Group Channel panner issue.. wha?

This is what I want to do: Take a bass guitar track and run it right up the middle of my tune, no excess sound coming from far Right or Left. I create a Group Channel, send the bass track to it. Then I left click on the panner window and choose the panner option to do this, and adjust the pan controls. All good. But then I see that I cannot mute the original ‘spread’ bass guitar track because it mutes the Group Channel output. So I think, OK, I do a select track mixdown, choose the Group Channel out and send it to the pool…where I select it and drag it into an empty track in the project. My thought here is I will now have what I wanted and I will just mix my project using this new track and muting the original bass track.

But quickly I realize that my bass track mixdown from the pool is not lining up with my original project, it’s too short in length. Is this because I did my track mixdown using the elastic pro setting? What setting should I use?

Any help here is very much appreciated!!

I’m not sure I completely understand what you want to do, you have a bass track that contains stereo information that you want to change into a mono signal?
First, you don’t have to mute the original bass track, if you send it’s output to a group track then you won’t hear both in parallel, only the output of the group track.

But you don’t have to mess with group tracks at all actually.
You can do it in two ways, either mix the L an R together, risking a bit of treble loss or phase problems. This you do with the stereo dual or stereo combined panner (right click the panner, select mode, then drag both lines to the center.

Or you ditch either L or R and pan the other one C, use the plugin “Mix6To2” under “Surround” for this, set both faders to -infinity on one side and 0dB on the other.

/A

Hey TwinOak. Well, you know, that channel panner option was there back in 6.0.2 I think, but it went away. If you right click in the panner window of the channels you will not see what you describe. This will only come up on the Stereo out or Group channel. …Well, unless I have inadvertantly done something to create this? Man, if I have, please tell me how to get this back!!

But good to know about the Group channel being the ‘master’ controller for the channels inserted into it. Certainly this makes more sense than what I was thinking it was doing. Idiot here, sorry about that! And then this will work for me and do what I wanted. Cool.

As to the surround feature option you mention, OK, this is more for the mono thing at output. This isn’t what I wanted actually, and I can do this type of thing to check my mono mix with the Stereo out panner, like you already said. No, I wanted to pull the sideboards in on the bass guitar, and keep it away from the rest of the ‘outer’ mix. Going to dead center was just an extreme example.

Running 6.0.5 here and I have no problem using right click to switch panner mode (on stereo tracks). If your bass is on a mono track then the right click option is not available since a dual channel panner would be meaningless in that situation.

/A

TwinOak, hm, thanks for circling back. Hang with me here if you don’t mind because I am still lokking for an explanation from you. :slight_smile:

Here’s my input path: Mono channel to record into. After that process takes place that mono channel is returned from the DAW to a stereo output pair which which is ultimately controlled by the Stereo Out Master fader. This is all in the Cubase Mixer, pretty straight forward I think. But you are right, I see where the Group channel shows a ‘stereo’ reference under the channel bus assignment and my channels show ‘mono’. OK, I will regroup. Thanks for pointing this out, i would not have seen that.

That said, let’s please go back to the Group Channel? I have read up on this as best as I can and experimented with this, as well. The best explanation I have of the Group Channel is that it is in parallel with the channel that I have sent to it. I say this because as I pull down the Group fader, the source channels continue to emit sound to the Stereo Out. If the Group channel really controlled the channels sent to it, then by pulling the Group fader down, all sound should cease. Is this wrong thinking? I hope you are not going to tell me your C6 behaves differently over there? If this is true, then the sky is falling and please tell me what you did to create this on your DAW. Of course, I would love dealing with a single fader for a group of channels - and it seems this must be possible because this would simply mimic an analog mixer as you routed things to a Sub Group. Can Cubase do this? From here I don’t see it or hear it.

If you know how to set this up I am all ears. Thanks.

