For the longest time I thought I was using master faders properly in Pro Tools. I would have all of my tracks going and then of course run them through a stereo master fader set to my main outputs of the audio interface. Simple! What I started to realize was that when I would do a fade out on the master, my mixes would start to fall apart and something sounded weird. Why was that?
It turns out, master faders in Pro Tools don’t actually operate the way I believed they did. Once I learned how to do things differently, my mixes benefited. Check out the video to see what I’m talking about…
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My name is Graham Cochrane and I'm the founder of The Recording Revolution, one of the world's most loved audio recording and mixing blogs with over 200,000 readers each month. 
I’ve been doing the submix technique (hat tip to Jon Merchant) for the last few years but this is the first time I’ve seen the 2nd master fader track in use. Great tip! Gonna start implementing that tonight!
Definitely helpful tip. Glad you can use it!
I’ve been using the SubMix tip a lot more since i’ve been watching your videos, but i was using the aux bus the same way the second master fader is used here in the vid. will try it for sure, even more that i’ve been having some issues with signal levels on a session i’m working on recently.
I’m trying to understand the need for the submix/master channels. Isn’t it enough just to check the peak level meter on all the channels? (Where you can switch between volume, peak and delay measurements)
Great post. I`ve neem doing this the wrong way for ever and only after seing this post, I`ve started doing it differently. It sure explains why some of my fade outs never sounded how I wanted.
You rock, Graham.
Hi there
I know this video was posted some time back, but I’m gonna ask this question anyway. I’m new to Pro Tools and mixing in general, so my question might sound daft in your ears, but anyway here goes:
I think I got most of what this video is all about: Being able to control the overall volume of the mix that goes to “bounce” or analog speakers or what ever; being able to discover and prevent clipping on the way to the sub mix; and being able to apply effect plug-ins to a fade that every other track goes through without changing the volume input that goes into the effect plug-ins applied to that channel.
Because of this last mentioned issue you cannot apply effects, such as a compressor, to a master fader (since it’s pre-fader) – I get this – and therefore you route everything to an aux fader and apply your effects to that instead. But since you do this, how come you still need the master fader. If the only purpose of the master fader is to control the overall volume that goes to e.g. “analog 1-2”, then why not just use the aux fader you already created (and that is already outputting to “analog 1-2”) – the sub mix that is – for this purpose, and then just skip the master fader. In other words: What does the master fader do, that you can’t already use the sub mix aux fader to do?
You use the other master fader – the sub master – only to check for clipping, as I understand it, which it’s able to do because it “checks” the sound before it passes through the effects applied to the sub mix. Would it be possible to achieve this on the sub mix by temporarily choosing options and check “pre fader metering”, and thereby avoid the extra master fader? In other words: Does the pre fader mode mean, that a channels metering displays the sound that inputs into the channel prior to passing through the effects applied to that channel (or does the “pre fader metering”-mode only control whether a channels metering is effected by the channels fader or not)?
Sorry for the extremely long post…
Thanks in advance 🙂
Martin, great questions. You clearly followed the video! In one sense, according to that logic you don’t NEED to have a master fader. I have one out of habit because I like seeing a final fader where everything dumps. Some would also argue to put any and all dither effects on the master fader and not on that Submix aux. But that all gets confusing.
Regarding the SubMaster fader checking for clipping before it hits the Submix, i’m not 100% sure, but I would guess that it checks clipping on the bus on the WAY to the submix which might be different than pre fader metering. But it’s possible that it sees the same thing.
In the end…I think you get the point of the video. Make sure no clipping is happening and then don’t worry too much else about master faders 🙂
Hi Graham,
Question on the master fader setup in protools. You mention setting all the outs on each track to submix, to be sent to the submix aux track so everything can go through this submix before hitting master fader.
On my vocal track out, I am using a bus on that already so I can do a parallel compression for my vocals, so how can I send my vocal tracks to this submix aux track when the out is being used already for a parallel compression?
Thanks Much
Hi Steve, you just need to make sure that all tracks and all AUX tracks eventually have their outputs hitting SUBMIX.
Hey Graham,
So what plugins do you use on the master fader, or submix, during mixdown? Or do you wait for mastering to add overall limiting, reverb, etc, to the entire mix? Thanks.
-Angelo
These days I’m using VCC and VTM from Slate Digital, along with the SSL Bus Comp, and sometimes Ozone for EQ and tweaks.
Thanks for the quick reply! I’m still slightly confused, though. Do you only use these plugins for mastering session or do you put any of these plugins on the master fader during your mixing session (like before you bounce it to be mastered)? And do you typically put any plugins on the master fader during mixdown? Sorry if this seems like common sense, I’m somewhat new to mixing and mastering. Thanks.
No problem. These are plugins I use for my master fader while mixing. They aren’t doing a whole lot, just warming up the sound a bit.
