individual plugins vs bus plugins

[finotti]

Here is a question from a newbie: suppose I will apply the same plugins to a few different tracks, say 4 tom tracks. Is it better to add them individually to each tom track, or put all toms in a bus and apply the plugins there? I don't know much about this, but I was wondering if with multiple tracks at once might be too much the plugin(s) to handle.

Any suggestions?

[Norlick]

Depends on what processing you wish to do.

If the sounds require the same type of processing, try doing it on a bus. Some processing, like compression, will have a different effect on a bus than it would on individual tracks.
It's very common to compress a bus of sounds that have their own individual processing applied to "glue" the sound together.

Best way to know if it's better is to try it out, and see what results you get. Just try not to over-process the bus and you're generally good to go.

[jonetsu]

Same echo as Norlick here. In general, toms would belong together and there would not be a need to make one stand out more than the others in the way you describe the context. They work as a group, unless there's some special effect/attention on 1 or 2 toms as some emphasis or punch. Working as a group the benefit of having a bus for processing would be: to 'glue' them together, to be able to EQ the processing if you keep the orginal signals to blend in, and to save CPU processing.

[sadko4u]

It depends on what you want to do.
Individual track processing allows to control the frequency characteristics and dynamics for each individual instrument.
Processing group of tracks with a bus is called 'group processing' and this allows to 'glue' set of tracks together. That allows to control the frequency characteristics of all instruments in group simultaneously but dynamics will be processed as they were one instrument so that makes them sound much similar.

[finotti]

Thanks for the informative replies!

I've just finished recording and will start mixing soon. I will make some experiments and appreciate the help!