Contrary to what is stated in the User Guide, audio or group channels exported from the “Export Audio Mixdown” menu are always DRY (no processing)
From the User Guide Page 1022: “All audio channels that are available in your project are listed in the Channel Selection section. By activating an audio channel in the list, you instruct Cubase to mix it down to a file, including insert effects, EQ, etc.”
What I would like to do is export all my Group Channels with all the processing, in one pass, but the only way I’ve found to do this is soloing and exporting each group channel one by one.
thanks for writing,
After a lot of testing, I could see that inserted plugins and EQ are printed, and that Send to FX channel is not printed.
Is that the correct way?
Yes, this is correct way. Once you select to export a dedicated channel, you will export the output of the Channel. Not the whole signal chain. To the output the signal comes without Sends.
If you want to get the signal even with the Sends, you could Render in Place first (set the Whole Signal Path). Then you can export this Rendered channel.
Sometimes you just have a Vox mono track sending directly to stereo out. It doesn’t make sense to put this Vox track into a group, just to export.
What I’m doing now is exporting the vox and the Fx tracks as 2 separate files.
What I really don’t like in the way it’s implemented now, is that you don’t have the two most needed options in the “Export Audio Mixdown” menu. The completely dry export and the completely processed export.
These options are implemented in “Render in Place”, but you can’t render a group track, or you don’t want to import the file back to the project.
So, I think the most productive way would be to put these 4 options available in “Render in Place” into the Export Audio Mixdown menu.
Many years later and still I can’t believe this issue is still not addressed by the devs… ESPECIALLY after the revamping of the export dialog. My head hurts.
“Route the send FX through the group you want to export and the FX will be printed”
This is really not a good solution for a myriad of reasons; and the cherry on top is that if you add the group after you added a send FX track, the send FX track will not see the new group output. The only solution is to create new Send FX tracks after you created the group. This is absolute silliness in such a professional software.
“What I would like to do is export all my Group Channels with all the processing, in one pass, but the only way I’ve found to do this is soloing and exporting each group channel one by one.”
Here is the best workaround solution I’ve found; not perfect but it’s something:
Add all your Send FX tracks to the groups you want to export. Activate them and set them to minus infinity. Be careful, batch export still will not work, but now you can at least solo the group and you can export it with the send FX track processing on them. The idea is that having all the send FX tracks activated on the group, will also solo them when soloing the group. This way any tracks routed through the group and are using send FX will also get exported baked with the proper send levels.
Hope this helps anyone looking for a solution to this issue.
I don’t recall seeing that. I’ve done numerous of additions to my templates and have re-routed already existing FX tracks to newly created group tracks.
I’m on 12.0.6
Make a new project;
Create a send fx track;
Create a group;
The send fx track will not see the group, not even after restarting Cubase.
This is a bug.
Actually, this might be a gotcha of the preference: automatically connect sends for newly created channels. (?) Something like that it’s called, under VST in preferences. I’m not at Cubase right now, I can’t send the exact place.
If this preference is ticked, then the newly created group track will be connected to the fx track. Then, you won’t be able to select the group track as the fx track’s output, because Cubase won’t allow feedback loops.
I’ve fallen for this many times, definitely a preference to look out for.
Yes
Automatically connect sends was the issue. It’s sorted now.
Thanks for the illumination.
However the main topic of this post still stands. How to batch print groups with baked send FX. Connecting the send FX track to a group is not a solution since the same effect feeds several different groups.
Sure it’s the solution if you export all different groups. The question was how do you get the groups printed with the baked in effects, and just because an FX track is routed to several different groups doesn’t mean each group doesn’t get the effect baked in, right?
Also, I’m wondering what type of effect has several different destination groups? Sounds a bit odd to me.
I’ll reiterate what are the issues for me so we are on the same page.
Soloing a group will not solo the Send FX tracks that feed the tracks that are connected to the group; the Send FX tracks will remain muted.
There are three ways as far as I can think to resolve this issue. One is the one you proposed, which is to route the Send FX track into the group that is soloed. Second solution would be just to use the solo defeat button. Third solution would be to activate the sends on the group and set them to minus infinity. So this is not really a big issue overall. The problems for me arise when exporting, which brings me to my main issue:
Cubase will not batch export baked groups with their connected Send FX tracks.
The only solution for this problem there is, is indeed the one in which I route the Send FX tracks to the group I’m exporting. The other two will not work. However, consider the following scenario:
I have the following simplified project:
String tracks: v1, v2, vla, celli, cbs. These tracks have Room Reverb “Main Hall” from a send FX track. The tracks are routed on the “STRINGS” group.
Woodwind tracks: Flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon. These tracks have the same Room Reverb “Main Hall” from the same Send FX track. The tracks are routed on the “WOODWINDS” group.
So we end up with two groups that use the same Send FX track. I hope now that it is pretty clear why the proposed solution will not work for batch export. Also, this is just a simple setup. My current template is way more complicated. This is why I’m only able to manually export my groups and I’ve been doing it like this for many years. The batch export for me is useless. Maybe I’m missing something obvious here and I’m just a nincompoop.
It’s not that different from what we do in post production. Rather than the division being strings and woodwinds it would be for example dialog and effects. The solution to having the same reverb fed by different sources is to duplicate the reverb and have the outputs go to the respective groups. In other words there’s a reverb for strings and one for woodwinds, the string reverb goes to the string group and ww verb to ww group.
You can also set up your template with output buses (no actual output connected) dedicated for stems and route all tracks/groups/fx to whatever type of stem you need. You’d still need the multiple reverbs I suppose but it’s nice and neat to have a dedicated type for stems (output buses).
