I am wondering if Direct Monitoring is compatible with the Presonus Studio 192. It’s greyed out over here. Search comes up ambiguous. I am using it with USB 2.0, because my mobo does not play nice with the 3.0 ports. Is it possible that the Studio 192 supports Direct Monitoring with USB 3.0 and not USB 2.0? Or does it not support it at all?
Using a USB 2 or 3 connection has nothing to do with this. The way I understand it is that the “Direct Monitoring” function in Cubase is greyed out because Cubase cannot control the Universal Control (UC) mixer used with the Studio 192 (or my Studio 192 Mobile).
But you can still use the 192 DSP monitoring function by going into the UC interface and making sure the mixer is not set to “Mixer Bypassed”. Then you would have to set up the outputs in Cubase so that you don’t hear the output from Cubase and the 192 DSP outputs at the same time.
Just wondering why you want/need to use the Studio 192 direct monitoring?
I ask because several years ago when I first purchased my Studio 192 Mobile I had it set up to use the UC mixer. To be honest… it was a PIA so I have since had the UC mixer set to “Mixer Bypassed” with no issues at all.
Regards 
Hi Prock, thank you for the reply.
I’m wanting to use Direct Monitoring because I want to use external hardware synths while monitoring through effect processing within Cubase - ie: a Reaktor Effect, or more simply, just a reverb. When clicking the Monitor button in the Cubase Mixer, I can hear the external synth, but there is a major latency - with and without any insert effects. I’ve muted the passthrough channel in Universal Control and I’m attempting to monitor through Cubase alone. I’m on a mission to be able to retain MIDI control of my hardware synths as long as possible before bouncing them to audio - but in order to do that I need to also be able to apply various DSP effects within Cubase. It’s my understanding that Direct Monitoring is the answer to this - but of course I could have the wrong idea here…
Direct (hardware) monitoring simply routes the input of your device to the output of the device without going to Cubase first.
You would be hearing the dry signal with only the internal DSP and AD/DA latency.
If you want to monitor with plugin FX and the latency is to big, reduce the buffer size, if possible.
Gotcha, so it doesn’t do what I thought it might do. So in my case there’s really no need for Direct Monitoring, since I can just monitor via Universal Control with zero latency. It has a few rudimentary built-in effects that can be useful. I guess the plugin FX will have to happen post-bounce. Can’t really get the buffer size down low enough to be workable here, so I’ll just do things in pieces, save patches, and keep notes in the notepad. 
O have Direct Montiroing with my MR816x here but I dont even use it. Its just as easy to use the Mixer Console software that comes with it. I can still monitor with reverb with it BUT I dont have to deal with latency this way
The ONLY thing Direct gives you is the bypassing of using your software mixer app on the front end
Use your Universal Control App. No need at all for Direct Monitoring inside Cubase for any interface IMO
Yep - I figure the console software should theoretically be lower latency in all cases anyway.