So this long post (sorry) is all about VCA Faders etc. and some ideas and questions about how it works, and how it should work by my opinion, and I’m wondering if it actually is possible to use VCA like I’ll explain.
So even if I’m very pleased with finally being able to centrally control Volume automation on multiple tracks with VCA I also started to think about some deeper stuff, but also and some basic stuff that has really never been completely clear to me. Here are my questions/wonderings:
- LINKING THE (Effects’) PARAMETERS OF MULTIPLE TRACKS:
Can I link, say, COMPRESSOR SETTINGS on multiple audio tracks (say, tracks 1-6) when I already have TWO VCA faders active – one VCA to tracks 1-3 and other to tracks 4-6?
So I have 2 sets of VOCALS TRACKS (tracks 1-3 and 4-6) and I want to control the volume separately for both track sets so I put VCA to them. BUT as for the COMPRESSOR settings I would like to easily adjust it for ALL the tracks 1-6 simultaneously and the same way. Is it possible?
I tried selecting those 6 tracks and add additional VCA to those, even if they already have 2 other VCA faders active (one for tracks 1-3 and other for 4-6) and I didn’t succeed.
Well actually I don’t even know whether VCA Faders can be used to link any other track parameters but Volume. Anyway I intuitively just thought that with VCA fader one could link ANY track parameters, and that one could have multiple VCA faders which could even have some same audio tracks as “members”. Meaning for example that you could use VCA Fader 1 to control the Compressor settings for the tracks 1-4 and VCA Fader 2 to control Volume for tracks 3-6. But I guess that’s not possible. Or is it?
So how do I simultaneously alter some CHANNEL STRIP setting for all the tracks at one go, when the individual tracks are associated with multiple VCA Faders, all Faders having more than 1 track in it? I know I could CTRL+CLICK and select all the individual channels and adjust the STRIP settings in the Mixer by pressing ALT+SHIFT and adjusting with mouse, but I would like to be able to make PERMANENT track parameter links and link sets, so that I wouldn’t have to re-select the desired channels, which is very difficult and prone for errors and takes too much time etc. etc. So I thought that VCA Faders could do this all, but tell me if I’m missing something here.
2. VCA FADERS etc.:
In the Mixer you can add VCA Fader in two ways; one for directly adding selected tracks to the new VCA Fader, and the other for just adding an empty VCA Fader track. So what is this empty VCA Fader track for? How do you use it? Can I add some tracks to it later? It doesn’t even have faders initially.
Oh, just now I also tried this Q-Link function which is quite good but STILL I would like to be able to make some custom track selection presets so then this Q-link would be great. I need to do many simultaneous adjustments for multiple parameters on quite diverse and overlapping track sets and it would be great if I could save at least Track Selection Presets and name them, and then activate Q-Link for quick editing. Even better would be a custom adjuster for which one could select tracks and then the parameter to be adjusted, and the slider of some kind to adjust the setting. But it would also have to work VCA Fader style (for overall automation adjustment when present).
Is it possible, or am I dreaming?
3. GROUP CHANNEL SIGNAL FLOW:
So when for example tracks 1-3 are added into the GROUP TRACK how do the EFFECTS behave? Is it like if you have a COMPRESSOR active on the GROUP TRACK, then do those audio tracks’ data individually pass through Group Channel COMPRESSOR so that all the individual tracks are SEPARATELY compressed? Or do they “sum up” first and then the Compressor would affect only to the overall summed up volume of the individual tracks as a whole? Get it?
And what is the signal flow on Group Track altogether? Does the Group Channel Gain/Effects/Sends come BEFORE the signal is passed to the Audio Track Mixer? Or are the Group Channel settings applied at last point of the signal flow?
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Are the any ways to adjust the signal flow properties anywhere in Cubase, and how?
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And what is the Side-Chain? And what is INSERTS’ ROUTING meant for?
OK, that’s it for now. You might be even more confused than me after reading that bulk. But hopefully you friends could shed some light upon at least some of my mentioned mysteries.
The MOST IMPORTANT being the ability to know how to versatile use VCA Faders for adjusting tracks’ parameters even if the desired tracks are overlapping across multiple VCA Faders. Or whether that’s even possible.
Thank You in advance and please don’t be too harsh on me
-Tommy Dee-