Hey, I don’t consider myself so advanced and I actually just switched to Pro Tools (love it, never going back to Sonar), but I think I’ve come up with an even better method than you use. Please tell me what you think of it. I don’t use a Master Fader. I have everything ending up at a “Pre-Master” AUX track, which finally outputs all sound through my audio interface. Here’s the nice part: I don’t use any plugins on this Pre-Master. Instead I send it to another AUX track (I call it “Final FX”), where I add any final plugins. Two cool things about this method: 1) I can just check the “Pre-Master” meters to see if anything is clipping before the final plugins. I believe this was the use for your second Master fader. 2) Although there is no built-in way to bypass all plugins on a track with one click, with this method I can effectively bypass all of my “final plugins” just by muting that SEND to my “Final FX” track.
So what do you think? Are there any disadvantages? What about the Master fader? Like I said I’m not using it at all. Can I get anything out of it?
Hmmm… if I understand what you’re doing correctly, then in this example your first stereo AUX is outputting to the speakers AND sending to the FINAL FX Aux. Which means you are mixing in your effects in parallel and not really on the whole mix.
Yeah, the effects are in parallel but they’re affecting the whole mix before it outputs to the speakers. That’s ok, right?
Well, there are no rules in audio really. But In my mind it isn’t ideal. I want my mix running through the mix buss processing or not. No in between.
Hey, Graham. So after routing everything into the sub-master mix and you discover things are peaking what is the best way to proceed after that? Do you simply turn down the whole sub-master fader before sending it on or should you refer back to the mix and turn down all the possible tracks that could be causing the peaking in the master?
I made many good sounding recordings before I learned about proper gain staging and find many of these older sessions to be too hot. Thanks!
Generally I try to gain stage enough that there is plenty of room and this scenario doesn’t happen. BUT, if you are pushing things too hot you can simply grab the sub-master fader and pull it down. This turns down the audio going to your MIX BUSS.
Hey Graham, just suscribed to your youtube channel.
in regard to the final master fader, does it fill other purpose than to avoid an incorrect amount of gain into the plug ins from an EVENTUAL fade out of the track?
my question is really , this technique , does it have another function?
thanks so much, cheers from Chile
– Diego.
No real function – however I’ll bring in reference tracks and route them just to the Master Fader to avoid the plugins on my mix buss so that’s helpful to see that output level.
Hi Graham
I’ve been using Pro Tools for nearly three years and a lot of your videos have helped me learn some things along the way, so thank you for that.
My question is about whether it could work making two sub-mixes to help spread out all the final plugins and avoid the need for a lot of delay compensation. I typically use 6 or 7 plugins (EQ, multiband compression, master compression, stereo widening, limiting etc) to finalize a mix, which creates about 12,000 samples of delay. Could everything be routed to Submix1 for the first of the inserts, then Submix1 be routed to Submix2 for a couple more inserts, before going to the Master?
Shouldn’t affect delay compensation I don’t think, since the entire mix has to be compensated for any plugin any where.
Hey Graham, as usual thanks for the interesting posts. Im in the middle of a Mix and after watching this video I tried this method and lo and behold I was clipping. the thing is I already have a fairly balanced mix and I do not want to ruin the volume relationship between the tracks. is it ok to just lower the sub master down so that it does not clip on the way to submix?
Exactly!
This was new to me, interesting…
Hi Graham,
This is an old tip, but I just saw the video.
Cool! I’d never thought of this. I noticed it seemed like every one of your tracks was going to the submix – but you’d only select the aux track where there were multiple audio tracks grouped to them right? … Maybe you had just hidden those so it looked neater though.
I was going to ask if you would turn down the first master fader when running too hot, because I could’ve sworn I read somewhere that turning down a master fader won’t necessarily prevent distortion… But it’s already answered in the comments.
Would you ever, from the submix, add another aux on the way to your final master as a send for a reverb? I’ve heard don’t put reverb on your master, and also heard that it’s a good way to glue a mix together… And you can’t put a send on a master fader… a mix knob on a reverb seems possible, but difficult to compare… So the jury is out on that for me.
I’m working on an album of my own music, and was thinking that to do fades (I’m kind of just mastering within the session to have better control over the stems, so I can change things etc) I’d run my finished bounced tracks through a new session after the effects chain and do the fades etc at that stage. So, I could also look at the album as a whole project – fades and gaps between tracks and song order. You could get the same effect doing that right? As, if the limiting was applied correctly, nothing would be over zero anyway (or -0.5) right?
Sorry it’s a really long comment and part of it isn’t directly related to this interesting technique. I would be really interested to hear your thoughts on the reverb thing as well as the other stuff.
Thanks for your blog, along with Pensado’s Place and other resources, I am always learning new tricks 🙂
Cam
Yeah, I turn down the submix fader if it gets too hot because that actually controls the signal going along the buss to the MIX BUSS aux track.
No harm in putting reverb on the master fader. I’ve done it before 🙂
Great Video, Been a huge fan of Graham for a long time now.
Hi Graham
I’ve been using your clever tip for years now. However on pro tools 12 I encountered an issue bouncing the whol session. It only seems to want to bounce the tracks that are directly routed to the main outputs. All tracks sent to submix then the master fader don’t bounce down. I subsequently changed all the tracks to direct main output and bounced and all tracks were captured in the bounced files. So seems something related to bussing to a submix, the new input monitoring function or similar. Have you had any similar issues? Regards, Justin