Aux Tracks vs Patch Points In Cakewalk By BandLab Tutorial

hey guys in today's video we're gonna discuss some ways that can save you a ton of time and also allow for a lot of creativity within cakewalk my band lamp so stick around hey guys welcome back to the channel and if this is the first time that you're here nice to meet you this channel exists to simplified the complexities of the home studio and help you make professional sounding music any less than professional space well today's topic is all about patch points now I'm excited to talk about these in particular due to the fact that this is one of the many areas that cakewalk my band lab actually sets itself apart from other da WS on the market so first off let's discuss what a patch point actually is so essentially a patch point is an internal routing path used to route audio from a track output bus output or a send to an audio track input the virtual inputs can then be input monitor or recorded so you can think of patch points as virtual patch cables in a digital realm now in keeping with cakewalk she's user-friendly ability to customize nearly everything under the Sun you can freely create assign and rename these patch points this powerful internal routing tool opens up a completely new dimension of control within cakewalk Baybayin lab you can use pass points for instance for track to track bus to track and send to track routing and to even record audio signals that otherwise could normally not be recorded to an audio track such as a bus output a send effect or even a metronome now the wonderful thing about kick box intelligent system routing is that it actually automatically prevents assigning patch points that would otherwise cause feedback loops which is a common problem in a real world setting when patching various pieces of analog gear together ok moving over to the desktop now let's look at some examples of how we can use patch points within our current workflow now in this first example we're going to talk about using patch points in concert with aux tracks to streamline the workflow for patch points cakewalk by bail app supports aux tracks now aux tracks are used to receive audio from other tracks buses or sins stereo buses are traditionally used for subgrouping and effect sins but it is possible to use aux tracks for the same purpose now aux tracks have the added advantage of being able to record the incoming audio whether it be mono or stereo and you can arrange aux tracks adjacent to other tracks in the track pane or in the console view an aux track is a regular audio track that has been automatically assigned to a patch point input if you rename the aux track cakewalk by Bain Lab will also rename the assigned patch point by default when you create a new aux track within cakewalk by Bain Lab it does the following automatically for one it will create a new patch point named aux blank where blank is equal to a sequential number it also assigns the source whether it be a track bus or ascend output to the new patch point and it creates a new audio track named aux blank which is the same name as the patch point now if you rename the aux track cakewalk my band lab will automatically rename the corresponding patch point it also enables input echo on the new audio track and it assigns a default aux track icon as seen here ok now that this is all set up you can now freely assign other tracks buses and sins to the aux patch point it's also important to note that any audio track that has its input control assigned to a patch point is considered an aux track unless you manually assigned a custom track icon any track that has its input control connected to a patch point will automatically display the default aux track icon now for referential purposes here is a signal flow chart to give you an idea of how the signal flow works with the patch point alright so there are actually a couple of different ways to create a new patch point you can either click an audio track or bust output control and select new patch point from the pop-up menu as seen here you can also right click in this area here just below the track icon to bring up the same set of sub menus or by working in the inspector view you can go to sins from here and insert a patch point from here ok let's begin by using this first guitar track as an example so as you can see I'm going to go to the output here on this and I'm going to go to new aux track just underneath the track you can see that aux track 2 has been created now when you create a new aux track both sides of the connection are automatically made however when you create a new patch point only one side of the connection is automatically made the new patch point is assigned to the input output or CIN you use to create the patch point you must manually assign the other end of the patch point to complete a connection let me demonstrate what I'm talking about so if I right click in this area here and go to insert patch point you'll now see that I have what looks like a sinned however this patch point is currently going nowhere because there's no end to the patch point so in order to close the loop so to speak I would have to set one of these tracks input to the patch point you'll notice too that from this same menu I can actually rename the patch point from here now much like anything else that's used within cakewalk by Bane lab you can actually use quick grouping to clear multiple tracks buses or sins simultaneously to do so just simply select multiple tracks or buses and then hold down the ctrl key while you clear the patch point assignment from any of the selected tracks or buses just for the sake of this tutorial I'll show you how to put it on all of the tracks at once by holding down the control key and pressing a I'm now going to select all of the tracks at once now with all of the tracks selected I can hold down the control key again right click in this area go to insert new patch point and now every one of them have the same patch point already located on them likewise if I wanted to delete all of those new patch points I just created holding down the control button again I can go in here to delete send and they're all now deleted ok so in this example let's say I'd like to record an audio track that contains effects on it I can simply insert the plug-in of my choice which in this case is the trim later set the output of this first track now to the aux 2 I'll now set the input of aux food to a mono signal as that's what's being fed to it and make sure that I've interleaved this into mono now I simply arm the track for recording and record now I can disarm the track and even take the trim later plug-in off of the first track keep in mind that if the output of the first track is still set to aux 2 even if I solo this track I'm gonna hear what's going on in aux 2 as well so I'm gonna reset this to master now I can hear just a printed track with the effect and the original track is left unfiltered alright another creative way that you could use this is to actually record multiple tracks to a single track so essentially I could create a guitars track as I have here and literally blend all of the guitars together on this one track and essentially if I like the sound of it delete three tracks or this one so I'm going to set the output of one two guitars the output of two two guitars and the output of the guitar solo two guitars so now that I have multiple sources coming to it and some are blended left and some are blended right I can go ahead and switch this back now to a stereo input i'll interleave that stereo again and now just like we did in the first scenario I'll simply hit record okay now I've recorded tracks 1 and track 3 together on the same track alright another creative way that you can use