What frustrates me most with both Link Group settings and with VCA faders is that once I assign any set of tracks to a group (either linked tracks or VCA Fader), when I select one track from the group to record, all assigned tracks now record arm automatically, and there is no way (to my knowledge) to make it so they don’t! If I open the Edit Link Group Settings, I see options for Volume, Pan, EQ, Dynamics, Sends, Inserts, Mute/Solo/Listen, Automation Read/Write, Routing and Selection, but nothing to control record arm behavior!
To see what I’m talking about follow these steps.
- Create a Halion as an Instrument (or rack) track
- Assign sounds to as many midi channels as you want inside Halion
- Create midi tracks for the sounds you’ve assigned
- Go into the mixer and select a few of the midi tracks
- in the mixer “link selected channels”
- Select one of the midi channels in the group
You’ll notice that - even though you do not have selection checked as a link option - all midi tracks assigned to this group record arm. This functionality can be useful if you are creating layered instruments, but in my case I simply want to group a few tracks together so I can quickly solo/mute them, and maybe draw some common automation. I am not looking at creating a sort of layered sound thats always playing together.
The same situation happens if you assign tracks to VCU faders as well, which is even more annoying as VCU fader should have nothing to do with recording! Ability to turn off record arm for VCA fader groups! - Cubase - Steinberg Forums
Work arounds: I know I can Alt-Select a Linked track as a temporary group bypass, but I must admit I often forget to do this and I’m in for a surprise to find the violin part I thought I was writing turns into a string quartet because I’ve linked them and they automatically turned on when I selected the violin. Then to get them to all turn off I have to select a non-linked track, then re-select using Alt-Select in order to just record the violin. This is such a frustrating process that I’ve completely stopped using both links and VCA faders.
Feature request:
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Create a check box to prevent tracks all linked tracks from record enabling when they are part of a group (just like how there are checkboxes for Volume, Pan, EQ, Dynamics, Sends, Inserts, etc. for both links and VCA faders
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Create a “toggle groups on/off” key command. This will allow users to turn on/off groups at will and will greatly improve usability of groups.