Cubase 7 Triple Screen Setup

Hi!
I got a dual screen setup atm, and that works brilliantly, but i’m wondering about buying a third one. Usually I have the mixer on one screen and edit window on the other, but if I get a third one, is it possible to stretch the mixer over two screens in fullscreen mode? Or maybe the edit window on two screens?
Just thinking about it, anyone currently using such a setup? :slight_smile:

I use three monitors, one for the arrange window and two below it with a mixer on each. One for Audio/Instrument Tracks, and the other for groups/fx. Works great for me

I also use three monitors. One for the main project window, one for the mixer and one for VSTi/VST editing, MMC etc.

Stretching the mixer over two monitors is fraught with gotchas - tried it and gave up!

One other thing to consider is that unless your video card has a DisplayPort, you can probably only use two of its outputs at the same time for legacy connections (no matter how many it seems to have). Here’s a useful explanation (based on AMD Radeon cards but generally true across most - possibly all - cards):-

I am currently using 5 Monitors.

4 of them are arranged as a square. The lower two Show the Project window and vstis, etc. the upper two Show one or two Mixers.

The fifth Monitor is a Function Display that duplicates what ever Screen of the four mentioned I want to see closer (it is Close to my Computer Keyboard on the Studio table).

The Setting can Change however, I am using 2 matrox Cards and could drive up to 8 Monitors.

Cheers, Ernst

PS.: My tv set is the 6th Display. But I do not use it while working with cubase.

Do you see the woman in the red dress ?
:laughing:

Haha :slight_smile:

It is more than nice to have so much Screen estate… 8 Monitors… you know… this is like heaven!

maybe I can post a Picture of my Studio table here.

Ernst

Three monitors here, one for the mixer, one for project window and one for DigiCheck and whatever else to be ‘parked’. A standard no-noise video card drives two of them, the third one is connected to the mobo’s onboard graphics (Z68 chipset).

Three is better than two :wink:

Why stretch ?
1 for the project page
2 for full screen mixer
3 for VSTi’s and Fx

I’d love a third screen, but I’d have to move my speakers beyond ideal monitoring position (I can barely fit two 19" LCDs in between my mains). How do you guys with 3+ screens set up your speakers?? How does it affect your stereo image?

Pics?

PICS: Studio pics! - Steinberg Lounge - Steinberg Forums
Another idea would be to have one of the monitors a 46" or so wide screen. I saw a video once (FL I think) of Larry Fast with a setup like this - one really large monitor flanked by two normal ones. I’d go for this myself were it not for the aforementioned problem by jpgtr.

I am using 4 monitors. One for project screen, one Mixconsole and the other two are for plugins and proprietary apps. Since upgrading to 7.5 my mixconsole and plugins freeze at least once an hour while the rest of cubase runs merrily along the way. I hit F3 to close the mixconsole and turn it back on to remedy the problem. I update to the latest NVIDIA drivers but nothing fixes the problem. Other than that I have no issues other than the other known problems such as plugins hiding behind the full screen mixconsole.

Like this. :slight_smile:

A thread has been specifically dedicated for pictures of studio setups. I posted the link in my previous post. I was hoping to circumvent a parallel thread from developing. I guess you didn’t get that.

…and maybe you didn’t get that not everyone wants to wade through hundreds of pictures (without thumbnails) showing irrelevant studio setups? If there were thumbs then it would at least be browseable, but given that there aren’t, it would take an age going through them all.

So your answer is to create another thread with ‘hundreds of pictures (without thumbnails) showing irrelevant studio setups’ (because that is what it will turn into) that no one will want to wade through.
Anyway, my comment wasn’t directed at you - who incidentally have added no prior constructive posts to this thread. I seem to have hit a nerve eh?

Hi, here’s my Setup before the 5th Monitor was added

Cheers, Ernst

I apologize for not reading your mind.

jpgtr asked a question that was easier answered with a photo of my setup. I was trying to be helpful.

I didn’t intend to rain on your parade man…

Not possible to my knowledge in full screen mode. But not in full screen mode you can stretch as many screens as you want as long as you don’t maximize.

