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Sends Versus Inserts  [ Edit ] 

While reviewing a couple Logic books, I finally learned once and for now what Send and Insert mean when you’re talking about effects.

For each audio track in your song, you can turn on effects that will process it and change the sound. This could be a compressor, gate, limiter, reverb, or whatever. You can do this in two ways:

1. You want to have this effect change only one track in a very specific way. Usually when you compress your vocals, for example, you have different settings than you would for your snare drum track. If you do this, you will Insert the effect into that track. It will affect only the track that you insert it into. Each track that you compress will have its own instance of the compression plugin, with its own settings.
2. You want to apply the same effect, with the same settings, to more than one track. In this case, you set up a place, called a bus, where you Send the audio track to get processed. In Logic, the application of the effect happens in addition to (or rather, in parallel with) the unprocessed audio. So you’ll end up with your vocal track playing back without reverb, and with reverb, simultaneously. You can then adjust how much of each you want using Logic’s mixer.

The rule of thumb that is always used is: if you are applying one effect with one setting to lots of tracks, use Send. If you need specific settings for specific tracks, use Insert.

More on this can be found in this Logic FAQ.