Thanks for finally fixing the bug where the “mute pre-send when mute” preference isn’t saved correctly. Hallelujah! However, there seems to still be a problem when using pre-fader sends for sidechaining when the sidechain signal is coming from an instrument track. The sidechained channel doesn’t received audio from the instrument track unless the instrument is also soloed. Rendering the instrument to audio resolves the problem, but obviously it would be nice if the implementation of sidechains was consistent throughout the program so you can always hear what you’re doing. Please change this in the future. And if I’m wrong, please correct me!
In this example Retrologue should activate the compressor through a pre-fade side chain when the note is played.
It does when the Retrologue track is not muted. As soon the track is muted it doesn’t anymore.
If I use an audio track instead of an Instrument track the mute status of that track is not affecting the side chaining.
Ah! But here I will have to call upon @Martin.Jirsak for his advice, who has many times said that the mute button in the track list and the mute button in the mixconsole mute different things when it comes to instrument tracks. Track’s mute mutes the midi path, while mixconsole’s mute mutes the audio path. So when you mute the track, no data is sent to Prologue, no key is pressed, no sound is produced at all, so no sound reaches the sidechain. But if you mute the instrument from the mixconsole the side chain signal should come through. At least that’s how I remember things.
(Sorry I can’t test this right now before answering, but I’m away from a Cubaseworthy PC)
Have just tested this and as I suspected, when the instrument channel is muted (either in arrangement or on mixer) no sidechain compression occurs since the instrument channel is not producing any sound.
Doesn’t really seem like a bug to me since an instrument channel, an audio channel and a midi channel are all kinda different in their behaviour.
Yup. Sorry, I was remembering wrong, I just checked in Cubase. Instrument Tracks’ sends won’t work when muted. Rack Instruments will work though, the send passes through fine when muted.
To me it’s not a question of bug or not bug, it’s just frustrating behavior because I’d like to always be able to hear what’s going on with my sidechains when I’m in solo.
I am currently getting into parallel processing using sidechain sends from instrument tracks. So this has now become a problem for me.
Problem: when I solo any track, all (pre-fader) sidechain sends from all instrument tracks stop sending signal.
So if you solo any track that has processing somewhere in the signal chain that is fed by a sidechain from an instrument track, that processing stops working and is inaudible.
Using Listen mode instead of Solo is not solving this, because it ‘listens’ only to the selected track, but I want to hear subsequent group channel processing as well.
My workaround now is to route every instrument track that has a send to a sidechain to its own individual group channel, solo defeat the instrument track, and use the corresponding ‘instrument group channel’ to solo the instrument. That will keep sends from the source instrument track going. The problem is that I have to create all these group channels, which clutter up the project and make the routing unnecessarily complicated.
If only the preference Mute Pre-Send when Mute would work on instrument tracks…
I’m on Cubase Pro 9.5. Is this behavior different in later versions?
Here’s the working situation in the mixconsole. Pre-fader sends from three instrument tracks feeding the sidechain of an insert on the target group channel:
And here’s the situation when I mute one of the instrument tracks (or any track in the project, for that matter). All sends from all instrument tracks except the soloed one are muted. I can no longer hear the proper processing on the Submix group channel:
Please note the sends are routed to the sidechain of the insert effect, not to the group channel directly (the sidechain destination name also starts with the word “Submix”, which may confuse you).
So is the send on the HALion Sonic 01 instrument track still sending signal to the sidechain of the compressor when you mute the HALion Sonic 01 instrument track or solo one of the other instrument tracks? With the preference Mute Pre-Send when Mute unchecked? That’s what I want.
You should deactivate the sends on the two other instrument tracks to be sure :-).
