Putting instruments inside mix channels

[braille]

There's a drop down arrow on the bottom left of mix/audio channels that says "insert fx." I decided to drop all instruments/effects associated with that channel in the insert fx drop down area. I noticed some instruments became really quiet; some instruments stayed the same.

Why does this happen? Anyone ever done this? The mix Channel, to me, is essentially a combinator. Is there a different place to drop them inside a mix channel to keep everything tidy? What do you guys/ladies do?

[selig]

There's a drop down arrow on the bottom left of mix/audio channels that says "insert fx." I decided to drop all instruments/effects associated with that channel in the insert fx drop down area. I noticed some instruments became really quiet; some instruments stayed the same.

Why does this happen? Anyone ever done this? The mix Channel, to me, is essentially a combinator. Is there a different place to drop them inside a mix channel to keep everything tidy? What do you guys/ladies do?

Depends on how you "drop" them. You can of course put ANYTHING into that location without attaching any cables to the jacks you find there. I often do that to keep things nice and organized. When you do this, there can be no change in level since you're not changing any wiring at all.

What is sounds like is happening in your case is that you're connecting the output of your instrument to the "From Device" jack. But for this to change the level would mean you've adjusted the channel's Input Gain way up at some point. This would happen in that case because you no longer route through the Input Gain section, which is a very basic "know your signal path" issue if so.

To prevent things like this from happening no matter what I do with routing concerning the signal path, is to keep the audio level consistent at every stage of the signal path. I have all my audio signals start out hitting peaks around -12 dBFS starting at the instrument itself. If I add an effect, I make sure the signal AFTER that effect is the same level, in every case (some times it's not possible, so I adjust gain in the next stage or use a Gain device to adjust). That way if I later remove an effect, the level doesn't change. Or if I change the overall routing as I suspect you have done, the level also won't change! This is just one of the reasons I work this way, there are more - and in each case the idea is to make my life simpler when working on music so I can concentrate more on the music.

If you're interested, check out my video demonstrating this technique here: