Cubase 7 Control Room: Take the time to learn how it works.

Cubase
#1

Hi all - I don’t do many posts on this, but I have to toss in my opinion on the Control Room feature on Cubase. Like many, I had a way that I was routing everything to my monitors and people I was recording. I would route the tracks out to my main bus and route that bus to my monitors via an interface.

At first, I saw the Control Room feature and it just seemed like a complicated version of what I was doing. I was really wrong.

I finally took the time and sat down for a few days with youtube videos, the manual, and looked into the features that the control room provided for my production work. This really has helped my work and has created a much more fluid work flow for mixing, listening, using multiple monitors, sending special cue mixes to the session players, etc.

And I’m not posting this out of bragging, but just as a professional perspective. My work can be heard on the radio and I just got done working with a new artist that is more than likely to get signed with a major label out here in Nashville in the coming weeks. (now if we could only do something about this insipid humidity in the south! ha!)

I know there are still a great many who have not taken the time to learn about this feature. If you get a chance, just sit down with a cup of coffee and make it a point to get a handle on this. You will be happy you did!

As a former ProTools user, Cubase is just astounding. I would never use ProTools ever again.

:ugeek:

#2

+1 Right on!

People would do so well to take the to learn! There’s a curve to learning such an amazing program.

#3

I have to agree. I avoided the Control Room until Cubase 7, where it became more integrated and easier to setup. Now I don’t mix without it. The best feature of the Control Room, for me personally, is the Dim function (aka Listen). The fact that you can set the dim amount to whatever you want is awesome! Now I can work on a track and apply EQ more effectively since it lets me hear the effect better. Love it!

The only thing I haven’t been able to get working is the Mono/Stereo switch. Currently, I have to insert a plugin, like Vintage Warmer 2, that has this capability in order to check my mixes in mono. Is there something I need to do that I am missing, or is this a bug?

#4

It’s in the speaker section. You might have to create a preset by clicking the asterisk to the right of the label.(don’t remember if I made it or if it was the default.)

Search Key commands for Downmix too.

#5

I know where it is, I just couldn’t get it to work. When I press it, to change the mix to MONO, it wouldn’t do anything. However, it may be that I need to create a preset like you suggest. I will try that, thanks!

#6

I agree! I would never mix without this new Control Room feature! It’s brilliant!!

If I was the guru of user interface design at steinberg, I would do a couple of minor tweaks on the Speakers section in the Mixer side of the control room.

On the buttons where you assign them as Mono, Stereo, Surround, etc., I would just give the user the ability to assign the button by just simply right clicking on the button itself and a pull down menu would pop up (kind of like assigning an insert effect). Using that tiny little rectangle button at the far right that looks like a design pattern and not a button was kind of weird and kind of a pain to point on.

The other thing i would have done is I think I would have separated the list of speaker buttons on the left and the routing configuration on the right by some small amount so intuitively the user will realize that you get to pick the speakers you want to route to AND you get to pick what you want routed (none, stereo, etc) to them separately. When I first looked at it, it kind of looked like that once you picked “stereo” next to your “KRK’s” that that was a fixed assignment when it is not.

All of my cubase friends love this new control room once they figure it out! Love the cue assigns!

Uber Geek Producer!

:ugeek:

#7

the other thing about this that I like is that it is finally bringing back those little features that you would always use on an analog board for quick routing and listening without even touching your external hardware. Like the DIM function, the Listen function (LOVE THIS!!!) and the speakers section for quick A/B routing. Personally, I A/B with a couple of KRK’s (for details) and a small set of computer monitors (for real world) and my “C” route I use my ear plugs from my iPhone to see what it will sound like to the person who is listening to this mix at the gym or while just walking down the street or for a quick music loop on an iphone app.

having the ability to switch between all 3 quickly with mono and stereo mixes with a click of the mouse is fantastic!!!

:ugeek:

#8

The control room in C7 is just as integrated and easy to setup as it has always been since its introduction in V 4.5…

#9

I have been meaning to get my head round it for a while myself. I would really like to be able to listen only to a reverb channel which I believe you need control room setup to do (listen?).

#10

Exactly - explained several times on the forums already…
Or you need to switch sends prefader, activate the preference to not mute prefader sends, and use the standard “solo”

#11

The Control room was a mystery to me for a couple of years but I was mostly using a console and didn’t need it so I left it alone but now that I’m going more itb it’s brilliant

#12

Cubase CR is great… wish there were more CUES .
C7 CR needs some GUI improvements. and better contrast for fonts and buttons.(again same gray on gray all over the place)

#13

Thank you for reminding me about that “gray on gray” issue - I have tried to change the buttons in the preferences so the font would be gray and the deactivated button could be yellow? anything but the gray on gray

Even if the buttons were a lighter gray like on much of the interface tool bar? that alone would be very very helpful! thank you fro reminding me of that one…

:ugeek:

#14

Yes!

#15

Yes!

#16

This thread has inspired me to finally get to grips with CR! Thank you, fellas. I’ve tried before but got stuck and I’m still stuck. It’s probably stupid and I’m feeling a bit thick so can someone unstick me?

  1. My monitors are plugged into my Play 1 & 2 outputs, currently assigned to Stereo Out in the Output tab in the F4 window. If I want to set these monitors up in CR, it seems as if I have to lose the port assignments (Play 1 & 2) from Stereo Out because I’m going to need them in the Monitor outs in CR. Is that right?

  2. When I’ve tried this before I lose audio on the Speaker Tool. Must be going up a different channel but I don’t really understand. I’m frustrated because I’m pretty conversant with technical issues usually but for some reason I just can’t get on the right track with this one.

Thanks for any poniters. Or even pointers would do…

Cheers,
Crotchety

#17

Gentlemen,

I’m going to give it a try also… I’ll follow along in setup and see where it brings me…Thanks for the inspiration.

#18

Try and see what happens if you use them twice… Apart from that it’ s really all in the manual, IIRC

Cubase does not have a “speaker tool”

#19

Cues + Cubase IC (pro) = Very nice match for tracking!

#20

I completely disagree.

In previous versions of Cubase, I had to go into the VST Connections window just to turn the Control Room ON. Then I had to make sure to select my stereo outputs as monitors in said window (Cubase defaults to the next pair of available outputs in order to avoid routing conflicts). Since Cubase 7, I simply enable it from within Mix Console and my outputs are automatically shut down on the Output Tab and enabled for the CR.

Furthermore, the Control Room settings window used to be a floating window, which means it could disappear behind the mixer or any other foreground window, and that was the biggest PITA for me (and the main reason why I avoided it in Cubase 6). This is not the case in Cubase 7, since pretty much all the CR options are found within Mix Console. Everything is in one place.

There may be more differences, but those are the ones I can think of from memory. May not sound as much, but to me it is the same as the difference between single-clicking and double-clicking. The workflow is greatly speed up with the former. YMMV.