Find the ferret?

Cubase
1

I think all of us have routing troubles quite a bit and it’s like trying to find a ferret. For a specific sound on a specific track there can be so many routes, so many different level controls, if one of these is somehow muted, or has the level turned down or up innappropraitely.
In no particular order, we have the track volume and mute we have various side chains, group tracks fix tracks reverb, fxs, VST controls, maybe some sub hots like Kotakt, Opus and so forth, we have gain too.
When a signal goes down, instead of hunting the ferret, can we have a one stop diagramtic image of the signal path, showing where the signal goes - schematically - and more importantly where it stops. On this image, to be able to click and goto the offending culprit?

I remember being a learner and whole evenings, even days, were spent on finding the cause ofr these silences. It must put of a lot of new customers. This game of hunt the ferret needs to become easier - for the uninitiated. I do remember a very early Cubase attempt at this, around 1995.

Z

2 Likes
2

If accurate, a audio engineer type schematic would be helpful. I sometimes spend too much time tracking signals down paths.

For me I start with turning solo on..somewhere, then look at all mix consoles, project page, hidden tracks, direct routing, sends/returns etc. Sometimes side-chains for me are difficult.

My first Cubase was 1997. Is there any DAW that does this? My guess is that it would take a lot of resources to create this feature free of issues.

3

I am jopining in believing this would be helpful.

And I think that for a visualisation of all the signal paths Cubase has it already under the hood: I found the EXCLUSIVE-SOLO function helpful (CTRL+click on solo button) long time ago and this is one of my most used shortcuts. When my mix console is open, I look at Routing, Pre, Inserts, Sends and DirectRouting (other options are either hidden or collapsed).
Then I hit EXCLUSIVE-SOLO on a track in question and it mutes everything that is not part of the signal paths. Then I can focus on just the tracks that are shown as Solo.

Not ideal and some details (side chaning) might be missing, but I quickly get to where issues might be.
In the example below I wondered why my drums got a delay and I found the send on the G:roup track with a send set. I admit, it is a simple example - just wanted to share how happy I am with this shortcut.

image
image1436×1374 181 KB

Martin :slight_smile:

4

Probably the most likely solution feature would be a new visibility function:

‘Show Connected Channels for Selected’

This would include sends, outputs, and direct-outs.

5

Am i wrong in thinking that signal path is already available when hitting the little “e” on the track, and then hitting the “expand” button on the window that opens?

Sorry for the poor terminology, I’m away from computer.

6

This doesn’t show side-chain routing (and whatever goes on there), and such like.

1 Like
7

That feature is already present for a single selected channel.
However, it shows only the channels that are routed TO the selected channel.

8

I am really envisigaing a fault finding “wizard” or “trouble shooter” kind of thing, something which shows the path of a MIDI signal or audio signal and highlights where it might ‘fail’ (or by user error) to reach the speaker outputs’. I am sure there was something like this once, maybe soon after Cubase Score - 1993.