New Stereo External effects bug - dry track plays even when no effect!

Cubase
,
1

I’m having a strange new bug with the newest update of Cubase 11 - (11.0.2) - Windows 10 computer, multiple UA Apollo as converters.

I use a lot of external effects when I mix. With the new update, when I use a mono external effect (mono out, through the unit/units, back in as mono…) No problems.
However - now, when I create a STEREO external effect - a mono out going into a stereo effect…a strange error occurs. No matter what, I still get some dry, unprocessed signal coming back through the right channel, in addition to the effects.
Here’s the strange part…this happens, even if I completely unplug the effects unit. If I’m sending my signal through the external effect (let’s say “reamp stereo” even if the device is off and all of the cables are unplugged, the track that I am recording to (let’s say “guitar fx stereo” STILL gets the dry signal in the right channel.
I have tried this with multiple effects units, multiple channels out, multiple channels back in…to no avail.

To replicate:

  1. Go to Audio Connections (F4) and add add External Effects
  2. Configuration is Mono Send, Stereo Return
  3. Assign send/return busses
  4. Add fx track to project, stereo
  5. Set desired track to output to new FX track
  6. Create new (stereo) track, with input of new FX track
  7. Test delay compensation.
  8. Try playing track through new effect - effects unit (s) are set to 100% wet signal, no dry signal.
  9. Original, dry track can still be heard (and is recording) into the right channel…

Any ideas at all? I use out of the box stereo effects regularly and this is bringing my workflow to a bit of a bottleneck…

1 Like
2

New twist - if I create the effect as a stereo/stereo - and just send the mono signal to one of the stereo ins, it seems to work as a workaround. Very strange.

3

Hi thnatow,
You are absolutely right. You are not alone in this. For what it’s worth… I’m on version 10.5 and having the same behaviour so it’s not new. Just tested it once more to be sure :slight_smile: I already noticed this in the past and therefore only use Stereo/Stereo on Stereo Channels and Mono/Mono on Mono channels. I just don’t think about it any more because it’s no extra work to do it like this. But… I do agree it’s not working like expected. On top of that I use a BOSS GT-001 guitar FX processor that reports negative delay values (which is common for USB FX devices). The external FX plugin cannot handle negative values so I have to calculate and shift the playback channel to match…

1 Like
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Ah right it’s not just me then as I noticed this too. I thought I was doing something wrong