After setting up my UR as my main interface fed by my two MR 816’s I’m a t a loss as to how to set up my system with 3 monitors and 4 cue mixes.
It would seem that unless you use ‘mix’ outs to your monitors you can’t hear anything when using direct monitoring, and also you’ll have no window’s sounds either. The problem is though, there are only 4 mix out’s and it seems they’re obviously needed for the cue mixes and therefore they’re not available then to connect to the motor outs.
So the question is;
Using the UR 824 and the control room in Cubase, how do you set up 3 monitors sand 4 cue mixes?
Sorry it’s me again but I see no-one is replying at all so…I really don’t think there is a way to do what you want as there are only 4 physical outputs so that would be your limit. |suppose there would be a way of using the stereo headphone output in dual mono mode, that way you could send out two different cue signals in mono and adjust using the cue balance controls, it’d be really fiddly though. That’s give you two cue outputs, then the two headphone outs would "sort of: give you two more, though they would be controlled by which of the three monitor mixes you sent to them, probably not an issue during recording as one would only use main monitors during that . Another “possibility” would be to use the 2 headphone outs to drive the extra 2 sets of monitors, probably too much of a compromise I would have thought. The obvious other way would be to have a physical “switch” to swap between the three monitors to free up two of the physical outputs. Best I can think of I’m afraid
It seems crazy that this can’t work. This is exactly what the control room in Cubase is for. I could understand the limitation if you were using non steinberg DAW but the control room is a ‘virtual’ hardware control room with the routing to match.
On the MR 816 the headphone mix can be the same as the monitor outs if you set it that way in the control room, there isn’t a separate MIX out, DAW out ,analogue out. You just assign which ever cue mix to come out of whichever output you’ve set up in the control room, this doesn’t use up a mix for your monitors though.
I could understand this limitation if you were using the physical analogue outs into headphone amps, but the UR has two headphone amps built in. All you would need to do is have the mix out going to the headphones AND the monitor outs which is what the MR816 do.
Cubase control room cue mixes should handle the routing from Cubase , there is no need for the UR to need to do this if you’re using Cubendo. The way it is now seems to be that the UR is doing the routing Cubase control room should.
Lets look at this from the start again;
Cubase has 4 cue mixes built into its control room;
you have to use the 'MIX out’s ’ for each cue mix;
HOW DO YOU THEN SEND ANYTHING TO YOUR MONITORS and be able to hear the direct monitored signals as you’ve used all your mixes?
there has to be something I’m/We’re doing wrong here.
Just had a look at the actual separate MR editors and UR editor
In the MR editor you can send any mix of in puts channels to any output, in the UR it seems there are only 4 possible mixes which would explain what’s going on here inside Cubase.
I’d keep using the MR if it wasn’t for the crazy master volume thing!!!
I started to go down the current route recently due to actually looking at what the whole control room in Cubendo can actually do. So with that in mind I looked into getting rid of my hardware monitor controller.
The advantages sonically are; removing approx. 6 meters of cable and various potentiometers/switches (albeit high quality ones) from the path between the DA anf my $10,000 Quested monitors.
The cubendo control room has EVERYTHING a hardware control system has, it’s just the issue’s I have with Steinberg’s hardware, which should combine to give a seamless working scenario.
I’ve got a couple of hardware inserts set up in cuabse and obviously the levels are set on the corresponding outs at 0 Db.
This is all fine when working in Cubase, however as soon as I exit Cubase those channels then cause a lot of noise as they’re set at 0. the only way to stop it is to go into the control panel , deactivate the separate volume levels and then globally turn things down.
I then have to do the reverse when I open Cubase again to set the send levels to the hardware back to 0db…
this is just getting ridiculous.
It seems that both the MR and UR work fine as long as you have;
Only 1 or two sets of monitors, less than 2 cue mixes and Zero hardware inserts.
What’s the point of the whole control room and integration with hardware with such amateur limitations?
Perhaps you need to consider chaining one or two more URs together. Would this not also increase your outs not just your ins?
FX I like to confine to the S/PDIFs if possible (I have small external A/D D/A s to which they are generally patched by default).
Also the whole point of having expensive hardware eq’s and compressors patched into a DAW is the fact they’re analogue, and can do things digital/plugins can’t
I am also taking my first faltering steps into the world of the control room, so that I can directly attach different monitors to my UR824s. I haven’t yet managed to get beyond the issues you raise - this is just a note to say I’m trying to. It also reinforces my view that Steinberg and Yamaha could be doing a lot more to illustrate the variety of ways of using multiple interfaces.
To me it seems the main issue is you cannot use the DAW outputs for direct monitoring, ONLY the mix outputs have direct monitoring and there are only 4 of them.
After a head scratching, patching, re patching day, I now have my main monitors connected to the MR816 via ADAT to the UR824 however I’m still sending the same mix as before so I don’t what I’ve done to stop the noise from the external hardware when exiting Cubase.
but I have at least got a working solution albeit a rather convoluted one.
my brain is fried so I’ll continue tomorrow.
One big difficulty is not being able to ‘see’ your routing when Cubase is open, and you can’t alter anything on the slave MR units either while Cubase is open, even the sample rate!! makes trying everything twice as long.
MC
This is why i have my 2 MR816s connected to a RME Digiface and use Totalmix for monitoring. I use the Cubase Control Room to send a “studio” and 4 “headphone” mixes to Totalmix and then use Totalmix for my “live” inputs, NOT Direct Monitoring. I also use Lemur on Ipad to have total control over all 5 mixes instantly, and, Totalmix has an option to switch ANY of the four mixes to my monitors to hear what each band member is hearing, completely independent of Cubase. It’s a very eloquent setup and entire mixes can be saved for later recall (again, independent of Cubase). You can pickup a used Digiface and PCI card (PCIe cards are more) inexpensively and the drivers are still the best.
You can achieve a similar setup with your UR824 if you uninstall the UR Tools to make it independent of Cubase.
Also, if you need speaker switching, invest in a monitor controller, it’ll save you those headaches!
this all started though in an attempt to get rid of my monitor controller, loosing 6 meters of cable and various switches and pots from the chain is a worth while sonic improvement.
I can go back to using my controller if I can’t work this out, but I’m sure there’s a way
I do actually own a RM HDSP 9652 it’s sat in a drawer somewhere
