A guitar and bass are both routed to a 'Rhythm' group bus. Where would you place a compressor to glue just those two together?

Accepted Answer

On the Rhythm group bus

Answer

Bus (group) compression processes the summed signal of its member tracks, gluing them without affecting other tracks.

Question 4

What is the correct gain-staging goal when tracking into a 24-bit DAW project?

Accepted Answer

Peaks around -12 to -6 dBFS with headroom

Answer

Leaving headroom around -12 to -6 dBFS avoids clipping and gives plugins clean signal to work with.

Question 5

Which routing setup lets you record the output of a software synth as audio inside the same project?

Accepted Answer

Bus the synth's output to an audio track's input

Answer

Internal bussing (or resampling) sends the synth's output to an audio track's input so it can be armed and recorded.

Music & Audio Advice Practice Test