This might sound like a dumb question, but after using Cubase for years it still confuses me. Plugins loaded as Sends can be either Pre- or Post-Fader, indicated by an icon that looks like a half-moon with a dot next to it flipped either left or right.
The trouble is, the icon doesn’t “look” like anything I recognize as part of a signal path, so how do I tell which is Pre- and which is Post-? Maybe someone can explain what the icon is supposed to look like?
Fortunately I don’t often change it from the template, but if ever I do, I get confused, and literally have to do A-B comparisons while sliding the fader up and down to figure out which is enabled. Which of course I forget by the next time. Any mnemonic tips or explanation of the iconography welcome, thanks.
Hi there!
Look how the Post Fader icon looked in an older Cubase version:
In Cubase 11, the half-moon represents the fader and the dot the pre (before the fader - if it’s on the left) or post (after the fader - if it’s on the right) signal.
The fact that the OP had to create a thread to decrypt the pre/post fader iconography shows that obviously, something is wrong in the symbols used and @alin89c screenshot clearly demonstrate it. Sure, the ‘half-moon’ can recall the half-side of a knob, but precisely, a fader is not a knob…
maybe I’m underestimating the work needed, but it shouldn’t been rocket science to make the tooltips more informative : instead of Pre-/Post-Fader in both cases, I think it would be better to see EITHER Pre-Fader OR Post-Fader…
Here’s another idea:
In analog studio mixing consoles, sends are always controlled with a potentiometer, whereas the volume of the channels tends to be controlled with a fader. To me, the icons look as if the semicircle is a potentiometer and the square dot is a fader that is positioned in the middle. But then the icons would be reversed if you read them from left to right, because then the icon Poti in front of Fader would mean Pre-Fader and the icon Fader in front of Poti would mean Post-Fader. But since I’ve been using Cubase, it’s the other way around. Where is my mistake? Am I the only one who sees it this way?
The audio channel signal is sent to the FX channel before the audio channel volume fader.
Post-fader sends
The audio channel signal is sent to the FX channel after the audio channel volume fader.
It helped me to think of the order of the signal chain and focus on the dot (which is the signal itself). And it’s always better to have a visual understanding of what’s going on behind the scenes (in the chain).
