New York buses

New York compression is a squashed copy of a channel mixed in underneath the original. In Shadow Rack it's a bus of its own: channels send a copy to a New York bus, the bus runs its own plugins - your compressor, squashed hard - and plays on its own output, so you bring it up on a fader of your desk. A vocal can have its own bus (VOX NY), and the whole kit can share one (DRUMS NY).

Every copy comes out in time with its channel, to the sample, so when you add it in, you never get comb filtering.

Making a bus#

That's it. Other ways to get there:

• NEW YORK BUS at the bottom of a channel's page in the channel view (it reads ANOTHER BUS once the channel already sends somewhere).
• The dashed + NEW YORK key on a mixer strip: when there's no New York bus yet, it makes one for that channel straight away.

The bus is named after what's in it: Vox Lead NY for one channel, Drums NY when every channel has a drum icon, otherwise after the first channel (Vox Lead +1 NY). Rename it like any channel - the bus in the picture below was renamed Vox NY.

1234

1. 1The bus in the NEW YORK section, coloured like its first channel
2. 2Its own output: bring it up on your console
3. 3The channels' SEND keys now point to the bus
4. 4FED BY: SOF with a dot for each channel feeding it

What happens then:

• The bus appears in the NEW YORK section, after your channels, with the first channel's colour and icon.
• It's filled with your ready-made New York (below). If you haven't saved one, the plugin list opens so you can pick the compressor, with the hint pick your compressor, squash it hard.
• It takes the next free output(s) of your interface. When it starts with your ready-made New York, a message says where it plays: Vox Lead NY plays on OUT 5-6 - bring it up on your console.

Your ready-made New York#

Once a bus sounds right, right-click it in the mixer (or open its ≡ menu) and choose Save as my ready-made New York. From then on every new bus starts with those plugins, set exactly like that.

The SEND panel of a channel#

At the bottom of a channel's page, the SEND panel shows its buses, one row each:

How much New York you hear is the bus's own fader on your console, not the LEVEL.

SEND TO... opens a menu of every bus: tick the ones this channel should feed.

Several buses per channel#

A channel can feed up to four buses - the kick into KICK NY and DRUMS NY, for example. Each send has its own ON and LEVEL. In the mixer, the SEND key then shows +1; a click opens the New York menu.

The bus page: FED BY and RETURN#

Open a bus and you see who feeds it and where it goes:

• FED BY, above its chain: a tile per channel, with an ON dot (click to switch the send), the channel's colour and name (click to open it), and its level (drag the tile sideways). Right-click a tile for Level back to 0 dB and Stop sending Kick into Drums NY. The dashed + CHANNEL tile adds another channel.
• RETURN, under the chain: the output it plays on, big - OUT 15-16, its own output of the interface, bring it up underneath on your console.

A bus that nothing feeds any more is deleted by itself, so it doesn't sit on outputs for nothing.

Sends On Fader#

Click SOF on a bus's strip in the mixer and the middle of every channel strip turns into its send to that bus - the read-out says SENDS ON FADER: DRUMS NY:

• A channel in the bus has a fader (+10 to -oo; drag, ⇧ for fine, wheel = 0.5 dB, double-click = 0 dB) and DEL to leave the bus. The last channel can't leave - that would delete the bus in the middle of a show.
• A channel not in the bus has a big ADD tile (INTO DRUMS NY); click it to join.
• A channel alone in its bus shows BUS FADER: there's nothing to balance, the bus's own fader is the level.

Click SOF again to get back.

Where the copy comes from: NY SEND and AUTO#

A yellow marker in the channel's chain, NY SEND followed by the bus names, shows where in the chain the copy is taken. With AUTO ON (the default), Shadow Rack puts it before the first reverb or delay, or after the last plugin when there's none – a squashed reverb tail turns into a wall of sound, so it stays out.

• Drag the marker between the plugins to pick the point yourself, for example after the EQ and de-esser. At the very top, the copy comes straight from the input. Dragging turns AUTO off.
• Drag it back exactly to where AUTO would put it, or click the AUTO pill, and AUTO is on again.
• When the marker sits after a plugin and you move that plugin, the marker goes with it. Remove the plugin, and the marker goes back to AUTO.

There's no menu for the marker – you do it all by dragging. ⌘Z doesn't undo moving it.

In time to the sample#

Every bus comes out in time with its channels. A New York bus's plugins delay its sound, so each channel feeding it is delayed exactly as much as its slowest bus; Shadow Rack never delays the bus itself. The delay read-outs under the meters show it, to 0.01 ms. Sends fade in and out in about 10 ms, so switching one never clicks.

When it can't be done#

Shadow Rack says why when a channel can't get a bus: it's a New York bus itself, it already sends to four buses, or (with a WING) it's a bus or main.

Undo, and sessions from older versions#

You can undo making a bus, adding a send and stopping a send. Send levels and ON aren't undone.

A session from an older version may have New York inside a channel - an old parallel lane. It still plays, and the channel page shows a notice with MAKE IT A BUS (its plugins move to a new bus) and REMOVE.