I’m newer here, but it would be awesome to have more render options in Cubase.
For example, having an option where you can choose up to which insert/s to render your audio, but with the same Raw pre fader/panner event function.
I ran into a more time consuming way of doing this with an instrument track where I’m using Groove Agent to trigger Slate Trigger 2. If you do Raw, it doesn’t bounce Trigger 2, which is the task I’m trying to achieve. If I do Channel Settings, then it does every insert, unless I disable them. It also takes into account the fader level and panning which gets baked in to the event. If you have automation in any other scenario, you have to disable your automation and disable the plugins you don’t want rendered just to get your unity gain signal that you want. It’s a lot of workaround just to get a rendered version of just one insert. Sure you can do it right when you choose the drum sample, however, sometimes you don’t know if it’s the right sample until you live with it for a bit and change the levels and processing, etc. This also isn’t limited to choosing drum samples with Trigger 2 either; this would be with amp sims and many other sounds.
That’s why I propose a “Render With Inserts” option that provides a checkbox to include the inserts you have on that particular track, but it would render the event Pre fader/panner, while also achieving the same thing it does now, where it includes every other plugin you didn’t render on the new rendered track.
Or, another way I propose (which may be more streamlined) is if for example, you use the same plugin on the first slot of all of your drum channels and you want those baked in and committed; if you select all the tracks you want to render, perhaps there would be an option called “Render Up To Insert #” where you can choose the insert number you want to render up to while also keeping the event levels Pre fader/panner.
This would be a very useful and welcome time saving feature! Thanks for your consideration!
I think he is quite clearly explaining what he is missing:
I also would very much appreciate 1) freezing up to a certain insert and 2) rendering the inserts without fadervolume/pan and automation taken into account.
I often use cpu heavy amp-sims and freezing up to the amp-sim with the rest of the chain being editable would be great.
Pro Tools has this feature for ages.
There is no simple and easy way to render a track with just one insert of your choice without having to turn them all off. Further, you then have to reset your fader and panning values just to get the same level that you wanted as Raw. If you have volume automation on that track or any automation for that matter, you have to disable it all just to get a Raw version (pre fader and pre panner unity gain) with one insert on it. It’s a lot of workaround just to render a track the way you want it. An option to “Render up to Insert # pre fader/panner” would fix that immediately.
Freeze isn’t an option; it’s not permanent.
Mixdown single or multiple tracks with settings for automation, effects prints all the things you don’t need or want.
I gave the specific reasons why it would be useful, especially with a Slate Trigger track or an amp sim. If you get further in the mix stage and find everything is working and want those "raw’ sounds to be baked in (good practice), you have to literally go through one track at a time, disable automation, change panning or volume levels etc., disable all the plugins you don’t want, just to get a simple render of a drum sample track or amp sim at unity gain, and then go back and change your faders and panning to where you think they were and enable all the plugins you took off. You obviously can’t just hit undo until it’s back either because you’ll undo the render. Imagine having to do this on 20-30 tracks. What a nightmare.
Yup! This is what gave me the idea; Pro Tools does this easily.
At the end of the day, it’s not about making Cubase into Pro Tools; it’s about having great useful quality of life features that compete with other DAWs. Even if every DAW implemented the same features with different names, they STILL wouldn’t be the same. I hope proud thoughts don’t get in the way of implementing very useful quality of life features when referencing other DAWs. I’m starting to learn Cubase for a reason.
The first time I used the render-to-audio with the channel option (which is the one I use most frequently for converting instrument tracks to audio), I was unpleasantly surprised that it baked in the fader level. It also seems inconsistent in that it doesn’t bake in pan settings (and I’d definitely prefer if it didn’t bake in either).
I’ve gotten used to working around the behavior for the typical scenarios where I would use these enhancements were they available.
In the case for the first scenario, I’ve just gotten used to setting the fader to unity before rendering, and I usually leave it there and disable the instrument track, noting the level I’ve set and using that as the starting point for the audio track (I pretty much never do automation at that early stage). If I need to make changes to the instrument track in the future and re-render, I’ll have to do it in a context other than how it is sitting in my working mix at that point, but I just drag the audio from the newly rendered audio to track to the originally rendered audio track, thus keeping any changes I’ve made on the newer track since the original render.
In the case for the second scenario, I bypass or disable the plugins after what I want baked into the audio while rendering, then just copy (or move) those plugins to the rendered audio track.
I used to mainly use the freeze function, which didn’t affect fader levels and such. But I’ve more recently started my real mixing at the audio level, and adopting a practice of making what I bake into the audio starting points be the equivalent of what I’d have tracked to tape in the old hardware days (including tape emulation as the last plugin in that chain in most cases). While I do some degree as mixing as I go, especially in cases with short deadlines, I’m much more likely now to work on the arrangement and tracking in parallel, with only work mixes along the way, only setting up the bus structure I use for the real mix once I’ve finished the arranging/tracking/editing, albeit keeping the ability to bring in older iterations if I change my mind later on.
