Saving Quick Controls

I just purchased Steinberg CMC QC controller and I am very happy, but what I find very frustrating is that it seems that there is no way to save quick controls besides saving a “track preset” ?

The problem with saving track presets is that if I open a track preset, it will also remove all the other plugins I have in the channel except the one that I have saved into the track preset. So is there a way to save and load quick controls ONLY, or do I really have to map the quick controls always manually again and again if I want to control my plugins with QC when I am mixing??

My track preset is saved with all assigned Quick Controls in the Cubase 7.0.3 on Mac.

It’s logical. Once you chamge track preset, it remove all Inserts, same as all QC settings (because there is nothing to control). I’m afraid it’s nonsence to save QC only. QC is assigned to any effect always.

Martin, I can save 10 quick controls per track. It means that I can pretty much assign one plugin to my QC controller per track. Let’s say I’m in the middle of mixing and I decide to open Plugin X for EQing my track, I open the plugin and now I want to control the plugin with my QC. I have to load a track preset in order to load my quick controls for that particular plugin. Now if I have any plugins in the insert before this plugin I have created the track preset for, they are all gone!

If I could save and load presets for quick controls ONLY, I could have presets for all of my plugins, and just load the quick controls for that particular plugin that I want to control in that moment with my QC keeping everything else intact.

The way Cubase currently is, I have to assign everything manually every time I want to control different plugin with QC in that particular track. Does it makes sense now?

OK, now, I think I know, what you mean. This is different way of controling.

Novation Automap works this way. It means, you can map one controller for more plug-ins. If the plug-in A is active, you control the parametr A of plug-in A. If the plug-in B is active, you control parametr A (or B, or C) of plug-in B. This is dynamic assign of HW controllers to the plug-in.

Studio One can do this too.

But Quick Controls work different way. These are not dynamicly assigned. In fact, this is the opposite. You decide, which parameters areimportant for you. You will assign this important parameter to on eof Quick Controls. The goal is, you can assign different parameters from different plug-ins. So you can control all (OK, not all, just 8) parameters from one place, one platte, from one device (CMC QC). Automap is focused on one (active) plug-in only. By Quick Controls, you can control more plug-ins simultaneously. This is the goal.

The QC controller would be great if only it would be possible to create presets for quick controls in Cubase, because then you could assign a controller to any track in a way you want in a second from the presets you could pre-make. Even if only controlling one plugin per preset or basic values to control Volume and Pan etc without erasing the track insert when loading a track preset.

The way it currently is supported in Cubase makes this piece of hardware pretty useless to anything else except occasionally controlling the Cubase basic EQ in a clumsy way, or maybe Volume or Pan - unless you are willing to stop your workflow and start to manually defining the controls one by one every time you want to control a different plugin or parameter. It feels like a quite unintuitive way of working really.

Pretty shame really the hardware is beautifully built and could be great, but I think I might return mine back to the store now.

After researching and testing with the controller all day I thought to update my thoughts in here.

I am still not happy about the fact that you cannot save quick control presets and I hope that it is something that could be implemented into Cubase somehow (and the amount of quick controls increased), but here are few tips that I think will give satisfactory results in case you want to control plugins and Cubase with a controller like CMC-QC or CC121:

  • You might want to create a track preset with basic volume and panning pre-assigned into quick controls. If you have CMC-AI, you can open a new audio track with a track preset by pressing the AI button in the jog mode.

  • In Cubase 7 it is good to set the mixer so that the quick controls tab (labeled QUICK) can be seen at all times - that makes setting quick controls much quicker when you do it in the mixer, and you can see an overview of all of your quick controls at all times.

  • If you shift+click a quick control cell it gives you access to all of your track inserts. This means that you can practically access any plugin from any channel at any times by using quick controls.

As an example, what you could do is that if you have an audio track with 4 plugins you want to control, you can create 4 midi (or audio) channels beneath the audio track. Name each channel with the plugin you are about to control. Then you can define quick controls to control a plugin per track. That gives you 8 channels to use with each plugin, and practically 40 channels for one audio track. You can then switch between controlling different plugins with your controller by jumping between the midi tracks.

If you have the time and patience to set it all up it will be very pleasant to work with the controller. But without the presets it is quite an effort to make.

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You guys are my heroes!! You finally did it. I can save Quick Control presets now in Cubase 7.5 and finally my CMC-QC can become useful as I can create presets for my plugins!

Thank you so much Steinberg :slight_smile:

I just got a QC controller also, do you find it frustrating that the Learn button doesnt really seem to work for anything but steinberg plugins / mixer etc?

i would have expected the Learn function on the QC to work for the current highlighted plugin, regardless of the brand? i cant get it to work either…

It depends on the plug-in. VST3 plug-ins should support this technology. But some vndors just ignore it.

here’s the issue with QC presets though: if assigned to a parameter of an inserted VST, the presets are tied to the exact position within the insert slots. say you save a QC preset that controls a ‘frequency’ knob of a VST EQ; you save it while the EQ is in insert #1. if you then insert the VST in inserts #2 - #8 and load up your saved preset, the QC are not getting assigned. i’d go as far as calling this a useless feature, in its current implementation anyway.

correct me if i’ve overlooked something.

It`s not completely like this. To be precise, presets are not associated with every single plug-in. With preset you will store 8 knobs assigned to the whole Insert effect section. You can assign QC 1 from Insert 1, QC 2 from Insert 2, etc., or any way, you want to.

yeah, what i mean is, you can’t for instance add your favourite EQ plugin to a channel, pull up a QC preset and start controlling right away. it will not work unless that plugin is inserted in the same insert slot as it was when saving the QC preset.

eg. a EQ parameter you have learned using QC’s and saved a QC preset while the EQ VST was inserted in slot #2; you later insert the EQ into insert #3 and load up your saved preset – nothing happens.

you would literally have to try moving your plugin to each of the 8 insert positions & load the QC preset each time to find out which position is the correct one – that’s granted there are no other obstructing VSTs in the remaining insert slots.

btw. the QC can be linked to any parameters within cubase, not just the controls on the channel they belong to. you can for instance have a QC on an audio channel that will be linked to the cubase control room volume…

Agree, this is how it works, because you are saveing set of Quick Controls with the preset. Exactly same as Generic Remote controllers, which are associated with the exact slot.

Yes, you can control any parameter via QCs.

Here’s the workaround for the Quick Control preset / insert slot number issue:

I discovered today that the quick control assignments stay with a plugin as it is moved to a different insert slot.

So:

  1. Load your plugin in the first insert slot
  2. Assign your quick controls
  3. Save this set of quick controls as a quick control preset (you click the little icon next to where it says “Quick Controls” in the inspector.)
  4. Repeat steps 1-3 with all the other plugins you want to control with Quick Controls on a regular basis…
  5. Now, while working in Cubase on a given track, always try to keep insert slot #1 free.
  6. Now anytime you want to load a plugin and assign quick controls to it, first load it into insert slot #1, then call up the appropriate Quick Controls preset, and THEN simply move the plugin to its appropriate insert slot.

Note: Whenever you make a change to your Quick Control assignments on a given track (for instance, to control a different plugin on the same track)… in order to go back and control the first plugin again, you must first move it back to insert slot #1 and call up the Quick Control preset from there, and then move it back to its desired insert slot.

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