Demystifying the Control Room In Cubase - Tutorial Series

Nice, just starting on part 2 and already feeling good by your clear presentation.

Great tutorial. I never used the Control Room because I really didn’t understand it.

Many thanks. :slight_smile:

Thanks - that’s very helpful.

+1 control room is one great feature. well done sb. only thing c6 is missing is a keycommand-assignable ‘listen’ command (cubase7 has added this option, all the while making the control room bulky and counter-intuitive to navigate – how long did it take everyone to find the vst inserts section in it? seems like sb has signed a deal with lcd screen makers, making all the panels super wide in c7).

Thank you very very much !!! So nice tutorials.
Beppe

Ah ok, im on 6.0, maybe its a 6.5 thing then. Is there even a way to x-grade to 6.5 now?

Excellent!

Never thought that I needed Control Room, so avoided it (looked rather confusing, as well).
Up to video 6 now and it looks as though It may come in useful after all :open_mouth:

Very clear and easy to understand. Well done SLD

Thank you all very much for the nice comments. As you might surmise, I worked very hard on this, and if I helped just ONE person understand this awesome and under-used feature more, then I consider my effort a success.

Glad to hear that people are finding it useful.

By the way, in Cuabse 6.5 you don’t need a macro to activate the listen button on a selected channel. You just need the “Mixer → Channels: Listen On/Off command” (as Bredo reported). This is a primary reason I can’t use Cubase 7 for my main projects yet, as it’s activate listen command does not affect the “selected channel” it effects only the red highlighted channel in th mix console. There’s a difference, and it’s a real pain in the butt. And I agree that Cubase 7’s implementation of the control room is … not as good as Cubase 6.5. :slight_smile:

Anyway, I’m not hear to complain. Just to thank you all for the support. Thanks again.

Hey SLD, just wanted to say your effort is very much appreciated!!

SLD, you rock! Thanks for the great tutorial. Much appreciated.

Thank´s for this series of videos of The Control Room In Cubase… :sunglasses:

Well there goes my weekend. I will be checking this out to see if there’s anything I’m missing.

I still haven’t figured out the ‘listen’ thing.

At it’s simplest, when not using the monitor switching, CR is great for just strapping the 2 buss processing and limiter THERE instead of the master buss, when you just want to audition the ‘finished’ sound without it actually affecting the track. Then on song 2, 3, 4… you still have the processing there. I love it for that.

mpayne0,

Hope you were able to get something out of these. The listen bus is VERY useful for all kinds of reasons, and it’s really not that difficult once you have a clear understanding of what’s going on. If you watch up to about video 4 or 5 in my series, and still have questions about the listen bus, let me know.

That was an awesome tutorial. I did not understand the listen enable nor the listen level options, so I’ve been ‘listening’ the entire time, but not hearing it :laughing:

You’ve got great teaching skill. Have you thought about a project/logical editor series? :smiling_imp:

Thank you mpayne0! I appreciate the feedback. I have a bit of a teaching background.

I initially tried pitching this tutorial to MacProVideo, and they talked to me, but never went further with it. Totally cool, I was just happy to get the interview. :slight_smile: Anyway, failing that I decided to go ahead and release it myself.

I will consider a project / logical editor tutorial for the future. I have other ideas I’ve already been working on as well.
A lot of tutorials do a great job of showing “how to do certain things” but they aren’t so good with the “WHY things work”. I try to focus on that because I think that knowing the “why’s” makes it easier to figure out your own “how’s” and develop your own workflow. And I’m more and more convinced that when it comes to modern music making, workflow is almost as important as musicianship.

Anyway, thanks again!

Oh it is.

I have been in heaven (or is it “L” :smiling_imp: ) with the listen function. I have certain mud problems occasionally, etc. that generally go back to my fx sends. This is because of lack of an efficient way to check the wet signals easily. Now it’s no effort to check and clean. Checking GR pumping against the rhynth tracks, lovely.

and haha they say don’t EQ in solo… oh yeah is that right?

Not only that, but the studio sends lessons were top notch. I wasn’t sure if I was missing out on any functionality there, but pretty sure I won’t be using those right now… unless I get into referencing/comparing multiple master buss chains. Understanding the possibilities opens a lot up, so thank YOU sir! My music will be better.

Thanks SLD Music! Your explanations are superb. Far beyond what I’ve tried to explain to some Cubase fellows before :laughing:

Though I’m using the Control Room features since they’ve arrived in Cubase I’ve learned/refreshed lots of things by watching the tutorials. And luckily it works pretty integrated with my Fireface 800 in ADM mode. Setting up different headphone mixes works great.

Thanks and respect!

Thanks again to you both.

I am currently in post-production on a sort of “making-of” series that is not so much a tutorial as a … record and sharing of my process of creating a short choral piece from arrangement through to final recording. It will include all the ups and downs of it, particularly when everything fell apart and I had to solve several problems I wasn’t sure how to solve. The idea is to share my process in a way that will hopefully inspire others (especially those who are new to it) to get past their own bumps in the road by helping them realize that EVERYONE encounters bumps–it’s how you react to them that makes the difference.

That said, I am also in pre-production (creating outlines and plans) on another full blown tutorial series for another part of Cubase that I think would benefit a lot of people.

Anyway, thanks again to all those who have watched.

Hi SLD -

Just spent some significant time on these - they are completely wonderful!

I was wondering about something relating to external inputs, I hope it’s OK to ask here:

Is it a reasonable use of the external input function of the Control Room to route a hardware processor’s stereo aux return to there? Or are those best handled as regular inputs into the regular Cubase mixer? I’m having a hard time thinking through the pros and cons of possibly using the Control room like that …

Thanks again SLD for the FANTASTIC Control Room vids!

(PS - I think I read you are considering doing a similar series on the PLE … I bet I’m not the only one who would love to see that).

Thanks alexis–much appreciated.

As far as your question… You COULD route a hardware processor’s returns to an external input, but I have hard time trying to figure out why you’d want to do it, or what advantage would be gained. The primary purpose of external inputs is to give you a way to route things to your control room (i.e. to your monitoring environment) so that they aren’t a part of the main mix environment–allowing you to listen to them without affecting anything about your mix. There are several applications for external inputs in this regard. Although external inputs can ALSO be routed through the Cubase mixer by setting them up as an input to an audio track, you’d probably need to have a really special reason to route the returns of an external processor unit to an external input. Never say never, but I honestly can’t think of a reason why you’d want to do that.

If you are indeed using your piece of hardware as an external processing device, I would set it up under “external FX” in VST connections, and then just use it as a traditional insert effect in the mixer (you can even use it in the control room inserts if you want).