Buses and Buffers

A bus is an internal pathway along which information travels. A buffer is a storage place for data in which audio effects such as reverb or echo, as well as 3-D spatialization, are applied to signals before they are sent to the next buffer in the chain or to the final mixer.

Each buffer associated with a mix group is connected to the synthesizer by one or two buses. Buffers that are destinations for Send Effects do not have any PChannels or buses.

When designing a simple audiopath, generally one buffer is used for each mix group, and all PChannels in the mix group use the same set of audio effects. There are situations, however, where more buffers can usefully be added in the mix group path. For example, you might use a combination of a User Defined buffer and one of the standard buffers to apply multiple effects.

When you add a new buffer to a mix group, it must have at least one bus to carry data to it. You can insert one additional bus, but the only case where this is generally done is when using separate buses for a stereo signal.

To insert multiple buffers in a mix group, use the Insert Buffer command to insert the buffer and one bus. For more information about this command, see Managing Buses and Buffers.

A buffer can be shared by more than one mix group, but each different mixture of audio effects requires that a unique buffer be set up to contain them. See Sharing Buffers.

When you create a new audiopath file, a single mix group is inserted with a default Stereo (L+R) bus and a User Defined buffer.