Hi all - I am running Elements 8, but the issue likely applies to all Cubase editions.
My mix engineer wants me to send all vocals and guitars as separate dry and 100% wet tracks, but I can’t seem to figure it out.
Obviously, dry tracks are easy. But for 100% wet, I don’t know how.
Here is what I am doing–
All the vocs/gtrs in question have no effects on the channel inserts. They are all sent to either Group Channels, or FX Channels via the Destinations strip on their respective Channel Settings. And they are all set to Pre-fader.
Now when I listen to the group or fx channel I hear the dry signal and the fx signal. If I lower the fx/group fader all the way, I hear only the dry signal, which is correct. But when I lower the fader on each individual track and bring up the fx/group faders, I should hear ONLY the effects, right? 100% wet.
But I don’t hear that. I hear the original audio track with the send fx together. 100% wet means I shouldn’t hear that original vocal or guitar at all, is that right? Or am I wrong? Is it normal to still hear the original audio underneath?
Also to be clear, the FX/Group channels are all stereo, and the individual audio tracks are mono in but stereo out.
What am I doing wrong? I hope I explained it well enough.
tl:dr how do I use FX or Group channels to bounce a track that is 100% wet, without the original audio signal still audible?
Here’s a simplified signal routing scenario.
1 Audio Track. Its output is set to the output bus “Stereo Out”.
1 FX Track. Its output is also set to “Stereo Out”.
The Audio Track has a Send that goes to the FX Track.
The FX Track has 1 insert effect, a reverb. The reverb plugin is set to 100% wet.
By default, Sends are created as Post Fader. This means that if you lower the volume fader on the audio track, the signal going to the FX track via the send is also lowered.
If the Send is configured as Pre Fader and you lower the volume fader of the audio track, the signal via the send to the FX track is unaffected.
That means, if your send is Pre Fader, you can lower the audio track fader fully and what goes to the Stereo Out bus is now only the FX track signal, aka 100% wet. It of course requires that the insert effect, a reverb in this case, is set to 100% wet.
Another option, if you don’t want to change the volume fader levels, would be to disconnect the output of the audio track. This would still allow the send to pass signal to the FX track, but the dry signal is not routed anywhere.
Your method sounds correct, so I’d check if the plugins in the group or effect track are really set to 100% wet. This must be done in the plugins themselves.
I like mlibs idea with setting the output of the undesired channels to No Bus.