creating a monitormix with direct monitoring

Hi!

I never used the control room in cubase, but now i come to the point to try it out, because i want to achieve a certan goal:

I got my new Presonus Monitor Staion V2 and it offers me a second input (beside my normal mix input). With this second input i’m able to route a siganl dedicated to my headphoneamp, which feeds the musicians Headphone. So i want to build a deidcatet headphone mix. Also my Soundcard provides a direct monitoring option. Wat i want to do is

  1. route the mic(s) input signal back to the second input of my Monitor Station, with fx on the cue it (like reverb or eq) but only in the monitoring path, not on the audio track itself

  2. route the main mix output signal back to the second input of my Monitor Station with the fx on it, but with no fx on the cue

How is that possible? i tried for two days now but could not figure it out, because it is not possible to route 2 sources (i.e. cue 1 (input with fx on the cue) and cue 2 (main output without fx on cue)) to the same soundcard output with the control room (or i don’t know how). so if i route input and output on the same cue, i can only apply fx on BOTH signals. And that i want to prevent.

I always work with the direct monitoring option of my soundcard, so if i hit the monitor icon on a audio track, it routes the signal back to the selected output (i.e. soundcard input 1 to soundcard output 5/6). In the manual it says ‘if you don’t use the control room and hit the monitor icon, the signal will be routed back to the outputs, that are indicated as main mix bus’. I dont know if it is a bug, but no matter what i choose as an output, it allways come out on output that i use for the audio track to playback (i.e. soundcard input 1 to soundcard output 5/6, but output 1/2 is choosen for ‘main mix bus’, the signal comes out at output 5/6 ) no matter if i select direct monitoring or not.

Maybe someone can help me?

I can’t speak to your problem or goals but just in general.

Direct monitoring is when the sound goes through the soundcard to the monitor.

You can’t do anything with that signal because it doesn’t go through cubase so no plugs routing or anything.

I use vocal processing in cubase as well as guitar processing so I never use direct monitoring.

Hiya.
I had direct monitoring on my old Layla sound card. It was great, the sound card mixer is controlled from the cubase mixer.
I wish my new setup had it…

Anyways to your problem.

If your interface has multiple outputs, you should be able to set up discrete monitor mixes for each via control room and with direct monitoring checked in the device setup you can control all this from cubase’s control room. Note this method does not send the audio through cubase. Cubase is controlling the interfaces mixer via the asio driver.
To get reverb and/or EQ from cubase you need to uncheck direct monitoring and use the software monitoring which will put you at the mercy of the latency of your system.
I’m sorry but I’m not familiar with the specifics of your interface so I can’t guide you through it all, but trial and error and the manual is the way to go until you’ve got your head around what you setup is capable of. Maybe disable control room and try to do it from your interface’s mixer as a starting point.

Not a great answer I know but I hope this helps somewhat.

Cheers.
PC

Hey everybody thanks for your replys!

I understand, that the direct monitoring feature will not allow to use plugins, because it uses the routing feature of my soundcards internal DSP. I think i have a powerful soundcart (motu 24 io) but the DSP software is not really good…i’m only able to route multible ins to certan outs, but it is not possible to rout the asio output to different physical outputs at once. (like RMEs total mix fx for example) That ist really outdated, but i have to live with that. I really need this many outputs for my outboard and my summing amp to funktion the way i want it.

anyway: it dosen’t explain, why the ‘normal’ monitoring feature works the way it works right now (or not). Why are you able to mark a pair of outputs as ‘main mix outputs’ if you are not using the control room, but the monitor signal comes out whatever output is used for the audio track? The manual says clearly: ‘When the Control Room is disabled on the Studio tab of the VST Connections window, the Main Mix bus is used for monitoring. (page 31)’. Well, it is certanly not. Its the output that’s defined for the audio track (e.g.: main mix bus ist 1/2, but the audio track’s output is 5/6. if you hit the monitor button and the control room is deactivated, the monitor signal is routet to 5/6. And it doen’t matter if direct monitoring is enabled or not…)

So, whats up with that ?!?!

Answer from the Issue thread i also made:

Thanks for the clarification! Then i will ask in a different way. Ho do i tell Cubase, that when i hit the monitor button, the sound comes allways through a specified output? That’s my goal right now…

When ou press the monitor button on a given channel it will always output to what is specified in the routing for that channel.
I think you’re going the wrong way about this. If I understand you want to create a dedicated artist cue. The easiest way is to use the CR in which case you use a Cue send on each channel to send it’s signal to a predefined que (which corresponds to the outputs specified in the CR) You could however instead use a normal send routed to your chosen output bus if you don’t want to use the CR. Remember too that the que set up like this will not propagate the signal being recorded if your interface has been configured to run in direct monitoring mode. You will only be able to cue recorded tracks and will need to rely on your Interface to provide the artist with a “me” signal, other wise turn off direct monitoring and hope your system can cope with the low buffer settings you will have to use to keep the latency down. With the CR you don’t have this problem and is therefore one of it’s advantages.