Understanding the differences between Insert Effect Chains and Return Tracks

How we manage our effects in Live will not only impact our speed and how efficient our workflow is but also the CPU usage of our computer.

Effects can be used on a track in serial, meaning you put effects after each other, forming a single effect chain on the track.

This means the first effect’s output will feed into the effect after it, and so on.

However, what if you would like to apply, for example, reverb to a vocal track and a delay without the reverberated signal feeding into the delay device, so the two effects are used in parallel, not affecting each other?

Well, that’s when you could use return tracks and use the effects as “send effects.”

Let’s have a look at this.

In Figure 7.14, you can see that I inserted a Reverb and Delay device onto the vocal track called INSERT in the project.

This is the first scenario that I described previously. The...