Automatically engage Qlink when selecting multiple tracks

When I shift select tracks in the mixer, I expect any action I take to be reflected across all tracks - having to click Q-link or hold down a modifier key is inefficient.
Also when I change the colour of the track through this method I would expect all tracks to change colour but it doesn’t.

You can permanantly activate QLink by clicking on the GUI button in the mixer. Then any action you take will be reflected across all selected tracks, just as you expect.

Greetings,
Jan

Yes - when I shift select tracks I expect Qlink to be enabled by default.

Yes that is what JHP just explained. You can set your MixConsole to behave in 2 ways. One is where selecting multiple Tracks does not Quick Link them. To have the MixConsole behave this way set the Quick Link button off. The other behavior is where selecting multiple Tracks will always Quick Link them. To have the MixConsole behave this way set the button on. If you want it to always be on then change it in your Template(s) and save those. Then it will always be enabled when you start a new Project.

Why is the QLink button only in the Mixer, when it’s use is also very relevant from the Arrange page?

Raino suggests saving the QLink state within a template - this DOES NOT work (on a Mac at least). The QLink status is lost upon closing Cubase and defaults to off on opening the program.

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By default - when select multipe tracks I expect whatever change I make to be reflected across all tracks without doing anything else - like every other DAW. Why doesn’t it work like this already?

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Wow, this is nice! I didn’t realize this. Is that new? I’m so used to holding alt+shift now lol

btw, can you also apply adding vst effects to the Q Link’s abilities? Right now, if I select multiple tracks and have Q Link activated, and add a vst effect, it will only add it to one of the selected tracks. It would be so awesome to be able to select several tracks at once and add a certain plugin to each of them.

This would be useful for when you need to add plugins to things without or before sending them to a group channel.
For instance, if I wanted to use Pitch Correct on 10 vocals, I can’t just group the tracks and put one master Pitch Correct on the group bus, because pitch correct would not function properly with that many inputs (and you might be needing those vocals to be going to separate groups anyway). Or if you want a certain plugin on a bunch of tracks, but you want to fine tune the plugin differently for each track.

This is already the case. It is even so awesome that the parameters of the plugins are Qlinked as well. So when you for instance turn the ratio of one compressor the ratio of all linked compressors will be affected as well.

Oh awesome!.. I could swear that I tried doing it in the past and it didn’t do that… but I just tried it now and it works, thanks! :smiley:

I just noticed that when you close and re-open cubase, the Q-Link button in the mixer becomes de-activated again. So I guess I can empathize with the OP. If the Q Link button would stay active permanently after switching it on, even after restarting cubase, then it would be no big deal that it is deactivated by default. So long as you realize the feature is there, you could just click it to activate it and the problem is solved. But it’s annoying to have to keep opening the mix console and re-turn it on… especially because I don’t usually have the mixer window open. My biggest fear with this is that I will open a new project and start editing tracks as if Q Link is on and then find out down the road that Q Link was actually disabled the whole time…

So I do see what the OP is talking about. I don’t imagine it should be too hard to simply enable Q Link by default or at least set that button to remember it’s state after restarting.

Please, no. Don’t enable this by default.

I’m with Steve on this & generally want Q-link off. But a Preference or just even having the button state maintained in a saved project should meet everyone’s needs.

so. many. preferences.

I also noticed that this the Q Link does not apply to track freezes. I think the main reason I rarely use track freezing is that it takes foreeeeever to freeze or unfreeze multiple tracks. And I checked and it seems there’s no key command for freezing and unfreezing multiple tracks. In fact, there’s actually no command for freezing tracks at all; just for freezing midi parameters.

So if Q Link could apply to track freezes, that would be awesome too.

Would you be able to make quick link apply to “paste channel settings”? Now and then I want to copy one channel’s settings and paste it on several other tracks, but the quick link doesn’t seem to apply to copy/paste channel settings.

I’m with you. Cubase has too many preferences as-is. Just figure out how 90% of people would want or expect a particular feature to work 90% of the time (maybe just 80), and make it work that way. The 90/10 rule or 80/20 rule. Not everything needs a preference because one person thinks it should work a little differently, or because there are some rare edge-case scenarios where the default option may not make sense. Figure out a design that works most of the time, stick to it, and move on.

I think lots of preferences shouldn’t be a problem if they were a) well organized b) incrementally searchable c) documented inline, e.g. mouse over help text.
That being said, I also don’t find it necessary to add a pref for something like Qlink that can easily switched on with a key command.
State saved in the project would make more sense, as people could put that in their templates if they wish.