No stereo out????

Cubase
1

Hi

Ok I’m making progress with Cubase 6 but now I have another problem. My Yamaha motif xf 8 is connected to my motu 828 mk3 which is firewired to my imac. Now I can get midi input signals and even playing back the midi tracks I’ve just laid down I can hear sound. But for some reason I cannot get any output (stereo out) signal. In the input/output tab of each track I have input=all midi inputs and outputs=motu 828mk3. I have checked the output tab in devices and it is set to main 1 and main 2. So I have no idea what’s going on.

It’s weird that I can hear playback but there is no output signal. Interestingly enough my mic, which is input=mono and output=stereo gives me an output just not the midi? Any ideas anyone!!???

2

Well, as always - MIDI is not audio sending MIDI Data to your MOTU out will generate sousnd in your MOTU to get it back into Cubase, you have to connect it audio-wise, or create an external instrument.

3

Let’s see if I can help you out here…

The first thing you need to do is create an input bus in the VST Connections window. To do this, Press F4, click on the inputs tab and add a bus with the inputs that your Motif is connected to.

Then, create an audio track in the project window and set its input to the one you just created in the VST Connections window and the output to the Main Outs.

Ok, now click on the little speaker icon (it’s next to the record enable button). When you play your Motif, you should be getting sound going from the track you just created to the main stereo output. If you hear the sound twice, most likely it is coming from the MOTU CueMix FX as well. In this case, launch CueMix FX and mute the output.

4

Manual pages 15-30 to start with…

5

Music Lover - Excellent advice in the above posts!

As the above posts are saying, you need to connect the Motif in two different ways to the MOTU - MIDI (which it looks like you’ve done successfully) and audio (which you didn’t indicate in your post you’d done).

The connections you described allow you to do the following, using the signals paths described:

1. Record a MIDI Track
Motif MIDI > MOTU > Cubase MIDI track.

2. Play back a MIDI Track
Cubase MIDI track > MIDI into MOTU > MIDI to Motif > Motif plays sounds

But since Cubase “Stereo Out” is audio, it only makes sense that you will have nothing coming out of there, because you have not sent any audio IN to Cubase!

One way to do that is to use the internal VSTi’s - routing your MIDI track to Halion 1 for example. But since you paid a lot of nice money for your Motif, you probably would like to use its nice sounds every now and then. So you need two extra steps to do that - namely route an audio cable from your Motif audio L/Mono out to the MOTU audio left in (the MOTU will have a similar name if that isn’t it exactly), and from your Motif audio R out to the MOTU audio right in. Use T/S plugs. Route them to a different set of inputs than your Microphone input.

Then, just like you set up an audio input Cubase for your microphone, do the same for the L/Mono and R outputs of your Motif.
.
.
.

Now when you play back a MIDI track in Cubase, the signal path in #2 above will be expanded to the following:

3. Play back a MIDI Track so that it makes sounds come out of Cubase “Stereo Out”
Cubase MIDI track > MIDI into MOTU > MIDI to Motif > Motif plays sounds and also > Motif sends audio to MOTU > MOTU sends audio to Cubase > Cubase (after any processing you want to do to the audio) sends audio to “Stereo Out”

When you see sound coming out of Cubase’s “Stereo Out”, then you can make some tweaks:

  1. Some interfaces like the keyboard stereo audio coming into a single stereo aux in, rather than two separate (left, right) inputs. To do that you will need an “insert” cable, which is a “Y” cable so that the Motif L/Mono and R outputs are mechanically joined (those would be TS plugs) into one, and then you’d plug that one (a TRS plug) into the stereo aux in of the MOTU.
    Music Lover - Excellent advice in the above posts!

As the above posts are saying, you need to connect the Motif in two different ways to the MOTU - MIDI (which it looks like you’ve done successfully) and audio (which you didn’t indicate in your post you’d done).

The connections you described allow you to do the following, using the signals paths described:

1. Record a MIDI Track
Motif MIDI > MOTU > Cubase MIDI track.

2. Play back a MIDI Track
Cubase MIDI track > MIDI into MOTU > MIDI to Motif > Motif plays sounds

But since Cubase “Stereo Out” is audio, it only makes sense that you will have nothing coming out of there, because you have not sent any audio IN to Cubase!

One way to do that is to use the internal VSTi’s - routing your MIDI track to Halion 1 for example. But since you paid a lot of nice money for your Motif, you probably would like to use its nice sounds every now and then. So you need two extra steps to do that - namely route an audio cable from your Motif audio L/Mono out to the MOTU audio left in (the MOTU will have a similar name if that isn’t it exactly), and from your Motif audio R out to the MOTU audio right in. Use T/S plugs. Route them to a different set of inputs than your Microphone input.

Then, just like you set up an audio input Cubase for your microphone, do the same for the L/Mono and R outputs of your Motif.

Now when you play back a MIDI track in Cubase, the signal path in #2 above will be expanded to the following:


3. Play back a MIDI Track so that it makes sounds come out of Cubase “Stereo Out”
Cubase MIDI track > MIDI into MOTU > MIDI to Motif > Motif plays sounds and also > Motif sends audio to MOTU > MOTU sends audio to Cubase > Cubase (after any processing you want to do to the audio) sends audio to “Stereo Out”

When you see sound coming out of Cubase’s “Stereo Out”, then you can make some tweaks:

  1. Some interfaces like the keyboard stereo audio coming into a single stereo aux in, rather than two separate (left, right) inputs. To do that you will need an “insert” cable, which is a “Y” cable so that the Motif L/Mono and R outputs are mechanically joined (those would be TS plugs) into one, and then you’d plug that one (a TRS plug) into the stereo aux in of the MOTU.

  2. When you are recording into Cubase with the Motif, it can help to turn local control off in the Motif (you can find that in the manual), otherwise you hear the sound twice (once when you play, and once when it “loops back” from Cubase), and you can get weird phasy artifacts.

  3. When you are recording into Cubase with the Motif, it can help to turn local control off in the Motif (you can find that in the manual), otherwise you hear the sound twice (once when you play, and once when it “loops back” from Cubase), and you can get weird phasy artifacts.

6

ilmoto and alexis

Thanks heaps for your posts very informative. Firstly in response, yes alexis already connected audio from my motif to the motu. Maybe I should try using the audio track instead of instrument track.

When I try putting in the instrument track I get stereo out but can only add one track as when I go to add another instrument track (2nd channel of the motif) it wont allow me to select the motif as an output as its greyed out saying that it is (used).

7

So you’re using an Instrument Track? You would have needed to set up an external instrument bus in order to do this with your external hardware. Is this the case? Press F4 and go to the External Instruments tab. That’s where you need to set it up. Then, choose that as the output for the Instrument Track.

Here is where you need to create an audio bus for your Motif



Here is where you need to set the output to the bus you created. In this case, mine is called External Instrument