ALMOST There: Monitoring Question

I’ve programmed 4 Monitor selections on my Artist MC Control. A: 5.1 B: Stereo Mains C: Stereo Cubes D: Mono

In Eucon, A - C are simply select monitor commands. But D is from a Eucon Preset that down mixes the stereo sum into mono and there’s the rub!

If I select any of the 1st 3 buttons on the MC, Nuendo responds accordingly. But if I select D from the MC Nuendo does not respond, in that it doesn’t advance to the D button in the CR. IT JUST TURNS WHATEVER WAS LAST SELECTED INTO MONO. When this happens, the only way to undo it is to manually go into the Nuendo CR and cycle through the options to get the effected bus (usually C) to go back to stereo.

The current work-around is to use the cursor to select D: Mono. I can swap back and forth between A - C from the controller. Can anybody tell me a way I can select the Mono setting from the controller WITHOUT SCREWING UP the A - C options?

I won’t have time to test anything until tomorrow at the earliest, but the first thing that comes to mind is to have your MC Control trigger a macro instead, and maybe make the macro do all the appropriate selections.

I might be misunderstanding you though.

I tried several variations of that theme but the problem here is that my desk is acting as my audio interface. So, I’m just trying to figure out how to replace functions that I already have via the desk. The desk would allow me to switch between 2 pair of stereo speakers and it had the built in mono down-mix function. But now it’s across the room, because this 20 fader Artist Series Controller is now in it’s place. So, when I set up a function that works on the controller, that function is then thwarted by the desk at output.

Example: There is a whole procedure that you have to go through to set the DA-7 up for surround mixing. Once you have it set, you can store it as a preset, but it’s still rather involved switching between surround and stereo settings. Now, If the desk is in surround mode, the controller works great with the most options. “A” gives me my surround output and “B” gives me my stereo output which is the front L/R monitors of the surround array. However, my primary stereo monitors are a separate set, which have no relation to the surround setup. THEY REQUIRE THAT THE DESK BE IN STEREO MODE for them to work! This means that I have to get up, cross the room, re-set the desk to stereo mode and turn the surround array off. NONE OF THIS WAS AN ISSUE WHEN I WAS MIXING ON THE DESK.

I made a mono out bus in the Nuendo CR for the monitors and just used the select monitor 2 KC from Eucon. It sent everything to the left speaker (NOT what I wanted). So what I’ve had to do is make another stereo bus which is down-mixed to MONO through the MC, which sent a true mono mix to my center speaker (what I wanted). But, as I stated, once I use that setting on the controller all other monitors are locked in mono, until I go into Nuendo with the cursor and “unlock them.” This is not a big problem, as long as I remember to use the cursor only for mono. But it’s clearly not ideal.

What I need to figure out is a way to route all of these signals to the desk in surround mode, while isolating a section in stereo mode for the primary stereo monitors. At present, I don’t see how that’s going to be possible without going to some kind of external monitor controller, like the JBL Intonato. That would give me 24 I/O that would allow me to connect all of my speakers and run them independent of the desk. But that’s a $3K cost for, once again, something that I already have!

This would relegate my desk to a mere latency free input source. I’m just “re-inventing the wheel” here! If there was a desk that had all of these controller functions, I’d replace my desk in a heartbeat! But as the market chose to phase out small format desks, that left me with the ergonomic nightmare of trying to place these controller modules around the desk. That proved impossible. So, now that I’ve replaced the desk position with the controller, I have to find a solution to replace all of the functions I already have a mere 6 feet away, sigh! :cry:

So I guess you’re looking at two separate issues really, one regarding downmixing and the other accessing your two different sets of monitors with convenience.

For downmixing you have the key commands in Nuendo for different downmix presets, and you shouldn’t have to set up a separate channel for it. If I understand it correctly the downmix affects whatever monitors you have selected. So what I see in one of my setups as downmixes are:

LCR+LFE
Stereo
Mono

And then for monitor outputs:

Equator 5.1
Equator stereo
Grace 902 (stereo headphone amp)

Now, once I choose my monitors in the below section I choose the downmix preset. So if I’m working on a stereo show on my main speakers I’ll choose the LCR+LFE arrangement because that’s also the widest channel configuration I’ve set up in device setup.

If I want to change from a stereo output to a mono downmix I simply select that downmix preset. It will output mono over the selected monitor output. If it’s my LCR-LFE then it’ll go out the center speaker, but if it’s one of the two stereo output configurations it’ll simply make it mono in two channels.

So, the point is that I can have a key command for the different monitor outputs, and a key command for the different downmix presets. As far as I can remember Nuendo remembers what the last downmix preset was for any given output. You should be able to just choose whatever output you want separately from the downmix preset - different sets of key commands for each ‘function’.

Maybe your issue here is that you’ve already taken up some of the “available” assignments on the controller so you’re only left with one downmix preset triggering key command on it. In that case I guess you’re stuck.

When it comes to accessing your two sets of speakers without using the DA7 I agree that it’s a hardware issue. Since you’re going through the desk and it sends to the different speakers I don’t really see a solution other than choosing a wider monitor output path on it, meaning a 7.1 output, where the first 5.1 goes to the actual 5.1 setup, and the last two go to the stereo set, but all of them being just one “set”. Then you can do the switching in Nuendo over those total 8 channels (since Nuendo doesn’t ‘know’ or ‘care’ where the channels go physically). Or, alternatively if you don’t want to blow 3k on a controller, just get a different DA-converter with more analog outputs…

That downmix suggestion worked great (see PM)! I’ve got everything working like I want it to WITHOUT having to adjust anything on the desk! Thanks a lot for your help! :sunglasses:

:slight_smile: