Better external summing support

Cubase
,
1

Dear Steinberg,

Cubase still doesn’t offer a good solution to incorporate external summing in the workflow, leveraging all the goodies available in Cubase.
Let me try to explain: On the way out, it’s all good, there are plenty of ways to configure outputs and feed whatever mixer you want to feed. But what comes out, also needs to get back into Cubase.
The options here are limited:

  1. You could configure an external in. Arm an audiotrack and record the output of your physical mixer on this track, then play this track back to the main mix and you could use the master section again. But this is a 2 stage workflow
    And the master metering does not work on the EXT IN in the control room.
  2. You could also define an external FX, with only the returns connected, being your physical main mix. And insert this in the main mix inserts first slot. Now you can immediately use the master section and insert your favorite plugins after this “external summing FX return” and do your final mixdown in 1 go.

In either scenario you can’t use the EXPORT MENU, since all the channel subgroup breakdowns are rolling up towards the Cubase Main mix (which is limited to the internal software routing)

It would be great, if Cubase could get an “External Summing” button in the Master Section or in the control room, or as a button in studio connections:

  1. This button would make the EXT IN feed the cubase Main Mix, so that you could combine tracks that stay ITB together with tracks that have been summed OTB
  2. This would also make the main mix metering usable for external summed signals
  3. This would prevent the 2-stage recording excersise mentioned above
  4. This would enable you to use plugins on the main mix while recording your external summed mix
  5. This could affect the EXPORT screen, where one could mute certain channels for STEMS rather than mute manually in the mixer and use the realtime export, rather than just record on a track first.

Again, I think Cubase has got great flexibillity on the way out, but there is an opportunity for improvement on the way back in.