Does soloing of Aux channels work?

in newer versions than 4.xxx

Hello!

I wonder why soloing aux channels doesn’t solo them in N-track like I’m used to in real live mixers? I think I use 4.15 or 4.2ish version.

You see I expect soloing an aux channel to give me what goes on in aux channel and nothing else - to hear only those signals that I’ve sent there and the effects that I’ve placed in that particular aux channel.

Or do I just do something wrong?

You actually said what’s going on, but it’s not REALLY what you want.

"You see I expect soloing an aux channel to give me what goes on in aux channel and nothing else"

Unfortunately, this is indeed what’s happening. Solo the AUX and everything else is muted, and that includes all output of the tracks sending to to the AUX. Of course that’s not what hardly anyone wants.

A problem stems from where the muting takes place. If playback is stopped in the muted tracks then there’s no data to send. There’s an option to read data from files even when muted. I don’t know if that will help but it might. (don’t think so)

Another problem is that muting may simply set the volume of the muted tracks to zero. If the AUX send for the track is post fader, as is usually the case, then they will stop sending to the AUX. Pre-fader sends might keep sending. (again, I don’t think so).

A workaround that might work is to send the tracks you want to mute to a single submix (or submixes). Mute the submix - set its volume to zero or whatever - and the tracks will continue sending to the AUX.

This is a typical type of issue with software DAWs. Not necessarily THIS problem (I consider this one a bug), but the fact that the mixers in software rarely mimic hardware mixers the way most of us expect in at least a few ways that ends up affecting the way we do things.

One solution might be to use the Group channels instead of the Aux. I find it easier to use, In my view does the same thing as an Aux, and it can be muted.

Well, actually soloing aux channel doesn’t seem to make anything happen. It looks to me like a meaningless button.

Grouping channels seems to work logically, but I think it doesn’t do what “a proper” aux channel would do for me. With aux you’d typically add something like reverb and mix that with dry signal on particular channels. With grouping you send multiple channels into one channel to control them all with one fader (etc). If you add reverb there and solo the group you’ll hear the dry signals combined with wet signal - not just the wet signal.

Soloing aux channel would be for monitoring purposes, to check out what on earth is happening there.

If it’s not a possibility in DAW-world (which I strongly doubt) I stay corrected. If it’s possible but it’s not included in N-track this may well be considered as a feature request. :)