OK, TwinOak, you are welcome to sign in here with more info but I think I have my Group Channel figured out. It does behave as I said, which left me with one question: Why? OK, I think the designers were thinking of simply adding a GROUP EFFECT to the mix, and nothing more. And typically reverb and other similar events but possibly compression, although I doubt it. This can be further explained by noting that programs like REVERENCE come up with the delay/slapback/effect on 100%. This is so - when you use a Group Channel - you can set the return spot with the panner and just raise the fader until things sound right.

Which translates to: The Group Channel is nothing more than an EFX return channel that you would run on a live sound board. Here I was thinking it was something else entirely, something like a Sub Master. Wrong!

All of this said, thank you TwinOak for pointing out the error of my ways with the basic stereo channel setup. Funny, but I did run things this way months back but then made my project setup a mono affair. I forgot I had done this! I never realized that the panner was altered by this change, I just thought it went away with one of the updates. Ha! There’s a lesson here. :laughing:

Just how are you assigning a channel to a group?

If you record a bass on a mono input then you should use a mono channel, a mono channel will not show the panning options of a stereo channel/group/FX when right clicked.

An FX channel is just about the same as a Group channel.

When you assign the output of an audio channel to a group input the audio channel is in series with the group channel, lowering the group channel fader will reduce the volume of all channel assigned to the group channel

I was perhaps a bit unclear on this one, you should SET the output of the track in question to the group channel track, in the box under the one where you set the input. As opposed to using the sends.

Any sends used on the original track will still be heard when you pull down the group channel volume though. Make separate efx tracks for the tracks belonging to that particular sub group and route them to the group channel as well if you run in to that sort of problem.

/A

Split - Eureka!! OK, this is correct, this is the way to setup the Group channel as a Sub! I missed this entirely. :open_mouth: Wow! This is what I was after and it is a great feature of Cubase. Thank you for jumping in here, you are my HERO! I could not find this info anywhere in the manual, sorry to say.

As to the recording in mono, and staying with a mono mixdown return from the DAW, sure this seems simple enough and logical. BUT BUT BUT - it can be set up with a stereo channel as TwinOak describes and everything seems to behave identically except now you have the (3) stereo panning capabilities in the channel panner. ?? I don’t get this actually. For what seems to be a very different input path, everything else seems to function the same. In fact, in my case, having the option of the 3 panner mode on the channel allows me to make the panning adjustments that would now only be found in the Group channel. ??

What are the advantages of a mono setup are vs. the stereo? What am I missing?

Usually a mono signal (recorded) should be played back from a mono channel, the position of the signal can be set within the stereo panorama by the simple pan line, outputting to a stereo L/R group/Buss or master output (stereo)

A more complex panner in this case is not needed as a mono signal outputs identical signals to the left and right channels and panning is achieved by varying the level to either the left or right channel, when both levels are the same the panner is in the centre thus giving the impression of the signal being in the centre of your speakers/headphones.

One reason you may want a mono signal on a stereo track is if you are using a stereo FX on an insert, this would result in differing signals between the left and right channel thus more complex panning solutions become desirable, for instance to narrow the stereo spread and maybe shift the result over to the left a bit.

This is signal flow 101.
If you have a mono source and record it to a mono track, then the signal flow will contain one single audio channel up until the panner, which controls how much of this single channel will be sent to either of the two channels of the stereo out. Inserts are mono only.

If you record a mono source to a stereo track, then the signal is split into two channels before the processing (inserts and sends).
Use no inserts and the new panners you now have access to will not do anything different from the single panner you have in the example above. (because the signal in L and R are identical, you’re just adjusting the balance, you can’t for example lower the volume of L without raising the same amount in R as you could do with the Mix6to2)

And with a stereo source on a stereo track, naturally, you can place each of the two channels independently in the stereo panorama of the output bus. (think of the extra panner modes as containing two mono balance panners, by default panned hard left and right)

/A

OK, thank you both for your time with this. I have to say, as basic as loading the project channels should be, I was not looking at things correctly. I will continue to load mono channels for what I am doing, yes, but to have the panner window option ‘revealed’ was important. I overlooked this. The big win for me is having a grip on the Group channel finally. I was a blind man! You guys ROCK!! :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile: