Solo Memory?

On at least a couple ‘real’ desks I’ve worked on there is a ‘solo memory’ kind of thing.

ie. you can hit the global ‘S’ button and cancel all solos but then, instantly get back to the solo selected tracks that you were just using.

One more time: you can toggle instantly between all solos off and a particular selection of soloed tracks.

And on one board (RAMSA?), it even had something like 3 or 4 ‘solo memories’ so you could instantly ‘channel surf’ between your last 3 or 4 soloed selections…

Kind of like the ‘Last’ button on a TV Remote.

I would find this -very- useful.

Maybe Cubase already can do something like this?

bump.

Suntower:

Yeah, it is possible. The way I’ve been doing it is by selecting the channels I want to solo first. Then I hit the “S” key. This will solo the selected channels. Hitting “S” again unsolos 'em. Alternately, hitting the “M” key will mute them. And one other thing…if you select a number of channels where some are muted, hitting the “S” or “M” key will alternate the states of the selected channels. Very handy for quick comping.

Not the dedicated function you’re looking for (particularly regarding multiple presets)…but the technique does pull the function you’ve described off…and with variations, depending on which key is hit and the mute state of the selected channels.

I dunno…give it a shot and see if it works for you.

Right. But after you ‘unsolo’ them, if you hit the big red ‘S’ again, they do not ‘re-solo’. You have to manually, tediously, hit the ‘S’ on EACH INDIVIDUAL CHANNEL -again-.

What I want is to be able to hit the big red ‘S’ in the header and have it -toggle- the last batch of channels I had previously soloed. That’s the -minimum- I want.

Beyond -that- I’d love to have 3-4 ‘presets’ I could instantly toggle between.

I have -no- idea what you mean by this. As I wrote above, this does not work for me at all. Can you explain again in more detail how you achieve this?

TIA,

—JC

Ah. I see where the confusion stems from. Use the “S” and “M” keys on your keyboard…not the virtual buttons on the screen via mouse clicks. Works like a charm.

Of note: this won’t work on Instrument Tracks that haven’t any VSTi’s assigned to them.

THAT. IS. TOTALLY. IN. SANE.

But I thank you for the clarification.

Yeah, it’s not the dedicated preset-able feature that you described (and something I’ve often wanted myself) but it does pull the stunt off, once you’ve gone through the tedium of selecting the tracks for the “trick” to work.

My 17 year old Mackie D8B console can do this in the form of “Snapshots”, where I can preset various mix states (mutes, pans, levels, eq…etc) and pop 'em on anywhere along the timeline. And they can be automated…something I wish Cubase would do…again.

And by that, I will swing into a small rant-tangent. A long time ago, Steinberg had a handle on the power of snapshots in the original incarnation of the Device Panels. There, one could set the controls to modify the target synth and save it as a Snapshot. You could save ten or twelve of these and by clicking on one, you could instantly reprogram the target synth and it was automatable. Not so anymore. Somewhere along the line, someone reprogrammed Device Panels and turned it into the brain-dead cousin no one likes to mention at family functions.

No… the IN.SANE part is that the keystroke works differently from the GUI!!! I cannot STAND when Cubase does that. Clicking the ‘S’ icon should work the same as the key command. Also… while I’m spewing… why the frick do the channels need to be ‘selected’? The ‘alternation’ should occur for tracks that are soloed. The ‘selection’ shouldn’t enter into it AT ALL!!!



Yes. Many ‘real’ mixers I’ve used… at every price point… have had -some- form of ‘solo memory’.

Oh. Steinberg’s pesky inconsistent UI history. I get it. It’s like how many ways you can close the Transport. Well, I hope you can find use for the technique. I use it mostly for comping a set of tracks. I usually select two tracks and mute one via the GUI and then hit the “M” key to swap between the two.