Reverb send or insert

Reverb on a send tends to be better for “natural” reverb sounds that give a subtle sense of dimension or glue a mix together. Insert reverb tends to work well for more extreme reverb effects and sound design. I've seen sessions where the same subtle reverb is copied as an insert on half the tracks in the song.

1. What is the difference between an insert and a send?
2. What is the difference between an insert effect and a send effect?
3. What is a reverb send?
4. What is an advantage of using an auxiliary send return effect routing instead of a channel insert?

What is the difference between an insert and a send?

An insert is like putting a plug-in directly on the track. With a send, you take the track, and you route a sort of copy of the track to an auxiliary channel, and put your effects there, on that channel.

What is the difference between an insert effect and a send effect?

In a send effect, the processed signal (like reverb) is mixed or blended with the original dry signal. With an insert effect, the effect (like EQ or compression) actually changes the sound of the track's signal passing through it.

What is a reverb send?

Reverb aux send: post-fader vs.

Pre-fader means that the signal that you send from a channel to the reverb aux track will be sent from a point before the channel's fader. As such, any changes to the position of that channel's fader will not affect the level of the signal that is sent to the reverb aux track.

What is an advantage of using an auxiliary send return effect routing instead of a channel insert?

The signal that gets sent to an aux track is a duplicate of the original. The benefit of using an aux track is that you can apply processing to a duplicate signal without affecting the original track's signal. This gives you control over the mix between the dry (original track) and wet (aux track) signals.