How to use Sends in Pro Tools
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Getting started with how to use Sends in Pro Tools
Pro Tools is a software that lets you produce, record, edit and mix audio as well as MIDI performances.
When you start the mix stage of a music production, you will benefit from using plugins as inserts in order to modify the sonic characteristics of the audio signals in a “serial” topology.
However, you can also use plugins in “parallel” with the “sends” included on every track.
Sends let you “send” a copy of the signal passing thru the channel strip, to a different destination, so that it can be processes in parallel.
This method can be specially useful when dealing with time-based effects such as reverbs and delays because it lets you have a dedicated fader for the “dry” signal, as well as a dedicated fader for the “wet” signal, giving you complete control of the mix.
Today we will learn how to use Sends in Pro Tools.
- Open or create a new Pro Tools session. Make sure it contains at least one audio track:
It is easy to see, we have a single “GUITAR” track, which is simply a mono audio track.
For the purpose of this tutorial we will add a reverb plugin using sends.
2. Open the Mix window by click on: Window -> Mix:
3. Locate the “Sends” are of the channel strip:
4. Click on the first available slot and the following options will appear:
5. Click on “new track” to create a new track fed from a send. The following window will appear:
From this “New Track” window, you can select the format of the track, type, time base and name.
For the purpose of this tutorial, we will let it as stereo, aux, samples timebase, and label it as “Reverb”.
6. Press “Create” and the new track associated to the send will be created as:
So now, we have our mono “Guitar” track, a stereo aux track labeled as “Reverb” and a dedicated “Send” labeled as “Reverb” located at the first Sends slot of the channel strip.
7. Locate on the inserts column of the “Reverb” track and add a reverb plugin.
For the purpose of this tutorial we are adding the default “D-Verb” reverb from Avid.
Now that we have the routing done, we can officially “send” the Guitar signal to the reverb unit.
8. Locate the Send fader and push the fader up in order to send a copy of the signal into the Reverb track:
Since we are using a Send for time-based processing (reverb) it is recommended to have it as “post fader send”.
In order to make sure it is set to post-fader, we simply must check the “PRE” function is not lit:
In our case, it is east to see, the PRE function is OFF, meaning it will be fed post-fader.
9. Press PLAY and the track will playback. A copy of the “guitar” track will be sent to the “reverb” track using its associated fader and you should hear the contribution of dry and wet signals.
10. You can adjust the contribution of dry and wet signals by simply dragging the send fader up or down as needed:
And that is it! We have successfully configured our sends in Pro Tools to create a reverb effects.
You can apply this same method for any time-based or harmonic effect.
At this point, we have successfully explained how to use Sends in Pro Tools.
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