A listen bus gives you the power to do things in a DAW normally only possible on a mixing console. We tell you why a listen bus is useful and how to do it in Pro Tools.

Why A Listen Bus?

The listen bus enables you to control things like monitors and solo routing without having to rely on the master bus in your DAW. Some DAWs already offer this, including Studio One and Cubase, others like Pro Tools don’t.

A listen bus offers;

• Control over control room volume without either using or affecting the master bus.

• Route solos to the control room speaker without affecting other parts of the mix, such as monitors or master bus.

• Insert plugins into the monitor path, such as Sonarworks room correction or mono compatibility, without affecting audio in the bounce path.

How To Set Up A Listen Bus In Pro Tools

To set up a listen bus in Pro Tools, or in any DAW for that matter, you need at least two physical output paths on your audio interface. However in Pro Tools 2022.9 Avid introduced Aux I/O which offers the option to add more than one audio interface. In this tutorial we show you how to set up a listen path in Pro Tools using either one or two audio interfaces.

The I/O Settings

In the Pro Tools I/O Setup window create an additional set of outputs to be your Listen Bus.

In the example graphic below you can see an Audient EVO used as the main interface and a Kii Control as the Monitor interface. If you only have one interface and have more than two audio outputs then you can use them as the listen bus outputs.

In the bottom right hand corner you can set both the Monitor Path, top, and the AFL/PFL path, bottom.

The Routing

The routing is pretty straightforward, it requires the use of an Aux for mix, a master bus, and an Aux for the listen bus. In the diagram you can see how the routing is applied.

• Red Arrow - Route the entire mix to this as your Mix Bus. Then output this to the Master Bus. Set this to 0db, the fader controls the volume to both mix and listen bus. If you wish you can hide this channel.

• Yellow Arrow - This is the output from the sMix bus.

• Green Arrow - This is also the output from the sMix bus. This is routed to your monitor path. The channel outlined in red is your listen bus and controls your studio monitors.

With this routing the Master controls the volume of the mix, and accordingly, the bounce. The Listen now controls the volume of the monitors in the control room. Turning this up or down does not affect the volume of the mix, and vice- versa. You now have control of your monitors from within your DAW, which is separate from the mix.

AFL/PFL

The last thing to check is the AFL/PFL settings. In the Options menu select Solo Mode and make sure that SIP is not selected, instead chose AFL/PFL. Julian wrote an excellent article on Solo modes in Pro Tools; you can read the entire article here.

Here’s an extract;

Let’s avoid using words like “safe” as solo safe means something slightly different but if we talk about solo setups which affect the mix and those which don’t we’re on the right path. By default Pro Tools uses SIP or “Solo In Place”. This is ideal for one-person tracking situations and for mixing but this system is restrictive when the person doing the tracking isn’t the only person listening to the output of the Pro Tools system. To be able to solo without affecting everyone else’s playback you need to use AFL (After Fade Listen) or PFL (Pre Fade Listen) and to set up your IO to play all solos via a dedicated bus.

Once you have the Solo mode set then when you hit solo it will appear in the monitors but not in the mix or in the talent’s headphones. This means you can tweak in the control room without interrupting the talent.

The Magic

This might seem like faffing around, but the bonus of this set-up is you now have full control of your studio monitors from within Pro Tools. To reiterate;

• Add a mono plugin or a plugin to offer a dim on the channel.

• The mute switch on the Listen bus mutes the monitors but not the mix.

• You can also route the click track so that it does not sound in the monitor path.

• You can add EQ, Sonarworks or other correction in the monitor path which won’t affect the mix.

Summary

You may already have this routing on your mix and know the benefits of using it. Alternatively, you may have a hardware monitor controller. If not, then you might find this set-up useful.

At some point, Avid may add this feature, like other DAWs. It offers a useful console style workflow.