Tips Tricks And Workflow Goodness

Record VSTi instrument tracks without using groups or bounce or export …

F4 → Output tab → hit + sign and create a Stereo Output called whatever “VSTi Out”. Do not assign this output to any of your audio card outputs.

On your Instrument track, set the output to the “VSTi Output” from the previous step.

Create a Stereo Audio Track in the project, set the INPUT to “VSTi Output”

Enable monitor and/or Record enable.

This is a really old one.

  1. A quick way to hear an edit without actually committing to the edit.

If you just want to cut a section of a song, but want to hear the result first.
Simply engage cycle, then set your left locator to the end of the section to be cut.
Then set your right locator to the beginning of the section to be cut.
Yea, backwards.
Now playback from a point before the right locator.
The song will skip over the section enclosed in the markers.



2. Use the FXchain Presets to load whole channels at once.
(Not really a hidden/secret feature at all) I know it sounds obvious
but I haven’t had to go looking for a plugin in quite some time.
I have created basic start up channels for everything…
For example: Vocal Channel - (De-esser, LA-2A, EQ)
Even FX Channels…I have 4th,8th,16th note echos in a flash.
The way over used but highly popular phone voice filter effect.
One click loads the UAD Moog Filter, LA-2A, Cambridge EQ and Precision Limiter.

Take the time to set these up and it will save you more time then you could possibly imagine.
You can designate a key command to open the fxchain preset browser as well.

Thanks a ton for this one…I do this often and the pan controls are a pain to deal with.

+1
{‘-’}


if you try it with the other alt key it’s all over the show lol , but your welcome :wink:

i always keep this record track up and in a split arrange mode. that way it’s always visible and always ready to quickly capture whatever needs to be realtime-bounced-in-place. also good for recording realtime noodling on synths then choosing the good bits and so on.

Hmm… Someone just asked me for a Mac version of a script I worked on in this thread

So, I figured this was a good bump place for that thread.

This is a Windows script that will lay out your used keycommands in a useful way and output them in an html page.

Very nice tread!

Here is what helps my work flow and maybe will yours as well:

  1. If working with plug ins mainly, I like to insert them on the input channel while tracking, this way the effect is being printed while recording and it will force me to COMMIT. There is beauty in it and when people reminisce about the “good old days” and how tape made everything sound magical, it is often an over looked factor. Committing and making final decisions right from the start, forces you to up your game. When the pressure is on, the performance tends to be better. If you know you can go back a million times and edit to death, that will not help the performance imho.

  2. I try to leave as little as possible to the mix down stage to give the sound “muscle’” or to make it fit in right. By the time the song is arranged and tracked/edited. The very thought of having it to mix can be nauseating.

  3. I try to avoid presets as much as possible. Generally I find them to be a huge waste of time.

  4. I like to print reverbs to audio and mess with them for creative results. Mix and match, loop, reverse or having them in places where they did not originate can give a lot of character and create cool defects.

  5. When writing, I like to put all my tracks into a folder track, so let’s say I have 3 versions for the chorus, I can quickly move them around, AB, recycle parts, etc, by dragging just those few bars in place to hear it in the context. The arranger track can be used for that too, but I find it faster this way.

  6. When editing vocals or instruments I like my final takes comped on a new track ( Id like to see something like beam part to master take in Cubase eventually. I think Pro Tools has it. Here is a simple macro that helps:

Edit - Copy
Edit -Paste at origin

Your selected take in the chosen lane will be copied to a new track as long it is highlighted in its place.

I apologize if any of this or all of it is too obvious.

Best,
F-

this one isn’t too known i guess: to replace all instances of an audio event in a project (akin to exchanging a sample in a sampler), put your replacement sample in the pool, the drag it from the pool whist holding shift, and drop it onto the event to be replaced.

1 Like

M/S-recording + edits:

If recording i.e. a vocalist with M/S technique (to get that little air around) which I often do, record it to a stereo track (M = left/S = right) instead of two individual tracks. Mix6To2 or Voxengo MSED get you decoded in a second.

That way you can apply i.e. VariAudio + Warp to both channels while avoiding phase issues.

Works exactly the same if you track a DI guitar + an amp, up to 6 channels, see Rhino’s tip on multitrack wave editing somewhere above in this thread.

Does ReadyBoost improve Cubase 7 VST performance?
My Win7 32b mobo is maxed out with 4GB of RAM.
Will adding a 32 or 64GB USB ReacyBoost do anything to help with VST performace?
Thanks for the help.

Thanks for the great thread!

well not workflow but a useful KC (for me at least :slight_smile: )
open all insert GUI on channel… shift+alt+left click on E button of a channel. to close all of them shift+left click on E again

Great stuff here guys…

For me, I have almost all my key commands set to my left hand so my right leaves the mouse as little as possible.

A=Add audio track
F=Snap on/off
Alt+S=Detect Silence
Ctrl+B=Bounce Audio
Ctrl+X=Export Audio
Shift+S=Silence
Ctrl+Alt+D=Detele Overlap

Just a few i customized that I use VERY often.

1 Like


Wonderful idea. Keeping this hard wired live REC buss so to speak.

There’s a cool thing I discovered. there are some tool modifiers that are not assigned to any Key and one of them is really useful (for me). In preference, under tool modifiers, range tool, you’ll find “Select Full Vertical” … what that does is that if you resise multiple midi notes or audio events with that comand, (let say you’re resising the end of multiple files) it won’t keep their end positions but all the event ends will align. So let say you recorded a vocal part multiple times and they are all stack but some are longer, select them all, resise the begining and the end with that command and they’ll all be the same lenght. Same for midi :smiley:

1 Like

Wow, how long has this one been hidden from the general public?
Haven’t been able to do this since Nu2 and I’ve missed it badly.
Has this been there all along?
Let’s hear it for Steinberg’s documentation!

Thank you so much for this one!
I have brought this up before but no one ever had an answer.
I thought they did away with it.