Direct monitoring and control room - figured it OUT!

Well, I must say it has been a frustrating journey that has plagued me to varying degrees for about 2 years. I don’t know if it was the latest driver / tools update, or just a fresh mind to approach it, but here goes…

Previously:
Could not - even with the help of Steinberg support - get direct monitoring to work with control room so that you could monitor FX without some sort of trade off. It would work without direct monitoring; it would work without control room, but not with all three things in play.

I had basically given up on control room in order to get the direct monitoring with FX to work, and getting DSP MIX FX to do all the control room duties. Cumbersome, but… it worked.

The Issue: In order to get the monitoring FX in real time to work with direct monitoring, you could NOT use any kind of virtual output - so Daw Direct 1 would not work for Headphone 1. It absolutely MUST be connected to a “real” output.

So… solution. (seems so obvious now, but nobody was able to pin it down before…)
Headphone 1 (cue mix 1) - fed by Mix 1 L.
Headphone 2 (cue mix 2) - fed by Mix 2L
Headphone 3 (cue mix 3)- fed by Mix 3L
Headphone 4 (cue mix 4)- fed by Mix 4L.

Studio monitors fed by main outputs - also assigned to Mix 1 L/R.

It also seems to be working that I have connected:
Mono Mixcube - fed by Mix 1R
Re-amp box - fed by Mix 2R

Yeah, all those headphone mixes and the mixcube and the reamp box are mono, and there is some “sharing” of mixes, but that’s all fine - at least so far.

I can’t believe I finally got this working as intended, and that it took this long to get it there.

CT

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Im gonna have to try this. I gave up trying to set up cue mixes which seems ridiculous on a piece of gear like this. So what we are saying is all cue mixes need to be sent out in mono and then you can use the monitor effects i.e reverb com eq and the control room as well? Any guidance on setting this up would be GREATLY appreciated…

Hi there;

Yes, exactly. The cue mixes absolutely MUST be sent to a physical output and not a virtual output.

I don’t know that they need to be sent out in mono, necessarily. I just do it in mono for efficiency of being able to use my outputs.

So, by setting it up the way I described above, that allows me to have four independent headphone mixes being sent from each of outputs 1L, 2L, 3L, and 4L, and two independent outputs for things like my mixcube (1R) and a reamp box (2R).

It also allows me to use direct monitoring and control room within Cubase while being able to use the built-in RevX and morphing channel strip with the interface - even just for monitoring while tracking.

I’m finally loving it again now that I no longer have to fight with it.

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Really appreciate you taking the time to post this info…as you say, it has made the unit very useful now, thanks Chris