I’m in the market for a new soundcard, and the MR816s are currently strong contenders. Right now I’m considering both the X and the CSX.
There’s one aspect of these interfaces that I’ve not been able to fully understand from reading everything I can from the website and from going through this forum - hope someone can provide a simple answer.
I believe it’s possible to use the DSP to apply effects from within Cubase, so does this mean, for example, I can take any audio channel that I have that I have in a Cubase arrangement and route it to use, say, one of the eight compressors within the CSX?
And if so, will this work as either an insert or as a more typical send/return FX unit?
Or is this just something these soundcards are not designed to do?
Hope this makes sense, and thanks in advance for any help with this.
Yes … when set to 'External Mode" all the built in FX in the 816 are available as standard VST plug -ins in Cubbse’s Plug in list. So you will see 1 instance of the Rev-X reverb and 8 Morph (Eq/compressor) plugs to use.
There are some considerations though :
1: the 8 Morph plug-ins are available as various combinations of Mono/Stereo … can’t remember the options right now, but the total channel count is always 8.
2: when you put the 816 into External Mode all 8 of its digital I/O channels are taken up. This means you can’t use the ADAT or SPDIF inputs as well ( to feed in Live MIDI sources for example). It’s an all or nothing thing. So you can’t use say the Reverb but still access the SPIF input too (unfortunately).
3: It’s obvious … but there is only one instance of the Rev-X … you you can’t go adding it as an insert to multiple channels …you set up a send to do that.
When in Internal FX mode the effects are all applied to the Live Input signals and routed to the 816’s outputs for artist monitoring. They never get to Cubase … so can’t be recorded… or mixed into an output feed that way. The integration into Cubase is so nice I still forget that sometimes … This too is all or nothing. You can’t have the Reverb for monitoring and the Morph Channels as VST plug ins within Cubase.
One more thing … if you use Novation’s AutoMap … don’t let it wrap your 816 plug ins or they won’t work in Cubase.
Good summary, Lee, with one exception. Yes, you can record the FX (on the csx only)! See p 22 of the operation manual concerning the Effect Insertion location button. You can set the FX to be applied to neither the monotor or the input channels, to only the monitor channel, or to BOTH.
Many thanks to you both, this is really helpful for my research.
It’s proving to be a challenge to even find a competitor product at a similar price range that can offer this feature and the direct integration into Cubase in an audio interface for Cubase users.
This too is all or nothing. You can’t have the Reverb for monitoring and the Morph Channels as VST plug ins within Cubase.