I’m starting the DAW now… I’m curious too.
LOL - this is keeping me busy, too. Of course, I know what both options do but didn’t know how they interact during mixdown.
Tape machine style monitoring:
-monitoring is turned on during record and at stop. It’s turned off during playback.
Record enable selected track
-yes, that.
Both options activated
-play > monitor is turned off as expected.
-mixdown > monitor is turned on as if I’d record a signal on the selected track during mixdown thus this track will not be in the mix.
If I have forgotten to turn the monitor off before mixdown it won’t be in the mix. Yes, that’s expected behaviour. What I don’t get: why does this particular combination turn on monitoring on the selected track during mixdown? A mixdown prints all non-muted tracks on a 2-track and it shouldn’t matter if record is enabled or not because I don’t track anything on that selected track.
LOL, I assume it is really simple - can somebody please tell me: what am I missing? 
OK, the problem is, that on the setting the recording enable is still active on mix down. But that shouldn’t affect the monitoring, since tape style monitoring means no monitoring on playback.
Even if the channel is record enabled.
That’s the point, maybe on mix down record is enabled in the background.
I think we need to consult @Martin.Jirsak or @steve to ask if this is wanted behavior.
If not, we should report it as a bug.
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Thanks Steffen, so it’s not just me having trouble to understand this behaviour. I have tested all sorts of combinations by now and I can’t think of a real-life or ITB concept that corresponds to that behaviour on logical grounds. Good idea to tag Martin and Steve 
Tapemachine style switches to input monitoring when the playback engine is stopped.
There is a chance that when Cubase creates a mixdown the actual playback engine remains in status “stopped”.
What happens if we chose to create a real time export?
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Real time export doesn’t show this behaviour when both options are activated - the selected mix is printed into the mixdown.
I’m afraid the underlying question remains when it comes to tape machine style monitoring: why does it work as expected when “record enable on selected track” is not activated and why doesn’t it work (selected track is not printed) when it is enabled?
Wait, you are onto something…
Bottom line:
Tape machine mode requires that record is not enabled on the selected track. “Record enable selected track” denies this option as it is automatically activated.
Manual mode allows slected tracks to be record enabled, they will be printed nonetheless.
For the reason I wrote: the record enabled channel’s output gets muted when Status.PlaybackEngine = Stopped.
The option “record enable on selected track” does not seem to make a difference here. The behaviour can be simulated by manually record enabling a track.
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I think I finally got it so here’s a summary that puts the pieces together:
Tapemachine Style = Off > record enabled tracks WILL be printed.
Tapemachine Style = On > tracks that are record enabled will NOT be printed.
Tapemachine Style = On AND “Record Enable on Selected Tracks” = On
- selected tracks can’t be printed because they will be record enabled by default.
- selected tracks can be printed in Real Time Export no matter if record is enabled by default because during Real Time Export the Playback Engine is in play mode and thus it will deactivate the Tape Machine monitoring on that track.
Tapemachine Style = On AND “Record Enable on Selected Tracks” = Off
- selected tracks can be printed as long as record is disabled
- selected tracks can be printed in Real Time Export no matter if record is enabled by default because during Real Time Export the Playback Engine is in play mode and thus it will deactivate the Tape Machine monitoring on that track.
It is a lot to wrap one’s head around.
Tapemachine Style is consistent in so far as the Playback Engine remains in Stop mode with monitoring turned on during a regular mixdown. Real Time export uses the Playback Engine thus Tapemachine Monitoring is off and the selected track will be printed regardless of its record enable state. In manual mode record enable doesn’t matter at all.
Conclusion
I would like to see that Cubase changes the Tapemachine Style monitoring behaviour in a way that it is consistent with Real Time Export and manual monitoring. I cannot see any benefits to keep this behaviour as is.
I have not opened a feature request because there already are complaints about that behaviour which date back to 2011.
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Hi,
Thank you, Johnny, for this idea. This is the core.
I totally understand, that the common user might not get into this point, therefore it behaves unexpectedly. But once you get this idea, you find out, it’s totally logical and the behaviour is correct; not a bug.
Therefore I’m going rather make a feature request than bug report.
The way you write it is not correct.
Of course I can have a selected track printed by manually disarming the track before I export.
The only criteria is whether a track is armed or not. If the track gets automatically armed when selecting it, it is more likely to be armed but I don’t have to switch off the option. I can always manually disable recording on a selected track.
I think we can see that it takes quite an effort understanding the current design. It does not seem to be intuitive.
Therefore it might make sense to change the design rather than to ask every user for this level of understanding of the DAW.
I can imagine it can be quite tricky to achieve the necessary change, though.
Is it better to pretend that playback is on? Or is it better to ignore the monitoring status upon exporting?
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You can switch on to update the display to see what’s happening. You can see automation changes and metering during the export. Even if you are not in real time export mode. Does this really mean stop? It suggests something different.
I mean, I’m never leaving record enabled, if I do an export. So it isn’t a real problem for me, personally.
Tape machine style monitoring works as expected.
The export is doing something weird sometimes.
Some people (including me) reported strange things in exports.
And not all of them are related to monitoring states.
I hope there is continuously evaluation happening in the background.
So sometimes it will get fixed.
It wouldn’t be correct to ignore the monitoring states.
Maybe they (developers, product manager) should make it much clearer that an export doesn’t switch the playback until it is real time.
If a feature does not meet user expectations you can either change the feature or you can try to change the user expectation. 
Yes, that’s correct. When I tested all these combinations I documented it with the help of a tree diagram. That appeared to be quite complex so I decided to boil it down to a simple list and not to include countless “unless-subclauses”. Nonetheless, you are absolutely right.
I agree. Given the amount of time it took to understand how these variables interact starting from scratch (and I don’t even USE Tapemachine Style monitoring myslf 
) and also the amount of expertise that’s needed to have a eureka! moment witnessed during the course of this thread - I would indeed rather change the design than the expectation of the user. Regardless of the Tapemachine Style monitoring behaviour being consistent right now (unless stranger things are happening as @st10ss pointed out).