Does anyone find a benefit to using fx track instead of group track??

Alright…I actually figured it out (with a lot of help). I just couldn’t figure out the algorithm at first.

I made a fx track for Roomworks Reverb.
I set the wet/dry to 100% wet. 0 Gain.
When I sent the individual tracks to the fx track, the volume of those tracks increased.

My personal preference for a nice concert hall sound is about 25% wet with a good hall reverb. Easy enough to do when you’re only using the insert for each track and not using a group fx track.

So basically when sending each instrument to the fx track, I adjusted the send of each track to -6db. Minor adjustments for certain tracks. Closer instruments would be little dryer, further away instruments a little wetter.
Apparently the formula to do this is - 3db for 50% wet and -6db for 25% wet and -12db for 12.5% wet. Adjusting the send to this formula will keep the volume the same.

Is there anything else I’m missing because this seems to work.

if the FX channel is sort of a 1-track to 1-fx channel kind of thing, for instance a reverb dedicated for a vocal… Most people would just adjust the level of the FX channel fader rather than the send level.

in the case of sending multiple tracks, I would put the track with most gain at send-level 0db and the other ones relative to that.

Adjusting the level of the mix console fader doesn’t work…at least not for me.
If I took the fx group fader down to 00, it would give me the original volume, but I also lost 100% of the wet as well.
By instead…adjusting the ‘send’ to -6db, it worked out to leaving me with 25% wet…with original volume.

It’s not that simple…changing the send level also adjusts how much wet you are sending. The amount of wet you send is dependant on the instrument and placement…so there is no hard and fast rule for that.

I’m not sure you’re thinking about this correctly.


reducing the send to and FX, is not reducing the “wetness”. The FX wetness is unchanged, the level going into the wetness has changed.

If a wet mix on the FX is %100. and you reduce the send by 6db, the effect is still %100 wet just the signal going into is less, and thus the FX unit will react differently likely dependent on the level going into it.


people use both the fader of the original track, and the fader of the FX track to make their wet/dry balance. Yes, if you take the FX fader down, you will only here the dry…

If you don’t want any dry, then put the send in prefader, and take the dry fader all the way down to -inf/off. The send will still be going to the fx.

We might be just mixing words here. I understand that the signal is 100% wet…just that by reducing the ‘send’ by -6db, I’ve now reduced the amount of the signal by 75%…leaving me 25%. Yes, the ‘wet’ effect is still 100% wet. Does that makes sense?

This confused me. The mix console fader for the cello or any instrument reduces overall volume. It doesn’t change the wet/dry of the track. If you reduce the mix console fader to 00db…the track goes silent.
The mix console fader for the fx track reduced to 00db leaves all the dry…removes all the wet…

I think perhaps the notion of group tracks being the same as FX tracks is part of the conceptional problem. First they are not tracks they are buses. Both are based on the hardware model of buses and sends and returns. If you understand how hardware works you will know how software emulations work as well. Clearly with software in the case of Cubase a lot of control is built in to the way the console is designed giving a lot of different ways of doing things. Plus with FX added to an FX bus one has its controls to tweak.

There are reasons to use an FX bus or instead use FX inserted within a track’s FX bin. It depends on what you want to do and how best to do it. Knowing when to use FX in an insert slot or when to use an FX bus or when it would be best to use a group bus and use FX on it will help greatly getting the best out of Cubase and the songs you create.

I use them differently, and I guess it depends on the genre of music that you are working with. I do a lot of rock stuff, so I usually use the same reverb and delays for different instruments to create a space. I also do a lot of top down mixing so I eq and compress the group first before moving onto individual tracks. There are times that I use effects on a group channel or individual track, but it is only when I need something special for it. It really depends on what you are trying to do, and both have their benefits. When I think about it, I break it down like this: Do I need effects in serial or parallel? That is usually what determines whether or not I use an effects track or put effects on a group channel.

“Does anyone find a benefit to using fx track instead of group track??”

Apart from the pop-up menu that prompts you to Insert the chosen plug-in on the group track, and getting a different color…

No. It’s the same thing.

As written before, no, it´s not feature-wise - depending on the used Cubase version.
But yes, you can use them in the same way.

Oh sorry, didn’t see that, neither did I know that they were different in Elements and Artist.