Control Room - Does this add CPU/Latency?

Cubase
1

Coming from other DAWs i really like the Control Room feature in Cubase, setting listening volume via the application across all projects is brilliant, plus the ability to send to headphones, quick mono/stereo swaps - it’s really great.

Just a quick question though, if anyone knows - does it add additional load to the machine or any kind of latency with the additional routing?

I’ve not noticed anything and don’t have a problem - but just wanted to know before i start getting in to bigger projects. - Cheers!

2

Well very little, You should not notice any worse performance.
Unless You add plugins to the Control Room, that would add to latency and CPU usage.

3

Cool, thanks for the info - i hadn’t even discovered you can add plugins to the control room yet, it just gets better :slight_smile:

4

Using plugins in the control room is awesome! You can have separate cue mixes each using its own insert effects chain. In my case I have 2 cue mixes set up; a headphone cue mix with SonarWorks using my headphone calibration file and GHz CanOpener, and a monitor cue mix using SonarWorks with my studio monitors calibration file. I never have to worry about my mixdowns getting printed with SonarWorks EQ correction or any other plugins in the cue mixes.

5

Well, this is exactly what i was thinking as i read the above, i can setup calibrations for my monitors within the DAW, at the moment i’m routing everything out to an analog mixing desk, which has it’s own benefits but this would give me a cleaner signal path direct to monitors as i’m mainly using the desk for level control to different outputs, and slight EQ for each.

Plus, i can just stick a limiter on the control room to prevent any unwanted spikes reaching my monitors which keeps the mixer clear incase i’m getting too hot and not noticing.

6

I haven’t used control room yet, being an early user of Cubase. What is its main function? It sounds like a routing tool?

7

Yes it’s a routing tool, and it is really great for things like individual headphone (Cue) mixes, where the click should go, mono/stereo switching, plugins for correction to individual monitors/headphones, talkback and more, you should try it:)

8

To Andre: Yes, +1 on trying the control room. The Listen-bus alone is worth all of it (and of course what all the others already said).

9

Control Room is THE unique selling point of Cubase.

1 Like
10

I use the Control Room (CR) and it has some great features - but I do find it adds quite a lot of latency with virtual instruments, even at lower buffer settings.

I have also found that if you add plugins onto the CR inserts, this adds to the latency with the virtual instruments. It’s by no means a show-stopper - can just turn the CR off if necessary, but it is a bit of a fiddly hassle mid-workflow.

11

Does anyone know how much latency the control room adds in actual ms?

12

I guess that it should depend of the interface used and the overall system performance. FWIW, it’s negligible, as much as I have experienced it - and as @peakae stated it, a long while ago - until now with my setup (AMD Ryzen 7 3700X/2 SSDs, one being m.2/Fireface UCX - USB2 connection), to a point that I never bothered to measure it : it’s by no means a concern, here.

13

Thanks for the response, but the interface should have zero impact on the amount that is added. I broke down and tested it with a loopback and didn’t measure any difference with the control room turned on. CR doesn’t report the amount of latency as it does with individual tracks so you have to be careful when tracking. It is nice that Cubase allows you to save presets so you can create one for an empty CR (production) and one (or many) with plugins for mixing.