Favorite strategies w/ VCAs, submixes, FX and parallel comp

Thanks!

Yeah I like to have a mono overhead option but not commit in tracking. Same with FOK. 

What do you mean by sub stem always hard left and right? You mean for instruments other than drums?

I don't like parallel compression much either as a rule, but I've found it useful for reinforcing center info and on quiet detailed sources like brushes, tambo on verses.

I haven't made up my mind about comp on mixbus. Leaning toward no for rock and organic music, yes perhaps for electronic. I dunno.

I always do effects on aux, I just mean for which instruments do you like your effects like reverbs and delays (pitchshifted or whatever) stereo for spread on mono sources (like vocals, guitars), mono input to stereo output on reverbs (drums, vocals), or panned mono reverbs (same, and guitars/keyboards). That kind of thing.

And for mono vs stereo preferences on sources, I mean true stereo tracked or mono acoustic guitar, maybe with stereo room for an acoustic ensemble, or either single overhead or summing overheads to mono. Or mono drums and stereo rooms vs stereo drums and mono room.

Some people just like acoustic and drums in mono, y'know? Or keyboards on a dense mix in mono, but in sparse mix in stereo.

From the very first time I sat behind a PM 3k to today's Digital 'VCA"
The stratagem has been simple, VCA group is about control , sub group is about sub mixing to send the combined group to a common destination, often they have some overlap. I have always found a master EFX VCA handy, to simply cut all EFX or an EFX mute group,
Simply because it is often easier to trouble shoot without verb and delay, but then I love to use real console inputs to layer EFX and have some EQ as well.
Quite often in my live days I would pretty much only touch say 4ch and the subs and VCAs during a show!

Anytime, sometimes we just make it to complex!
It's funny because I always remember sitting behind a big console and people always talking about "how it's just so complex all those knobs and buttons"
There I was thinking it's not that complex just repeat ice as hell and as long as I put tape on the top bottom and both sides I could do it in my sleep!

Well fuck, I thought this was a good idea at the time.

You did your part! And I know what you mean.

I guess next time I start a topic like this I'll actually have some audio to share and not blah blah.

Cool thread!
Over the years my mix routing has gotten more and more complex. I'm so deep in it I don't even remember how I got here. I don't start a mix with a template but I do have a work flow that ends up being pretty similar from track to track, though each instance of a bus or submix is built on the fly and tailored for what I'm mixing at the time.
It usually looks like this for drums:

1 stereo drums bus with all drum tracks and drum sub busses routed to it. It's the final drum "master bus". I mute this bus and all drum info is muted, including reverb and FX. This bus will have an Eq and compressor on it.

1 mono bus for kick drum distortion. Gated, Eqd, distorted. The kick is routed here from a send. The kick track main output goes straight to the drum master bus. This bus's output also gets routed to the drum master bus.

1 mono bus for snare distortion/compression. Same idea as kick bus.

1 stereo bus for super smash compression. Fast attack! Mostly close mics but a small amount of OH and room sometimes. Minimized transient info and maximized ambience/decay. Routed to drum master bus. Blend to taste...sometimes mute!

1 stereo bus for slow attack transient/impact/snap tailoring compression. . Slow attack let's me shape the impact of the close mics for max snap. Close mics only in this bus.

1 stereo bus for snare verb. Usuall very short and wide. Almost can't hear it but mute it and you lose some beef. It's the old AMS non-linear thing. I don't hear it as "verb". It's more like lengthening the note/decay a fraction. Sometimes it gets muted.

1 stereo bus for kick verb. Same as above but eq'd for kick.
Both K and S short verbs might get routed to the compression busses too.

1 stereo bus for snare/tom verb. This is the longer verb that gives the reverb tail. This one is kinda genre dependent. Doesn't work in all styles. Sometimes snare and toms need different verb so there might be 2 of these.

1 stereo bus for SHORT delay. Same here...doesn't always work. It can be a kinda cool "room". Real short delay, not a when the levee breaks thing. Again...not so much to be "heard" as providing a perceived space.

That's basic drum routing for me.
I tend to record a few heavily treated mono drum mics in various places around the kit. They might end up in 1 or more of the busses too.

The drum master bus receives all of those. I might sometimes feed ANOTHER bus with bass, drums, rhythm guitars, heavy synths, blah blah... So I can compress the bottom half of the mix separately from other elements.

I don't even know how much fidelity I might be losing with so much bussing. It's just what I had to do over the years to get what I wanted. I use a lot of compressors but not a lot of compression. Only the parallel buses are compressing a lot.

There's a bunch more bussing in a final mix but this post is long enough!!!!

Ok sob I'm having a party you guys show up splain all this I'll supply the food and drinks ,yea that's it a party you know like painting this this fence is fun (Mark aTwain) lol No really come on over I live on a lake 2 sea doos , boat , lmao

It really is a tricky way to work and doesn't lend itself to short deadline/low budget schedules.
I've mixed myself in to a corner a lot of times. I do a very hybrid thing with multiple passive busses/16 channel API/couple active summing mixers...I gotta really watch my gain staging in the analogue domain or I can truly screw myself.
Sometimes I wonder why I go to so much trouble but every time I try a more simple approach I end up in almost the same spot because I wanna hear certain things a certain way. It's pretty organic and unforced for me at this point though it took a lot of trial and error to get there.
When it's all ITB it's easier to save myself from falling off the cliff because big adjustments across lots of tracks are more manageable.

I still hate my mixes and I'm waiting for everyone to pull my covers and kick me out of the music business.

Noah, as long as your clients like the results and the consumers buy the results and everyone is happy with your work it doesn't really matter if you hate your own mixes, right? Maybe hating your mixes keeps you going to become better and better in what you do.
Your mixing is art and artists tend to have this thought they aren't doing anything special and someone could unmask them and see there is nothing special. Pretty common artist's incubus, i guess...
I think your sub-bussing style is because you care about drums and the rhythm fundamentals pretty much (which isn't surprising because you are a drummer...) and like to have as much control over gain stages and compression as possible. Often it's personal preference how complex or simple the setup must be for one to achieve the result you want to get. Even if you lose some fidelity on the way...it does not really matter if the mix works in the end.
I think the biggest drawback really is the efforts needed and having the time/budget for this. Maybe you are just not the zen style engineer who mixes a grammy album with 4 busses. :-)
I think i can hear the different submixes in your products as a kind of subtle color complexity that makes it quite interesting to listen to but is subtle enough to not distract from the essentials of tje music at all, because you never lose the focus on a really working rhythm section. Maybe it sounds a bit more compact or less wide than other peoples mixes who do less bussing, but who cares if your client likes it in the end ...
Maybe it's just your sonic fingerprint that makes you destinctive.
At least it's very interesting to read your approach and listen to your mixes and make the connection why things sound like they do. Thanks a lot for the insights!