In What Situation Would You Use a VCA Instead of a Group Track?

Cubase
1

I’m a bit confused on the situational and functional differences between the two, in what specific example would you want to use a VCA instead of just using a group track and vice versa?

2

If you want to control the individual levels of multiple tracks you can use a VCA for that. The VCA track contains no signal in itself.

If you want to control the summed level of multiple tracks you can use a group track. The Group track contains the summed signal and it can be processed using inserts (and you can use sends etc).

(I do post, not music, but anyway…)

Say you have a drum kit and you balance it and it sounds fine. Now you want to compress the entire drum kit to make it “glue” or whatever. You set the output of all individual parts of the drum kit to a group. On the group you put your compressor. To change the level of the drum kit as a whole you can adjust the group track fader. All good.

Let’s then say you do the exact same thing for percussion, rhythm guitars, and keyboards. They all go to one group track each that has some processing on them.

Now you could for example create a VCA for the drum and percussion groups as well as the bass track(s). So you basically have one VCA fader for that part of the rhythm section. Maybe you create another VCA fader for rhythm guitars and keyboards.

So now you have fewer faders to move to adjust those groups of elements.

It could be handy if you want to do something “fancy” and fade some of the stuff in or out for example.

(another note: I’m on Nuendo and implementation of VCAs is I think slightly different)

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3

Keep in mind that there is a bug with the VCA’s.
Assigned tracks lose their value upon reopening the project, which makes the VCA’s useless.
Yes, there is a workaround but still no fix since Cubase 8 or so.
Typical Steinberg, improves the looks but not the bugs :smiling_face_with_tear:

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4

Using the workaround VCAs are no longer useless.

5

Sure, this and a bunch of workarounds for the rest of the untreated bugs.
Should name it Digital Audio Workaround :joy:

6

Thanks @MattiasNYC, that was a really helpful explanation.

On your example where you routed all of the rhythm section to a VCA… Could you not send this to a group (of groups) track as well? I’m not clear on what the advantage of VCA is for this use case.

Thanks in advance.

7

Yes, you could make another group for the rhythm section instead.

There are going to be cases where it’s better to use a group and cases where it is better to use a VCA. Sometimes it’s obvious sometimes not. You really just have to look at each situation and figure out what your goal is and how to best achieve it. The one thing that always applies is if you have processing or post-fader sends on the group in which case the outcome will be different of course.

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