I’ve discovered that I am able to do a real-time render in place of my external synths (via an instrument track which is set up as an external instrument/midi). I simply choose to render the full signal path and it works great.
Except for one thing - during the rendering process, it does it silently (I can see however that it’s still working because my interface meters are busy, and when it finishes, the recording is fine). Is this normal behavior? Is there any way to make it so that I can hear it as it renders?
You might wonder why I’d want that, but the answer is simple - so I can walk over to my synth and record live tweaking such as filter cutoff and other knob-twiddling.
I’ve otherwise used Pro Tools in a similar fashion, in there they call it ‘commit’ and you choose to do it online (real-time). It continues to play audio live so you can fiddle with knobs if you wish, and because you’re recording audio you capture that live performance.
It’s not clear to me why Cubase would have to go silent for this process, so perhaps it’s a setting somewhere?
On a similar note, I’ve noticed that when I use the media browser and click on loops or one-shots to preview, they are also silent – until I drag them onto the timeline. So this had me thinking maybe there’s some setting where it’s not outputting to my audio interface assigned to stereo out.
I’m running Cubase 12.0.70 in Silicon mode on a MacStudio M2.
You can do the same by using Export Audio Mixdown, if you would Export just the one track (in real time). The Export offers the audio feedback feature for sure.
Myself, I wouldn’t do it. You can play the project back, tweak the parameters and record the tweaking as MIDI (or automation) data to be able to edit it later. So you can keep it live if you want to, or you can edit it (even in the future), if you want to. In any case, you have the choice.
Hi, thanks for responding. I tried the Export Audio Mixdown approach (real-time), and it too was silent while exporting. The resulting track was fine, so it seems to be the same issue where the live monitoring of exporting isn’t going through my stereo output of my interface.
I appreciate the concern – once I have a creative idea of what I want, I usually prefer to commit and record it as if it’s a live performance of an acoustic instrument, flaws and all. I always keep the original trigger/midi track around in case I do wish to change something, but having done it this way for years I rarely find I go back “just in case.” This creative process works for my brain!
hey wing - set up an audio track and route your live synth’s outs to it, arm record, and then record just the synth you are tweaking. If you want to record multiple at once, you can do so via recoding to multiple tracks.
Cool, yep, I’m familiar with that workflow, was just looking to a R.I.P/Bounce/Commit function which simply works faster (select clip and render without having to set up new tracks as it will create the track for you, and then mute the original track after that). Just a few less steps and less routing fuss. It does seem weird I can’t hear audio in the media browser or real-time export leading me to believe it’s a setting somewhere…
But in the meantime the manual track suggestion is what I’ll do in the case that I wish to capture live knob-twiddling. Thanks!
Ah, I seem to have fixed both issues - it had to do with Control Room in the audio connections menu not being set up correctly, according to this page. Under “Monitor 1” it was not connected. I pointed it to my interface’s primary stereo out and now it all works - real-time render in place + export as well as the media browser previews.
However, it did warn me that it had to break the connection I had previously established to my interface on the “Output” panel. So now Stereo Output is disconnected:
I am not sure if this is an issue, though, because playback of my timeline is working ok. I guess I haven’t understood the difference between this Output page and Control Room, so when I originally installed Cubase I set up my interface on this output page instead. At least I got it working!
If you use Control Room you can leave the Output Bus disconnected. Thats how most of us operate it.
The little speaker icon in front of “Stereo Out” is the indicator that the signal to this bus will be routed to the Control Room Main Mix.
Found this thread as a result of searching for a solution to an almost identical problem so adding to this rather than a new thread.
I’m trying to accomplish the same thing… tweaking synth parameters whilst the audio is being rendered.
I can hear the audio from the external instrument whilst the rendering is taking place but all other audio in Cubase is muted for the duration of the render, so I don’t have a reference to what I’m tweaking against.
For rendering a vst instrument this makes sense [ as the bounce is not in real time ] but for external HW, it’s having to render in real-time so one might assume the project would also play back in real time.
