For making stereo mixes - some people send everything to a Mix Bus and then to Stereo Out. What is the advantage of doing this rather than just sending all the tracks/sub-mix busses straight to Stereo Out?
None.
A Mix Bus is just a stereo Bus (if configured as stereo) identical to Stereo Out.
Except if you want to achieve something in particular, like doubling the inserts or so.
But technically they both are plain stereo busses
If you didn’t have control room then using a separate mix bus could allow you to use Stereo out as a quasi control room putting your metering or room correction plugs there for example.
I think a lot of people do it so they can drop reference tracks alongside the mix and A/B without needing to bypass the FX on master.
Not relevant if you use something like Metric A/B plugin for refs as you put this after the master FX or in control room.
Good one! A turnaround to not get the audio interrupted when comparing the two!
I use a final mix bus so I can leave Stereo Out locked to unity gain and still adjust the overall level. I also put a brickwall limiter there. Functionally it doesn’t really matter, but it feels more tidy & under control.
Full disclosure, the bus structure in my Templates leans more towards over rather than under built.
Thanks for the replies guys. Food for thought…
I do like @Grim said. If you want to put some pre-master plugins across your mix (Like Oxide or SSL G Buss) but you still want to A/B a reference track then use a stereo buss. Send your mix to the stereo buss-> Master, but send the reference directly to the Master.