ANOTHER CONTROL ROOM QUESTION

[MattiasNYC]

@Keyplayer

I canNOT find the thread where you guys were helping me set up the Control Room for N7/8! But I remember Fredo saying that I should place the Surround set up (Red) first. So, my set up now is my RME HDSP RayDat card channels 1-6 are set to surround and 7+8 are set up as the stereo buss.

I’m not doing surround work anywhere near as much a stereo and every time I start a new project, I have to turn the stereo monitor setting on because Nuendo only saves whatever is the RED OUTPUT from the control settings. So, my question is this. What happens if I reverse the order and make the stereo setting the RED OUTPUT and make the surround output secondary?

I believe the red output determines the maximum width either when mixing or when mixing down. I’m blanking on the restriction right now.

I can’t remember what you specific circumstances were but in my setup since I don’t have an external device to select speakers I use control room. In other words if I work in stereo I might still use a default output with more channels. It allows me to do dialog editing on the center channel and then switch between that, stereo (2.0) and stereo bass managed (2.1, managed in CR). Of course that might not be suitable for you.

I suppose the other thing to consider is either working with templates and simply switching your CR setup to whatever channel count you need.

@Keyplayer

Also, what happens if I’m exporting a stereo mix, if the surround output is the primary? Right now, I’m still printing my mixes through the desk. I run all of my channels out through the desk and print the results back to a stereo channel in Nuendo. But if I just rendered/export the mix can I still use the stereo out bus or do I have to send it through the L/R of the 5.1 buss? I’m confused about this.

Can anybody clear this up for me?

Well, your situation is why I’ve basically avoided that completely. I actually never treat the main output as the main mix (regardless of ‘width’). Instead my individual tracks go to groups which in turn goes to outputs that aren’t going anywhere. So really the actual physical outputs in my setup are only accessed by Control Room and can be fed whatever I want. So if you combine this with what I said above, it means;

• I have a main red output as wide as I have speakers, so 5.1. This is true regardless of whether I’m working in stereo or surround.

• If I’m working in stereo I load a stereo template and the main full stereo mix is an output that has no destination and goes nowhere. But in Control Room I select that output as a monitor source and it will by default go into front Left / Right, with or without bass management.

So this way I can always choose that output when I do a batch export (mixdown). Monitor routing doesn’t matter.

I wrote a post not too long ago here:

Stereo & surround mixes in same project?

…not sure if that helps or gives any ideas…