these aux tracks and sins is to record just the send effects to an audio track let me show you what I mean so if I right click on the audio track and select insert sinned I can go to new stereo buss alright now that I have bus C created I'm now going to insert the desired plug-in which in this case is the little plate on that new bus but you can see here I'm going to be sure to set the output of the plugins mix knob all the way to wet next I'm going to make sure that the output of the bus is set to the aux track that we just created called guitars now I'm going to arm the guitars aux input and leave everything set as stereo now I just simply hit record okay now I have a track that only has the audio effects from the reverb plug-in on it okay in this next example we're going to talk about using the auxiliary tracks or patch points to record a metronome to an audio track with the stereo bus that we've already got inserted I've just renamed it metronome now I'm gonna go to edit preferences project and metronome so from here I'm going to click the output drop down menu and select the bus that I've just made named metronome then I'll hit apply and now the output of the bus named metronome will be going to the aux track that I've just named metronome now with my newly created metronome track I can send this off to a drummer or I can use this within cakewalk and take advantage of the Audio snap features to align other tracks to this same grid all right so I've started up a completely blank session so this would be easy to follow along with but another way that you can use these auxilary and patch points creatively is to actually capture the performance of guitar effects in real time let me show you what I mean the first thing we need to do is go to edit preferences then we need to find the project and record from here you can see an option called a multitrack grouping now as of now it says do not group tracks I'm going to set this to crew all clips and hit apply now I'm gonna right click in this portion and insert an audio track from this audio track that I've just inserted I'm going to insert a send to a new auxiliary track now selecting both tracks by holding the control button I'm going to set the output to a new auxiliary track all right now I'm going to continue by naming these something that would be applicable to this situation okay so I've renamed them guitar live which will be my di source the FX which will be my effects and a blend which will literally be a blend of the DI and the effect source so on the effects track I'm going to insert an instance of a reverb in this case I'll use the Eventide reverb 2016 you'll notice that I've set the wet knob to a hundred percent all right now with all of the tracks selected by holding the control key I'm now going to arm all of them for recording alright with my performance recorded I can now select all of them again and another quick way to select all the tracks is to simply start with the first one click and hold and drag down now holding the control button again I'm going to disarm all of the tracks at once alright now let's take a listen back to the performance and see what we got so let's take a listen to each individual track here is the live DI source [Music] this is only the effects track and this is a blend of the two [Music] okay so some things to keep in mind when you're using these auxilary tracks or these patch points which if you haven't figured out by now are sort of interchangeable terms to bounce or export a project containing patch points you have to select all the tracks that contribute to the mix for example if the project contains three audio tracks like we have the forests that send to an aux track in this case the blend you must include the aux track as well as the contributing tracks prior to performing the bounce or the export another thing to make mention is that patch points and aux tracks have what's called a smart solo so when you solo an aux track or bus that outputs to a patch point cakewalk by Bane lab will automatically manage the solo state for all upstream and downstream tracks and/or buses this eliminates the need to manually solo or mute other tracks when using patch points you can actually see and hear an example of this right here I'm going to solo the guitar live track now because that's output is already set to the other auxilary tracks the smart solo feature is going to allow you to hear those tracks even though they're not technically so load take a listen [Music] now conversely soloing the blend track will also allow us to hear the FX track because as has already been stated soloing a track that has its input control assigned to a patch point but automatically may call upstream tracks and or buses audible now along these same lines it's important to note that all upstream or downstream tracks that are muted as a result of soloing in an aux track are dimmed in the Clips pane to indicate that these tracks will not be heard this makes it very easy to visually see the result of muting an aux track and tracks are not dimmed as a result of soloing busses now with all of these tracks being patched and rounded at different areas the questions that arise does this cause latency issues from track to track however built in under the hood cakewalk my pan lamp has something called PDC which is plug in delay compensation the PDC depends on the plug-in itself to report back what its internal latency is so that cakewalk can slow everything else down to match it now 99.9% of the time the scheme works perfectly it's one of the details that cakewalk worked out a long time ago before most other da WS actually did however once in a while a plugin isn't accurate in its reported latency and phase cancellations can actually happen from this sometimes external Hardware can also be an issue because there's no mechanism for it to report the latency back to the da W there is a way actually to test the latency of a plug-in by sending a sharp transient to it and zooming in on the waveform to make sure that the main and the parallel paths actually line up however the only time that you're going to routinely run into latency problems is with plugins that feature minimum phase filters meaning any equalizer or any effect that incorporates an equalizer for that reason you want to be careful applying EQ to parallel paths and avoid steep EQ boosts or another fix to that is actually to use a linear phase equalizers now these issues do not normally apply to compressors even if the compressor incorporates a sidechain filter so to sum up the question of whether or not the aux track that you have just created are causing some sort of delay issues your best bet would be to honestly just use your ears and if you can hear some kind of a delay or something happening try to compensate that by changing your buffer sizes all right guys well I hope this brief overview of auxilary tracks and patch points will prove useful and I also hope that you're already developing in your mind some way to use these creatively in your own workflow if you found this video useful go ahead and give it a thumbs up and comment below if you have any creative ways that you found to use these already that I have not covered I always love seeing people share their knowledge on my channel and I always love showcasing things that they've learned as well so until next time guys remember you can dream alone you can create alone but together we can achieve so much more

Channel: Home Studio Simplified

Views: 3,029

Rating: 4.9787235 out of 5

Keywords: vocal recording tips, cakewalk by bandlab, asmr, home studio, home recording, mixing tutorials, recording vocals, music

Id: bJfPpZlIS-s

Length: 16min 30sec (990 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 10 2020