Introduction
When sending multiple audio outputs from Playback, every possible instrument track is automatically grouped with other similar instruments into a bus output. With buses, Playback does the tedious routing work for you, so that you can start using MultiOuts right away and trust that your instruments will be grouped correctly.
Overview
Playback SmartRoutingⓇ will automatically pull from over 150 different individual instruments/tracks and conveniently route them down to 16 buses. However, tracks can be routed to different buses, and the buses can be routed to an available output for the audio device selected in Playback's "General" tab in the settings.
Current Buses and routings explained:
Current Buses and routings explained:
Click: The click track
Guide: The guide track
Drums: All drum set tracks
Percussion: All percussion tracks
Loops: Electronic percussion, some aux percussion parts
Bass: Acoustic and Synth Bass tracks
Piano: Every type of acoustic piano track
Keys: Synth and aux keys tracks
EG: Electric guitar parts
AG: Acoustic guitar parts
Strings: All orchestral and string tracks
Horns: All woodwind, brass, and horn tracks
Pad: The pad player (not re-routable)
Vocals: All background vocal tracks
FX: All FX tracks
Aux: Miscellaneous instruments
SMPTE: A bus dedicated to SMPTE output (📖Learn More)
Bus Routing
While using a MultiOut setup, you have independent routing control of each instrument bus by sending them out of any available audio output, mono or stereo.
There are two main ways to route your 16 busses to outputs available; From the “Busses” tab in the settings menu, and the from the “Busses” layer in the Playback interface.
Bus Routing from Settings > Buses
Routing Single Buses
Head to Settings → 'Buses' Tab, where buses are routed by default for the current output device. Simply tap on any bus row to re-route that bus to a different available output.
Note: If an output is greyed-out and cannot be selected when trying to route a bus, this is an indication that the particular output is already being used by the SMPTE bus. Disable SMPTE in the "General" tab of Playback's settings, or route the SMPTE bus to the output "None" to free up that particular output on your audio device.
Routing Multiple Busses at Once
Clicking "Assign Multiple Busses" in the bottom-right corner will allow you to select multiple busses and quickly assign them a single available output.
Note: Rename Buses
Buses can be renamed by tapping/clicking and dragging to the left to reveal the “Edit” button for a particular bus.
Quick Bus Routing (Setlist)
Buses can also be routed from the “busses” layer in the main Playback interface while in Setlist/Song Map Edit Mode. Simply head to the busses layer by selecting the “Busses” option toward the bottom right of the interface by the master fader, or cycle through the layers using the single layer setting button next to the master fader. Then select “Edit” toward the very top right of the app to head into edit mode.
While in Setlist/Song Map edit mode, simply tap the name of the bus to reveal the output selection menu, and select the output you’d like to route that bus to! (see image below)
Bus Mixing
The bus mixer view gives you the power to change the mix of your buses, affecting all relevant instrument tracks. Bus mixes are song-specific by default, which gives you the ability to adjust buses to different volumes per song. If you prefer your bus mixes to be global across every song, this can be adjusted by disabling song specific buses in the Settings.
You can also solo or mute buses, which will affect all relevant tracks. Listen to just the guitar parts for a song, or mute every keys track in a song. If a bus is muted, all tracks routed to that bus will appear muted as well.
MultiOutsⓇ can be unlocked with a Playback Pro subscription which allows you to utilize the full power of mixing and routing with Buses.