hybrid mixing

Hi, i am very interested in knowing if it’s possible a strange kind of routing with external analog console; Till now i have only a D&R 4000 console that i like a lot, because i don’t have(for now) hardware compressors, fx and so on, if i want to use analog summing and mixing with console eq and pan, at some point i have to return ITB to use some plugins on busses.
Let’s make a pratical example:
DRUMS:
I route the various drums on separate outputs of my ssl alpha link(kick 1, snare 2 and so on) i use plugin compressors etc but i eq and pan my instruments from the console; then i route all the drums on a phisical group on the console, and make it re enter in the DAW on a buss to apply a bus compression with a plugin; the problem is latency; with an hardware insert i can make cubase to compensate between the input and the output; but if i route to the console some channels; and then return back with a group; how can i compensate for the latency?

Yikes… This could be a can of worms for you.

1st you need to determine round trip latency (cubase out to dac, then through board then out the board’s group bus back to cubase) make a temporary external effect with the I/O routing then ping it. Write down the latency then eliminate the external effect.

Assign the board’s group output to dac input channels. In vst connections, inputs pane, create a stereo input that is set to the dac input channels you chose for the board’s group.

Create a stereo audio channel in cubase. Select the stereo group input channel you just created in the vst connections.

Use the latency value you discovered in the temorary external effect to offset that channel. (Clock icon on the channel)

Create audio output channels in vst connections for your individual drum tracks. Route the output of your cubase channels to go to your board channels.

Thank you so much for the response, yes i know it’s gonna take me a big headache :smiley::D:D but the eq and the pan on the analog console is so much better to me(even if not a neve or an api); I had imagined that the system to use is something like that, i was wondering if there were something more simple and fast to make this that I couldn’t find. Gosh…let’s try it; thank you so much for the reply