And this is exactly why I would love an option to Render the audio with the inserts you choose but being able to choose up to which insert you want as well as having it be pre fader, so that it’s like having it be committed to tape, as well as it being good practice for session archiving, and an easier workflow for achieving that “to tape” practice a lot easier and quicker; less steps and more intuitive.
Yup! It comes in handy for things like printing your drum samples, as well as printing amp sim tones “to tape”, or any other sound you want to tape.
I also fail to understand why the option exists (if I’m understanding it correctly) to be able to get all of your levels and automation and processing and FX channels baked in, but NOT have the master bus be involved in that. Usually, if you’re bouncing your tracks as stems, you’re 99% gonna want everything that was on your master bus anyway, and if you don’t, it’s easier to turn off the plugins on your master bus and bounce, as opposed to changing fader levels, plugins, etc. just to print a sound pre fader to tape. If it were up to me, I would personally swap that function of all processing minus master bus in favor for a pre fader “up to insert #” feature any day, personally.
Also, I’d like to add that if for Render In Place, I think right now it is a massive bloated operation where for every track/event it renders, it considers every send and all the effects on that send, all the way up to the master bus. For some reason it also seeks input/info/syncing from the video track if there is one. If my Render settings are “Channel Settings” only, why does it still have to consider every other effect and routing in the project? Isn’t that a complete waste of resource that eventually bogs down Cubase itself?
Also if there are a massive number of events to render, Cubase eventually starts spasming and becomes hardly responsive, and I have to quit and restart again. At least on my end. The only workaround for me is to render small batches of events at a time.
I think there is an option in the render to audio function to include the master bus. However, for bouncing stems, I always use the export mixdown function with multiple sources, and that also definitely provides the option to include the entire signal chain (i.e. including the master bus) – it just takes a lot longer when doing that since it actually has to bounce each source serially, rather than being able to bounce multiple possibilities in parallel (e.g. like it can do for just bouncing the master to multiple MP3 formats in addition to WAV).
I’m not sure if it is actually having to consider “every other effect and routing in the project”, but one scenario where this matters is when there are sidechain inputs coming from another track. For example, let’s say your rendering a bass track, but you have a compressor on that track with a sidechain from the kick drum. You’d want the effects of that sidechain in the compressor to be included in the render, so the render would at least need to include the processing in the kick channel when rendering the bass.
True, understood if there is a sidechain detected. I never use sidechaining. Besides, even if there were sidechaining, it should be a process that happens above rendered tracks. It shouldn’t be part of the print itself.
Steinberg should at least give us the strict option to render only the settings on the track being rendered, without considering everything else in the project, and move on to the next render event until it completes. As it is, Cubase still does not have sandboxing capability when it comes to plugin memory leaks.
This is (potentially) an impossibility because the plugin with the sidechain may be in the middle of the inserts for the channel being rendered. Or at the beginning or at the end. The effect of the sidechain needs to be taken into account wherever it exists in the signal chain. Otherwise, what you’re hearing after the render will be different from what you’re hearing after the render.
FWIW, I tend to use sidechaining a fair bit, especially with new intelligent plugins like Waves Curves Resolve, which can help with masking issues between tracks. For example, say the instrumental mix is conflicting with the vocals. You can put Resolve on the instrumental mix bus, and sidechain it from the vocals (lead vocal or submix of all the vocals), and then Resolve helps make space in the instrumental mix only when the vocal is happening, using the equivalent of dynamic EQ/compression, but potentially with a pretty fine level of spectral analysis to minimize the “damage” that might occur with more broad-brushed techniques.
Over the weekend, I also started trying out PSP Audioware’s new PSP Levelizer, which is a high-end fader riding-type plugin that can also take a sidechain, and not just “all or nothing” on the side chain front, but with a balance between the signal being “ridden” and the sidechain (including the potentially of filtering the sidechain to affect how it influences the signal being ridden). While I’ve long used this sort of plugin for riding vocal levels (e.g. Waves Vocal Rider, iZotope Nectar Auto-Level), especially while auditioning parts during comping (I may end up manually riding the levels once I’ve done the comp) and bass (e.g. Wave Bass Rider), the new PSP plugin is something that lets me use it in some other contexts, like riding a fiddle part both on its own and influenced by the lead vocal, and riding a lap steel part based on its own signal and a blend of the fiddle part and the vocal.
Of course, all this sort of thing could be painstakingly automated to accomplish similar things, but there’s only so much time in a day/week/month year.
I’m not a chart producer, i’m a film composer so I really do not care about that kind of stuff. There should be options for the kinds of producers like yourself, and options for the kinds of producers like myself, where we normally deal with 100 over track counts.