I’m on Cubase 13 Pro [ latest version ] on OSX Ventura, all of my settings appear to be correct. Is this just not possible or could I be missing something?
I could create an audio track to record from the External Instrument bus, but as Wing said it requires more setup [ especially if one has multiple different synths that would be better ‘tweaked live’ ] so if anyone ‘knows the secret’ I’d be hugely grateful.
The audio from the HW is routed correctly [ through an external instrument ]… and I can hear the HW audio during playback and rendering.
The issue [ for me ] is that whilst rendering the HW I cannot hear the audio from all of the other tracks playing… There’s level being shown on the MixConsole meters but any audio [ other than the rendering HW track ] is not heard.
If I abort the rendering I can hear the other tracks for a second and the other tracks play fine before and after rendering, they’re just not audible whilst the rendering is taking place.
I have created an External instrument, the audio is connected to an input from one of my UAD Apollo’s [ the midi is also setup correctly ]
I have added the Ext Instrument to an Instrument track, routed to Stereo Out.
The Stereo out is routed via Control Room, and goes to a virtual output on my master Apollo.
I have a midi event on the HW instrument track, this plays the HW instrument correctly [ the signal is heard at all times and renders correctly ].
My issue is not with the HW track itself but with the fact that all other tracks in the project [ which are all routed to ‘Stereo Out’ except for a silent SC trigger track ] are not being heard through the stereo outs whilst the HW instrument track is rendering.
I’ve tried changing the output routing so the Stereo Output goes through the Output rather than Control Room and I’ve tried routing to the Mon L / R of the master Apollo. Neither of these had any impact. I cannot hear the rest of the song whilst rendering the HW event.
If I render a VST event, I also do not hear any of the other tracks playing. This is expected as it’s not a realtime bounce.
During the rendering of the HW event I can observe the levels of the other tracks playing in the MixConsole Window but I cannot hear the audio… it’s as if the audio engine will not allow anything else to play whilst the HW event is being rendered. My post was mostly to clarify whether or not this is expected behavior.
[ As an aside, I tried doing the same procedure with a HW instrument in Bitwig and was able to hear other tracks whilst doing a bounce in place ]
The ‘Chords’ track is one [ of many ] tracks that is not audible when trying to render the HW OB6 event.
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘Which bus do you use for the export’… I’m just selecting a midi event on the HW OB6 [ external ] instrument track, then selecting ‘Render Selection’ [ Dry / Keep source events unchanged ] and Cubase renders onto a [ new ] audio track.
As I keep stressing, this procedure is working as expected, the issue is that I cannot hear everything else in the project playing whilst the rendering is occurring.
Render in Place is “local”. Cubase renders just the selected event. That’s definition of the Render in Place. If you want to mixdown, go for Export Audio Mixdown.
I only want to render the selected event [ the external HW synth ].
I can hear the audio from the HW synth as it is rendering without a problem.
During the rendering, all other tracks in the project are silent, even though their levels in the MixConsole suggest they are playing, they are not coming out of the Stereo Output [ the meter there only shows the HW level ].
Whilst it is rendering I want to tweak parameters on the HW synth in context with everything else that is happening in the mix but all I can hear is the Rendering track, not the full mix.
The whole purpose of the Render in Place is to render just the selected event. So Cubase Mutes all other tracks. Therefore you don’t hear them.
If you want to hear the rest, go for the Export Audio Mixdown, select just the one track as the source and set it so, Cubase imports the exported file back to the project, once the export is done.
I understand the concept of Render in Place and in a non-real time situation not hearing any audio makes perfect sense. For a realtime bounce, not sure why it would be necessary to mute all other tracks. [ Bitwig doesn’t do it, don’t think Logic does it ].
I just tried the Export Audio Export with the single track selected and [ unless I’m missing a setting ] the result is exactly the same, only the audio of the selected track is audible whilst exporting.
Looks like recording into another audio track is the only way to monitor everything whilst recording ‘live’ synth parameter tweaks.
