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Now that you understand how tracks work on the Fairlight page, the next important concept you need to understand in order to unlock the power of the Fairlight page is FlexBus, which lets you combine multiple audio tracks in different ways.
What Is a Bus?
A bus is simply a common signal connection point in an audio mixer. Busses can be mono, stereo, or any larger format, like 5.1 or Dolby Atmos 9.1.6 (where 16 audio signals are used). Bussed connections are mixed together into a single signal that can be controlled via a single bus channel strip. For example, by default a single bus called “Bus 1” combines the levels of every clip edited onto every track of a timeline into the mixed signal that is output to your speakers or headphones.
You can use busses in creative ways to organize mixing of tracks in a timeline. For example, if you have five audio tracks that have all of the edited dialogue audio clips for a particular program, you can route the output of all five dialogue tracks to a dedicated submix bus. This allows the combined levels from all the contributing dialogue tracks to be processed, adjusted, and mixed at once using a single channel strip’s controls.
You can use multiple busses to organize a mix, including routing submix busses into other “main busses.” Individual tracks can be routed to submix busses, then multiple submixes can be routed to one or more “main output” busses. For example, you could have four submix busses, one for German dialogue, one for English dialogue, one for Music, and one for Effects. You could route the German, Music, and Effects submix busses to a Main 1 bus to output the German version of the program, and route the English, Music, and Effects submix busses to a Main 2 bus to output the English language version of the program.
Surround Panning and Bussing
When working on surround or immersive formats, audio tracks from the Timeline are routed to busses via each channel strip’s multi-format surround panner, so busses can be configured to accommodate specific audio formats, such as mono, stereo, LCRS, 5.1 surround, or 7.1 surround, and immersive formats, such as Atmos. By using multiple bus routing, you can even output different formats simultaneously.
Bus to Bus Routing and Mixing
Fairlight’s FlexBus structure offers complete user flexibility for bus types and signal routing, allowing completely user-definable bussing, and making it possible to patch outputs and/or sends in any
way you need, as dictated by your project. Each track can output to up to ten busses and sends with additional level and pan controls to a further ten busses. Busses can be sent to other busses up to six layers deep, facilitating complex stem building, processing, and allowing discrete deliverables.
User-definable busses allow for bus-to-bus, bus-to-track, or track-to-bus routing, with each bus having the ability to pass signals from mono to fully immersive formats, such as Dolby Atmos. As with any and all of the track types in Fairlight, these bus types can be changed at any time if needed.