Correct bus routing advice

Hey, I've been producing for about four years now. I took a break for a couple of months and when I came back I created a nice Logic template with everything I need. I'm having some confusion I need alleviated.

My projects operate mainly out of summing stacks for Synth, Bass, Vocals, Vocal FX etc.

For my drums I am currently using Drum Machine Designer (DMD) which also operates like a summing stack with all contained tracks audios getting sent to the bus that is the DMD drum rack itself.

My question is about the correct way to route my audios in these summing stacks.

If on these tracks, I have certain sends to lets set reverb, delay and saturation buses, do I send these auxillary tracks to my summing stack too? Or to the overall output?

I find that if everything (that is the tracks, and all their respective fx sends) are going to their respective summing, with enough going on, that single summing stack bus gets overwhelmed and started clipping.

This forces me to lower the volume of my tracks, resulting it a very quiet bounce when it comes time to that.

What is the correct way to flow the audio signals so you the best volume and the tidiest result?

Apologies for the longwinded post!

There is no correct way really - just use whatever routings that best make sense for your needs.

If you're overwhelming busses etc, you're probably running your mix way too hot, in any case...

A summing stack has the same dynamic range as the rest of the software and it will clip at a little above 1500dBFs. I doubt that you hit that level. Only if you exceed 0dBFs on an actual output or an equivalent bounce will you get clipping.

So levels should not be a determining factor in your routing. If a bus goes over 0dBFs, it's not the routing, it's the level that's wrong.

If you work with stems/busses/stacks and fx auxes, you have two options. a) Route them to the stack. This will keep FX balances right if you change the stack's overall level. But you will need to have that same reverb Aux once per stem to keep them separate. b) Route them to the Stereo Out. This will not keep the FX balance, obviously, but will let you use a Sen destination for all channels.