routing three mono tracks: directly to masterchannel or always use buses first?

[Mixbususer33]

Hi, 
just thinking out loud :o) ... I will test this in the coming days but still would also like to hear from someone with more Mixbus experience who might have thought this over:


How would you route the following scenario:
3 raw mono audio tracks in Mixbus recorded: guitar, vocal, drums

Is the Mixbus concept for this minimalistic lineup still to route the three mono tracks to one or three buses to get the bus tape saturation before going to the masterchannel…. or would you just route the three mono tracks directly on the masterchannel and say that the masterchannels tapesaturation is sufficient to glue things together?

I understand that if I were to work with direct mics on drums and with background vocal tracks that I would always take the busses first … but my minimalistic setup doesn't neccessarily need to go through buses first.
My question is would I be missing out soundwise going directly to the masterchannel instead of going first through buses?

thanks in  advance and regards

[Yriisem]

the master channel also has a tape saturation setting.

[Mixbususer33]

the master channel also has a tape saturation setting.

Hi, yes, I'm aware of that and wrote so in my post. But my question was about sound-advantages of also first going through buses...

[Dingo]

Much depends on the nature of the materials. If I wanted to use more tap saturation and compression on the drums and none on the others I might send the drums to a Mixbus. If however I just wanted a mild amount of saturation on everything and just a balance between the three elements then I would just bus to the master outs.
I tend to use mixbusses all the time as I often have to output stems of the different instruments for sending to a final mix.

[Mixbususer33]

Much depends on the nature of the materials. If I wanted to use more tap saturation and compression on the drums and none on the others I might send the drums to a Mixbus. If however I just wanted a mild amount of saturation on everything and just a balance between the three elements then I would just bus to the master outs.
I tend to use mixbusses all the time as I often have to output stems of the different instruments for sending to a final mix.

Thanks Dingo for sharing your opinion and experience ... sounds good and will experiment more with that in mind :o)
regards