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Stupid Question sorry. I'm trying to grasp subgroups. Analog board (see below)

Board

So I have the four subgroup faders, (1-4) and an example channel fader on 16.

Let's say I have drums on channels 1 to 5, Vocals 6 to 10.

When assigning channels to subgroups, why are they grouped? Eg. 1-2, 3-4. If I want to send all my drums to subgroup 1 and all vocals to 2 I cannot do this as they would be sent to a combination of 1 & 2. Hence, I effectively only have 2 subgroups? I understand the left & right for subgroups, hence I could send 3 to left, and 4 to right, but is there a point? Since channels are already mono, I would click both left and right above subgroup faders.

So I'm asking:

Why do you have to assign to 2 subgroups at a time?

Since I have to assign drums to subgroup faders 1 AND 2, why do I have two faders?

Thanks for the help.

Mark
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Jayden
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2 Answers2

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I don't know the board, so just going by the picture, it looks to me just like an economy move.

Rather than spend money on stereo buss faders, they've used monos.

You assign a channel to bus 1 & 2, then set bus 1 to output left & 2 to output right; tadaah! Stereo bus. Your panning on the channel stays intact.
Alternatively, hard pan a channel left or right & send to 1 & 2, send both 1 & 2 to both left & right & you have 4 mono busses.

You used to be able to buy clips that would hard-link a pair of mono faders like that into a kind of dedicated stereo, but YMMV on that these days.

Tetsujin
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Because Stereo. Because Panning.

You have a single mono channel here that you are panning through the L/R panning knob between two channels of a bunch of stereo buses.

If you only want drums on channel 1, then pan the drums channel hard left. If you only want vocals on channel 2, then pan the vocals channel hard right.

Probably best not to do it that way though. Drums are usually stereo so you will need a stereo bus for these.

Normal setup would be a bunch of mono drum channels panned into a single stereo bus. You then assign bus 1 to Left and bus 2 to Right of the main LR output master bus.

Mark
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