So, at the moment, i’m working on a band demo (8 songs) with overall 50 tracks (groups, fx channels, audiotracks, miditracks, vst tracks). All of it was recorded in the same enviroment with the same setup, so every session looks and sounds the same (without goups and fx tracks, these where brought in later in the mixing process). Now, after mixing one song, i just want to ‘copy’ the mix to the other songs, so that i only have to finetune it. I know that there are several possible ways to do that in cubase, but i think i just do it wrong:
Multi Track Presets:
According to this video (- YouTube) it is possible to save multible tracks from the arrange window at once with all its fx, sends and preferences. i tried that, but it only works for audio tracks, and all the routing is gone after reloading. So i tried the…
Mixer Presets
This works a bit better, but you have to prepare a lot: your Mixer (and corresponding: your arrange window) has to have the same amount of groups, fx channels, audiotacks, and so on, and they all have to be in the same order or everything will be messed up badly… and it doesnt work for vst tracks. And your routing is gone, too, but if you reload the sends for example, the send-amonut will be the same as in your old projekt. But it have to be at the exact same spot in the mixer as in your old projekt. Wich of course result in a massive re-routing process, too.
Ok, and now: is it just me? Did i miss something or am i just to stupid? For me, it looks like a huge buggy mess, wich is just not implemented correctly…did someone have a better workaround to recerate ALL your tracks and settings? Because this feature is pretty useless for me if it is not working as it should…
Yes its a bit of a mess. The only way i can work properly is to pretty much save each channel individually unless you know you definitely havent changed the track orders or added any different tracks in the destination project. I’ve started saving track presets and creating a new folder in the user area for the song or artist.
I still think the ProTools way is better in that you can pull up a project that has settings you want and extract elements out of it without loading that project and explicitly saving settings. However this only one of the few things that ProTools does better at this stage!
So i’am not the only one with this problem, great. I think i found a solution for my special situation, that only needs a few extraklicks: i just reorder every song, so the tracks have the same order. if something is different, wich in my case are only the amout of vocaltracks, i put them at the bottom of my song. Then i templated everything until it’s not the same as in the other songs, and save this as a VST Mixer peset. Now, i only have to recreate the routing and add the different channels manualy.
I don’t know if i get this right, but then i have to reload ever track individually, which in my case result in 50+ Tracks. Are there any benefits compared to the VST Mixer Preset, which saves every channel at once?
I do that, too, but in this case, the songs already exist and i just wanted to ‘move’ my mix to the other songs. Or do you made an empty template and reload all your wavefiles? That’s no option for me either, becasue i already have done the edits and comping…and sometimes, i change them in the mix if something doesn’t work out right or i miss something.
for your scenario, try exporting the selected track using file > export selected tracks. it creates an xml file including channel settings, inserts, sends; if you have audio channels being routed to groups, you can also save the groups and retain the send assignments. you can then file > import track archive, and drop them into your project. this is the closest to what you’re needing.
track archives seem to work ok but they do not include track folders or track colors oddly. Steinberg needs to spend some time getting this system a bit more consistent in its implementation.
I’m also in the same boat but have made it for just shy of a decade recording bands 5-12 songs ep’s and full lengths. I use a combination of track archiving and mixer channel saving because the “channel preset” is completely useless me. Personally I’d like them re-implement being able to save mixer channels for a multi out vsti but all I can do now is export the vsti track archive(which was impossible until 7.5)