Is there a way to a/b tracks with one button? In other words, have 2 tracks selected and have one mute and the other unmute with a single press. I know I used to do this in version 8 but I either forgot how or it has changed in 9.5.
Yeah, press the solo button in the muted track, it will toggle between mute and solo.
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Ahh, but there is no way to A/b within a mix. Maybe I was never able to do that and was remembering the method you described. Thanks.
Mute one of the tracks.
Select both tracks.
Pressing the āMāā key will now toggle between the two tracks (as long ass you donāt have Q-Link enabled).
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Use the control room and create a number of Cue busses - one for each reference track.
Pull in you reference tracks in to the project. Hit Direct Routing in on each of the new tracks in the inspector, and disable the stereo out by pressing once on āstereo outā. Doing it this way gets over a bug in cubase where it doesnt always let you select āno bussā.
Assign each reference track to a different cue send.
Then in the control mixer (cmd - alt and r) you can just switch between your mix and the reference tracks - and the reference tracks arenāt going through the stereo out so they are un affected by mastering plugs.
PS sorry misread question. Might be useful anyway.
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This is the right answer!
LOVE you!!!
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Note: The āMā key works fine, but the CTRL+Click on the Mute button doesnāt.
Any ideas as to why?
To my knowledge there is no perticular function tied to Ctrl + Click on a Mute button. (There is for the Solo button.)
What do you expect would happen?
This is how I do it using Control Room.
Yes, 1 button switch.
Indeed. I just switched to RME on my main studio rig (moved all UAD Apolloās to my second rig) and Iāve extended the CR-based A/B routing to any system audio input by repurposing (in my case MADI 1/2, and 3/4) unused channels set to Loopback and mapped to the corresponding software input channels so I can also have ā1 button a/b referenceā directly from sources like Apple Music and without having to hork audio recordings first. Works well for my purposes.
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Another one, this time all tracks in the project will be muted aparat from the one you have currently selected.
Edit / Key Commands /Preferences / Project & MixConsole -Enable Solo on selected track
This works best via key command although you can also check this as a general preference.
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I was really hoping this was the nice simply solution I was looking for. Trying to compare e.g. two bass tracks to see which I like better. But the above select-both-tracks and mute will toggle doesnāt work for me in C14. Any suggestions?
Hey there - the Cue method described above will do exactly that. It takes a wee bit of up-front configuration/routing but will then forever be available 
Is that the only way? I see other DAWs make this easy.
If I understand the Cue method, I need to setup two cue mixes, one with all tracks and Bass1 only from the basses, and another with all tracks but just Bass 2.
This seems a lot of setup to simply A/B two audio performances..
The Cue method looks fine for A/B of two masters or a reference track. But tedious for spontaneously comparing two separate audio takes in a mix. Better to do the not quite seemless flipping of the two channels Mute states by hand..
Oh, āaudio takesā is different - I would just use the Comping tool to audition multiple takes. Since you said āanother trackā I suggested the Cue method. And sure, it can be involved at first, but thatās what Cue Sends are for - you could link multiple tracks and create Cue Sends for all at the same time which you could easily enable/disable, etc. Itās all up to your workflow.
But yes, just toggling between mute-state would certainly work as well. But speaking of ātakes,ā you could even move your audio events from different tracks into a new lane and comp them that way too.
I think thereās a lot of different ways to approach that, depending on the use-case.
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Thanks @Thor.HOG I am pretty sure Iāve watched an Alt+Click in other DAWS to do this kind of mute toggling though (a bit like described above in this thread, that doesnāt work for me, and a bit like the Solo feature does).
I think it might be possible to get slick at this with Cues to make A/B ing takes easier. I find myself doing this kind of task a lot (multiple takes by session players, multiple guitar choices, multiple vox takes) so putting them into Lanes might also be a solution (in some cases) when checking out these various takes across different parts of a complete song.. But its one of the first times Iām finding Cubase weaker than e.g Logic in somethingā¦ I am not sure that moving tracks around into Lanes isnāt more intrusive to the workflow than Cues. It wonāt work if Iāve EQd the two tracks differently, for example, to get them comparable. So in the end manual mute toggling and irritated mouse-finger might be the best way right now.
For sure. Depending on how much time you spend on these tracks, you could also name one set of tracks āA-Trackname1,ā āA-Trackname2ā and another set āB-Trackname1,ā āB-Trackname2ā and just write up a PLE that automatically mutes one and unmutes another based on the track name ācontainingā āA-ā or āB-ā and assign macros and key commands.
Then you could have single-key switching between entire sets of takes if you wanted to. Again, more complex, but processes like these can be integrated into your workflow rather quickly and once you get used to them they could be valuable. I suggest that more of a way to ensure youāre aware the PLE (Project Logical Editor) tool is pretty powerful and may also help.
Thanks, Iāve heard about but never explored PLE. Sounds like I might look into that route for this particular problem. That and keyboard function mapping both things I should explore more.
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@AlanP May I ask why this method doesnāt work for you in C14? It does exactly what you are asking for:
- Mute Bass track A
- Select both Bass track A and Bass track B and press āMā to toggle the mute state between these two Bass tracks while the rest of the project remains unaffected.
I donāt think it can get any simpler than thatā¦