Want to hear only the bus

Getting Stuff Done How do I .... ?
#1

I have a vocal track. I want to create a compressor bus, pipe the vocals into it, and hear ONLY the compressor bus. Whether I use the vocal track as an input to the compressor bus or create an aux send from the vocal track to the compressor bus, soloing the compressor bus does not give me ONLY the compressor bus, but the compressor bus + the vocal track.

What do I need to to to hear only the compressor bus, without the raw vocals from the vocal track?

My goal is not a track with only compressed vocals, but to be able to hear the effect of the compression while I’m adjusting the compression settings before mixing it back in with the raw vocal track.

#2

Figured it out. Connect the compressor bus to the monitor and mute the master bus.

#3

a better way would be to just mute the vocal track post-fader only. (right click on the mute button). the vocal track is still audible when the compression bus is soloed because the vocal track feeds the compression bus. if it was completely muted while soloing the compression bus, you wouldn’t get any signal delivered to the compression bus.

#4

Or switch to AFL and AFL the bus rather than destructively solo it.

#5

Thanks for the tips!