Sends are an interesting component of mixer topologies. They allow a combination of mixing and parallel processing. When several channels have non-zero gain applied to a send, they are mixed together, sent through whatever processing is assigned to the send, and then returned on a new channel. The processing on the send ‘hears’ a mix [...]

Without going too deep into mixer topologies, the channel fader sets the gain (you might also think of it as the level or volume, though it’s not quite the same thing) of the sound going into the mix bus (also called the 2-bus or the master channel). Placing effects before the fader (pre-fader) mean that [...]