I’ve be scouring the interwebs and social media groups to find a way or workaround to create 5 headphone mixes for tracking. Below is my solution. By all means if there’s a better way please share.
Hardware
2 UR816C one in Headamp mode.
They’re connected in and out with Optical cable, and clock synced with a BNC cable per the manuals instructions.
8 Channel Headphone Amp
Software
At the time of this writing I’m using Cubase Pro 12 on a Windows 10 machine.
Control room enabled.
Make sure in studio Setup “Direct monitoring is enabled.”
Why?
I needed to have a total of 5 individual mixes to feed a headphone amplifier for 5 artists to track live.
In audio connections on the control room tab create
3 Stereo Cue’s
1 Mono Cue ( you might need to make this stereo)
1 headphone mix
Route output
1 L/R 2 L/R 3 L/R To cues 1 through 3
(Note on the UR816 your main LR are typically piggybacked on out 1 L/R)
Route output 4R to Cue 4R
Route Headphone L to output 4L
Your headphone amp will determine the type of cables/adapters required between them.
Open up a mix console.
On the MixConsole toolbar, click Racks and activate Cue Sends to show the rack above the fader section.
Now on the four Cue sends on each channel set them to Send “Pre Fader” this will make sense in a bit.
Your 3 stereo and 1 mono Cue mixes are done.
Your mono headphone mix will be mixed with the faders on the mix console, and since all your cue sends are sent pre fader any manipulation for your headphone mix won’t affect any of your cues.
(Make sure your input channel faders are kept at unity during tracking.)
Done.
Once all your initial tracking is complete you can switch back to a standard 3 Cue Mix for overdubs.