August 21, 2003
Sends Versus Inserts
[ Edit ]
While reviewing a couple Logic books, I finally learned once and for now what Send and Insert mean when you’re talking about effects.
For each audio track in your song, you can turn on effects that will process it and change the sound. This could be a compressor, gate, limiter, reverb, or whatever. You can do this in two ways:
- You want to have this effect change only one track in a very specific way. Usually when you compress your vocals, for example, you have different settings than you would for your snare drum track. If you do this, you will Insert the effect into that track. It will affect only the track that you insert it into. Each track that you compress will have its own instance of the compression plugin, with its own settings.
- You want to apply the same effect, with the same settings, to more than one track. In this case, you set up a place, called a bus, where you Send the audio track to get processed. In Logic, the application of the effect happens in addition to (or rather, in parallel with) the unprocessed audio. So you’ll end up with your vocal track playing back without reverb, and with reverb, simultaneously. You can then adjust how much of each you want using Logic’s mixer.
The rule of thumb that is always used is: if you are applying one effect with one setting to lots of tracks, use Send. If you need specific settings for specific tracks, use Insert.
More on this can be found in this Logic FAQ.
Posted by Joe | TrackBackgreat site. i came for the logic and got drum advice too! would send any non-drummer like myself here for some good advice on drum tracks.
thanks for sharing
My pleasure. I'm glad you enjoy it.
Posted by: Joe Chellman at May 7, 2004 5:36 PMWhy use sends? The only reason I use sends is if I want to effect the wet signal for example I may want to process the reverb signal through a compressor or phaser etc. But this whole "If you're using the same effect on a lot of tracks then use sends" is really doing my head in. In theory it makes sense but really it's just not efficient. I always use delay and reverb as inserts because I want to have complete control over every track and I always feed the delayed signal through the reverb now if I was to do this using sends I'd have to set-up 2 or 3 of the same effects so that I can cross-feed different delays through the reverbs and it's just not efficient. My computer is more than powerful enough to tolerate tons of plug-ins and if it does ever become an issue I'll just render the effect as audio but I've never had to do that. Sends are just for lazy people who haven't really thought about signal routing properly.
Posted by: Me at November 22, 2009 1:56 PMThanks for the perspective, "Me". What you said, except for the belittling language you used, sounds pretty similar to the rule of thumb above. If you want control over the effect individually on individual tracks, as you say you do, then using an insert is the way to go. That's what I said, and that's what you said. Agreement!
If you want to use an identical effect with the same settings on multiple tracks, it's more efficient in terms of CPU and workflow (if settings need to change, you can just do it once on the bus) to use a send. There are other reasons to use them, but that is one.
Posted by: Joe Chellman at November 22, 2009 2:25 PM