Does anyone know if the Stereo Out bus is better at processing than your average FX bus or Group Track?. I ask because I am considering running my whole project into a ‘Pre Master’ bus so that I can have a certain set of plugins on the Master Bus permanently e.g. Sonarworks etc. And this way I don’t need to rearrange plugins when I decide to add one.
Cheers,
That should be just fine. I do the same thing.
Add as many sub groups as you like.
Rough example, for music:
Drums & Bass to a group
Band instruments to a group
Band Group & Drum & Bass Group to another group
etc.
For plugins like Sonarworks Reference or similar correction plugins that should not be in a final render I would suggest using the control room, if your Cubase version has that. Absolutely worth it…
Okay, so the Control Room is like a post Stereo Out channel. Cool 
The control room plugins effect what you hear and not what will be in the rendered exported mix, so apart from room correction I would t put anything on there that you want to be part of the mix.
I use sonarworks on the control room for speakers and my headphones. Anything you want to be part of the mix should be on the master bus.
Little bit about the CR here, it’s an old video (my workflow has changed a bit since then and it is aimed at headphone mixing), but the section I highlighted explains the concept of the CR quite nicely.:
Hi,
Do you know you can rearrange plug-ins quite simple way?
So the re-arranging is not really difficult.
But to answer your question… No, Stereo Out bus is not special.
Personally, I keep the master bus completely free of any processing except for a Brickwall Limiter and a Dither that I activate or deactivate as needed. This gives me the freedom to easily switch between the mix and one or more reference tracks which are routed to the main output.
I have as many MIX Buses (A-B-C… or Pop-Jazz-Rock…) with processings suitable for each musical style. The volume of each MIX Bus is controlled by a single Bus which I call Level MIXbus, I adjust the routing as needed. It gives me a lot of flexibility. As for parallel compression, everyone has their own way of managing it, individually, in a group or on the main mix. As for the room control, it is very useful for tools like Sonarworks or other, it’s very personal to everyone.
In addition to all above, there is one thing you have to remember. On all the channel types in cubendo, the pan comes the very last of the chain.
I.e if you insert a brick wall or a dither on an output including master, even if they are inserted to post fader insert slots, those slots are pre panner. Moving the panner makes the signal after the brick wall overload or renders the dithering meaningless. So you always have to make sure you don’t touch the panner of the output busses.
Dang, you’re right, of course, i never thought about that. But then I never thought about panning the master bus anyway, that way lies insanity…
Exactly my reaction.
Staring at the obvious and never even seeing it.