Until recently
This is from when I had 5 monitors (2x30" + 3xtouchscreen) and a TV:
SOK-MUS.Studio - mixing area.2013-10-08.jpg
The TV to the right mirrored the third touchscreen in the studio, so I could set it up in relation to the rest of the monitors. The TV also doubled for monitoring the FHD video-cam in the studio.

The frame is made out of Metal-Mate, which I call ‘Tonka toy Meccano’. It is available in Australia. As you can see, it is also used to hold all the studio Acoustisorb foam in place, as decoupled inner and out frames.

These were driven by two ATI2460 FirePro fanless quad mDP video cards, though I would get video driver resets often, but fortunately not when using the DAW partition; only when using the other partition for doing video or graphic editing.

When I built the new system, I replaced the dual ATIs with three older Palit 9400s, which even though fanless, generated a lot of heat, and still had some driver problems.

Before that!
For some years, where the two 30"s are in the picture, I had three 30" horizontally, with the side ones angled in, and a fourth sloping downwards over the middle, all like an immersive inverted T. The extra monitors paid for themselves in productivity gains for a particular IT contract, which I did from home. However, even then, I was still running out of pixels!

Speakers
The sub-woofer was mounted down below then. The stereo speakers were in the same position as they are in the photo. As you can see, they are angled down and inwards to the listening position, ahead of the monitors to avoid too much acoustic coupling.

The Cubase iC Pro revolution
We recently bought Cubase iC Pro so we could use our Samsung Note 3s in the studio. While not using them ‘in anger’ (actual recording session) yet, functional and ergonomic testing showed that they could handle remote transport (one Note) and performer cue (other Note).

So the whole setup in the photo above has changed. As a result of iC Pro, the touchscreen in the studio is not required, making the TV pretty well redundant (can monitor the video-cam through the HDMI input on the 30" if required).

This reduced the number of video outputs required to four, so back came one of the ATIs.

Good bye to faking a good cue setup
I had a few groups as a cue mix being fed by channels sends because cue sends on channels were very fiddly, especially on a touchscreen, and they are not really set up for easy mixing. However, iC Pro does cue mixing the right way (can even have each of the four cues on separate devices), so those became unnecessary. As we only have a few audio channels for our stuff, and no MIDI stuff (as yet, but no likely will ever be much), I moved the Studio Control section from the right to the left MixConsole, leaving only the Input channels, which didn’t need to be full-screen any more.
That meant I could move much of the stuff off the right-hand 30" to the right touchscreen, so now that 30" has been sold as well!

Rebuilding
As I intend to get a ~50" 4K TV (double the pixels of a 30") to replace the remaining 30" that holds the Cubase project window or RX3, I have completely disassembled the custom frame shown in the photo.

As I only need to hold a single 30"/TV, the sub-woofer and the speakers off the desk, I will make a simpler frame, bolted to the desk (it will look like a bull-bar!), to hold them. The speakers can now be much lower, as they only need to be beside the central monitor/TV, but above the touchscreens, which I often use by themselves upright if I just want to do more mundane stuff, without the 30"/TV ‘face heater’!

Full circle
So after having so many large monitors for so long, I am down to three monitors again, due mainly to SB finally giving Cubase a decent studio control and cueing setup (though it could be improved!).

And the speakers will not be ominously looking down on me any more!

Currently I use 3 24’’ monitors… The cubase window is stretched across all three monitors, the mixer in full screen mode on one, track view on another, vsti’s and effects and such on the third. To focus on something specific I toggle between what’s displayed on the center monitor with different workspaces as the need arises. One of my global workspaces is the mixer streched across all three monitors (not in full screen mode, as far as I know it’s not possible) and maximized to the edges of the cubase window, so it might as well be in full screen mode, although I know it’s not quite as pretty :smiley: . The other global workspaces bring the trackview window to the center, the mixer in full screen mode to the center, or the VST instruments rack to the center. In some cases I would also add a project specific workspace that would include effects and such as well to focus if needed. This would be about the best solution I could think of with the way things are currently… at least the best I could come up with to suit my workflow. I thought about adding a large LCD overhead, but at some point too much screenestate starts to become more distracting than helpful IMO. :open_mouth: :smiley: