Help with I/O setup i,m lost

Gday all.

I’m sure this will be obvious to most but I’m new to this DAW thing and I’ve been fine up until now but I’m lost and losing patience. I am trialing Cubase 8 Elements at the moment ( I will by this though ) and I can only seem to record on 3 tracks and also I can’t hear anything coming out of my monitors. I am using a Focusrite 18i20 interface on my Windows 7 laptop. I have included some screen shots to help anyone who might know what I’m doing wrong.

Again thanks for looking and hopefully I can be back to recording music soon with your help.
Cubase snippy 2.PNG
Cubase Snippy.PNG

Which ports of your interface did you connect the monitors?

Gday BJ. I’ve hooked the monitors to the monitor line outs on the interface. I should have mentioned that I had audio for a bit and then I must heve mucked around with settings, mashing buttons in frustration with the " only 3 tracks recording " issue and then I lost any sound coming from my monitor. Anger management might be the key, hey! :wink:

All you need in outputs is a single stereo bus assigned to the outs the monitors are connected to. You have somehow duplicated your input routing to the output tab.

You’ll have to give more info regarding the recording issue. You mean three tracks at once? Three total? What is stopping you from recording?

Thanks Grim. The inputs look ok though? Like I said For some reason I’m only getting 3 tracks to record a signal but that maybe a separate problem I guess

The fact that you have set up the inputs for separate instruments won’t help if you do not select the input on the track inspector. This is on the extreme left of the arrange page, underneath the volume an pan the middle black rectangular space. Left click on this and you will see the input sources you can select from. That should solve the problem. You will have to assign this for each track you want to record.

Thanks mate. I’ll check that out. I have put all the mics that I want to record my drum kit on the back of my Focusrite interface ( Inputs 3,4,5,6,7,8 ) as that is what they will almost always be used for. I’ll record my guitar and Vox on the 2 inputs on the front of my interface which are 1 & 2. Again thanks to everyone who is trying to help this Noob!

Oh yeah, If I select the input on the track selector to whatever input I need, What should the output be on?

As per Grim’s reply - the stereo out > to your monitors.

Ahhh… so inputs 1 through to 8 ( if I’m using them all ) should all have outputs as the 2 monitors, both on the vst set up window and the track selector. You will have to excuse my stupidity, It’s slowly making sense

Sounds like you’re getting there. Basically you have no need for multiple ootputs in vst connections for your current setup. Only a single stereo out.