FX send not following fader when in group

[vinnyvortexParticipant]

Hi All, new Qu user here, getting to grips with this desk pretty well but I have a question I hope someone can help me with.

I have a drum group setup to send various individual channels to. On the individual channels for the snare & hats i have setup a post fader reverb send FX. When these individual channels are faded the FX fade with it, all good.
But, when these individual channels are assigned to a group, the FX sends don’t seem to follow the group fader like the individual ones. So when i pull the group fader down to mute the drums, i can still here the FX.

What going on, have i overlooked something here?

Thanks in advance.

[dpdanParticipant]

Hi Vinny, welcome to the forum!

this is the very reason I learned to hate groups when I was teaching myself how to mix music on a console with groups.
First, if it isn’t already, it is imperative that the reverb’s dry/wet mix be set to full on… WET!

The snare and hi-hat sends for your reverb should be set to “post fade”, in fact, all sends to effects should be post fader.
This means that as you raise and lower the snare and/or hi-hat input channel, naturally, the reverb sends are going to be effected by the input channel faders’ position, because they are post (after) the fader, not pre (before).

Here is a scenario,
let’s say ALL the drum mics are assigned to a group labeled “drums” an incedibly common setup.

Let’s say you are mixing a band and the producer, (or someone who thinks they know more than you) tells you that the drums are too loud,… to accomodate him, the logical thing to do is to lower the “Drums” group fader. This will in fact lower the sound of all the drums, but suddenly you notice that while the drums are now softer, they are drenched in reverb. That’s because you lowered the volume of the audio SIGNALS that are going to the groups.

You DID NOT lower all the individual input faders (Kick, Snare, Hat, Tom, Floor, Over etc.) Therefore, the sends for the reverb did not get lowered. If you have a separate dedicated reverb for just the drums, THEN, you could also route the drum reverbs’ output to this “Drums” group, that way, when you raise and lower the drum group, the ratio of reverb and dry signals will remain consistant.

Now,…. here is what you should do to accomplish what you really want…. do not use groups, instead,
assign all the drum channels to a DCA and name it Drums. It is actually a DCA GROUP, but I won’t confuse the issue with the word group. So now we have all our drum mics in a DCA.

You need to know that a normal group has audio passing through it like a funnel, we could in fact put a single EQ or a compressor on all the drums, but that is for another discussion.

A DCA is basically a remote control that allows us to control a number of channels or faders with a single fader. A DCA does NOT have audio passing through it. It is just a remote control of faders.

When you raise the Drums DCA, it would be the same thing as raising all the individual drum input channels the same amount, maintaining the balance, BUT,,,,,, since this DCA is remotely controlling the audio on the faders, it would also increase and decrease
the signal going to the “Sends” which are post fader. To wrap up, instead of raising or lowering your group, (which you won’t use) you would raise or lower your DCA, and THEN the reverb will also be adjusted accordingly.

This is a lot to absorb at once but it is just simple plumbing.

A final example of how I use a DCA on my Qu mixer is that I named DCA 1 to ALLMON which is my abbreviation for “all monitors”.

I assign all the monitor mixoutput masters to this one DCA. I typicially leave it set to zero db.
If and when something feeds back uncontrollably, all I have to do is lower that one fader and it is the same thing as grabbing all the monitor mix masters at once. Very Nice!

[SteffenRParticipant]

Route the FX to the group…

[vinnyvortexParticipant]

@dpdan thank you for your detailed answer, i really appreciate your time.

I do have the sends set to post fade as described in the original post. I cannot see any parameter on the FX istelf for dry/wet control, I assume you mean the return should be set to 0 on the fader? which i have.

I have since contacted A&H directly and one of their representatives has explained to me, as you have also, that the group fader does not directly control the channel fader and its send level. The group is a separate bus mix of the audio. I just assumed that when routing a channel to a group the send levels would follow the group level, for the channels assigned, a rookie mistake maybe.

Yes a DCA group does sounds like it would help me achieve what I’m after, and it is something i have not tried yet, but will.
I’m not completely new to digital mixers, i had a Yamaha 03D before this, but there seems to be more routing options on this desk, which i have yet to explore.

[dpdanParticipant]

glad to help Vinny!

a DCA is your friend 🙂

Steffen, routing the FX to the group would only work if the only thing in that effect was drums as I mentioned in my post.

[vinnyvortexParticipant]

@Steffan R. Haha, sometime the answer is so simple you cannot see the wood for the trees! Yep, that’ll do it! didn’t think you could route the FX return to a group, but you can. Now all channel audio and the FX audio follow the group fader. Thank you.

[vinnyvortexParticipant]

@dpdan Yes, this works only if the effects are for the drums only. No good for overall send effects.

[dpdanParticipant]

exactly, but as Steffen said, you could route that effects return to the group and you would use a separate effect (reverb) for everything else.

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