Combining two or more audio tracks

Cubase
#1

Hi - I’ve been sending two tracks to a group, then recording from that group to combine two audio tracks. But I’m wondering if there is a quicker way in C7?

I’ve done the “record from a dummy output” thing, but it just doesn’t work for me, I can’t figure out why. If someone can look over what I do and maybe give a suggestion please? (I do use the Control Room).

  1. F4 … create a stereo output bus with “Not Connected”, I call it “Dummy Output”.

  2. Set the outputs of the mono vocal track and the stereo vocal track I want to combine, so they are routed to the dummy “Not Connected” output.

  3. Create a stereo audio track whose input is that “Dummy Output” track. Arm it, and hit record. But there is no activity on that channel, and nothing gets recorded.

Any suggestions, please?

(Or maybe there is another way?)

Thanks much for any help!

#2

Hi,

This is exactly the way, how it should works. Are you sure no Solo or Mute is applied?

There is faster way, I would say. You can route both tracks to the same Group Channel. The Audio Mixdown, and select this Group Channel in the list of channels on the left side of the Mixdown settings window, as an source. In the same window, enable to import the Mixdown immediately back to the project. The offline Mixdown is much faster.

#3

Thank you for your answer!

Funny you should say that, I got it working yesterday by toggling the Mute on the track whose input was the Dummy output, even though there was no obvious mute involved to begin with. Weird!

When the dummy output is working correctly, I find it much faster than setting up a group channel, then rendering. It’s almost a one button click for me, but I know that is just a matter of taste, and I appreciate your pointing out another method to use.

#4

Not sure why you’re using a Dummy bus.

I have a vox bus, guitar bus, etc.

Send your vocal tracks to the vox bus right?

If you want to print it just record it or render it.

#5

That’s a great point, thank you. I’d need to remember to turn off the processing and set the fader to 0 each time, if I didn’t already have the Dummy bus set up in VST connections I’d probably do what you suggested but for now it’s less clicks to do it with the Dummy bus…