Issue with outboard equip. + 3 Lynx Auroras + Cubase 7.

Cubase
1

Right, this will be a long one.

After getting a few bits of outboard equipment, I started using the external effects feature in Cubase. My rig consisted of:

2 x Lynx Aurora 16VT
2 x Lynx AES16e PCIe cards.

This worked great, and has become an integral part of my workflow. But, more outboard means less channels for summing, so I recently purchased another Lynx Aurora. As I have no more available PCI slots in my computer, I opted for an ADAT solution, having a Lynx LS-ADAT connected to one of the AES cards and an LT-ADAT card in the 3rd. Aurora.

Installing the cards went like a breeze (after I got the necessary piece of software to allow the AES card to run 32 channels…), and the 3rd. Aurora’s channels showed up in “Device Connections”. I assigned the connected outboard equipment to channels I wanted them to be at and… nothing.

At first I could not get it to work. Then, by chance, I noticed that by going in and changing the sample rate to any other value, I could get the signal to reach the ADAT-connected Aurora as well.

So, all’s well so far. Or that’s what I thought. It turns out, even thought the Aurora passes sound, seemingly through the outboard components, the sound is not altered. I cannot hear the processed sound coming from, say, my API 2500, just the clean unprocessed signal.

I can see the signal leaving Cubase, entering the Aurora, going into the 2500, leaving it again, and entering the Lynx, and back into Cubase. But no processed sound. So, OBVIOUSLY, the signal I’m hearing is not the one being sent to the outboard compressor. But why, then, is it that when I break the signal chain on the patchbay, the sound stops?

I am at my wit’s end here.

2

Have you looked at the ‘Direct Monitoring’ features of the Lynx signal chain and the Aurora ASIO driver settings related to Direct Monitoring?

3

I’m curious to know if you have made any progress…

4

I think I understand what you are trying to do. The sound you hear is the straight through sound.

Gads, so many things. If you are routing from Cubase to an external device via the Cubase external bus then this would be a previously recorded track you are sending out. Then you would return it to an open input of the device that you use to interface with Cubase. And of course you need to ‘ping’ the signal so that it compensates for the send and return trip out and back to Cubase. You can’t sent a non-recorded track out from Cubase because, well, it doesn’t exist. And this addresses the notion of sending a live input (the sound you are trying to record) out from Cubase to the external bus - no. Well, you may understand all of this and in which case I am just droning. Sorry. My confusion with what you have written is that NOWHERE have you said that you ‘pressed record’. And this is my point. Using the external bus in Cubase, you send a recorded track out to an external processor, and then back into an open input of Cubase, press record, and reap the results: a duplicate of the prerecorded track but now enhanced by the external effect that you sent it through. And here you could parallel it to the original or simply use it to replace the original.

OK, rockrecorder, are we on the same page?