I have been reading the manual and watching tutorials, and with Elements 7.0 I still cannot do any internal routing. So this is a plea for help.
All I am trying to do is send the output of one track (of any kind) to another audio track. It seems to be impossible.
Busses - as I understand it, even though the manual says busses are how Cubase interfaces with external devices, busses are also used for internal routing if required. OK, so I set up a new output bus and give it a name, say “test1” and set it to ‘no connection’ which from what I have read creates an internal connection. Only it doesn’t. I can only see this new output bus in the VST Connections window and the inspector sends; it is not available as an input on any routing selection - it simply does not appear as an option. In other words it is not available to route to another track.
Group Tracks - as I understand these they are for consolidating the tracks allocated to them. I can use the ‘send’ menu in the inspector to get a signal into a group the output and can then be assigned an output bus. Yes, that works. But the output bus is not available as an input, so I am still no further ahead.
VST Instrument tracks - again, to cut a long story short, even after activating the relevant outputs, and creating the requisite busses there are no inputs available in any of the routing menus. I am using Addictive Drums and I would like to route the key drums to separate audio tracks.
I don’t understand why Cubase has sends, but no returns.
I’m getting very frustrated, as you can imagine! Or maybe internal routing is not available at all in Elements 7.0. I am beginning to yearn for an old fashioned patch bay . .
Not sure whether Elements 7.0 just can’t do it as suggested might be the case, but one thing worth checking before giving up if you’re not sure:
Make sure there is that there is not a mismatch of Mono/stereo between the Group and the audio track you want to record it to. In other words, if the Group is stereo, a mono audio track might not see it as a potential input. Has slowed me down late at night more than once!
Thanks marQs. Looks like I would be wasting my money in so far as this is concerned. There are lots of other good reasons for me to invest in Artist, not least, as a bass player, the VST bass amp. There are work arounds and I do not want to do internal routing very often - I’ll just render or duplicate the tracks I want to muck about with independently.
I just opened up my licenced version of Reaper, opened a new AD virtual instrument track and had all the audio tracks automatically created for me - all I had to do was activate them in AD. Reaper costs less than Elements. It’s hard to know what to say!
I was fighting as well to be able to record Maschine live in cubase elements 7. Can’t seem to make it happen. After checking around it’s possibe on any other DAW but not on Cubase elements 7. Easiliy done in Reaper and studio one, apparently…
Is there a way to make a feature request or something like that?
Well chiko, it looks like the choice is either to stick with the cut down versions of Cubase or lash out on Studio One - the full version costs about the same as Cubase Artist. The thing is, all the DAWs are differently featured, and whilst some will have things that we find annoyingly absent in Cubase the opposite is also true. I find the Steinberg package overall more attractive.
That said, we can still put a suggestion in for an improvement for the next iteration of Elements, although I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Later: I just checked the improvement suggestions thread for Elements 7 and it is locked. So we can’t ask for internal routing
I’m looking at other DAWS indeed, but i’ve been using cubase for so long that it’s going to break my heart :]
I might get something like studio one or reaper just to record Maschine the way i want and import that in good ol’ Cubase…
Of those two I’d go for Reaper. There is a long trial period, the personal use licence is not expensive (less than the basic Studio One) and it is fully featured and supports VSTs. I do have a Reaper licence as well and use it from time to time. It’s only the lack of a media library and useful VST instruments that stops me using it more; for basic analogue instrument recording it is faster to use than Cubase, but the built in effects are not as good.
I am astonished that you can’t do something as simple as routing a buss to an audio input in Cubase Artist. I’m on 8.5 and thought I was doing something wrong initially until I realised the feature wasn’t there. It is especially odd as there is no mention of it in the comparison section on the website despite in my mind it being a pretty huge feature.
I got round the problem by connecting my SPDIF output to the SPDIF input, maybe a solution for people if they have an unused digital connection.
I hope Steinberg add the option to use a VST instrument output as an input source for an audio track in a future revision, open up bussing in Artist and Elements or implement some other simple way of routing a VST instrument to an audio track. I would have thought it is a very common workflow thing.
