Monitoring during recording in Cubase 10

Even with multiple Inputs the same concept can work although the initial setup gets more complex. If for example you have your drums miced on the Kick & Snare (keeping it simple) you could create a monitor channel for each of those 2 mics and listen to them. You can listen to multiple inputs if you change your “monitoring bus” from an audio channel to a group channel.

The way you manage this in Cubase 10 is through routing. I assume you need to deal with this right now and not some vague time in the future. While setting up routing may be clunkier than you’d like, it is super flexible when needed. The trick is to anticipate the various flavors of live monitoring configurations you will typically use/need and build those into your Templates. Hide 'em in a folder until needed. Keep in mind that if you are setup to monitor a drum kit with 12 mics that will work for a kit with 2 mics too. By separating monitoring into “stuff Cubase is playing” and “stuff coming into the inputs” you can control them separately so you could have a singer hear what they have already recorded at one level and what they are currently singing at a different level.

There are a couple of often overlooked things that can be useful when configuring routing. Direct Routing (available near the bottom of the Rack not the top’s regular Routing) lets you route the channel to multiple destinations (up to 8, nest them if more are needed). In Audio Connections you can create multiple input buses for the same physical input. So you could have your single kick mic show up as 3 independent Input Channels with different names which can be processed and used differently.

And don’t forget those Channel Sends are just another way to route stuff.

If I were you I’d start off by creating one “monitor bus” for every physical input. Heck stick them all in MixConsole 2 or 3 and you can have a separate mixer just for your inputs.