This is a bit confusing. Does anyone know if this is a bug or if it’s by design?
The Cubase online manual has only this to say about Solo Defeat: “You can also click and hold Solo to activate solo defeat. In this mode, the channel is not muted when you solo another channel.”
And it works as expected - except if the track you’re soloing has a different output bus than the track(s) that are solo defeated.
For example:
Track 1 → Out 1/2
Track 2 → Out 1/2
Track 3 solo defeated → Out 1/2
If you solo track 1 or 2, track 3 still plays. Great.
But…
Track 1 → Out 1/2
Track 2 → Out 3/4
Track 3 solo defeated → Out 1/2
If you solo track 1, track 3 still plays. Great.
If you solo track 2, track 3 no longer plays (its output is “muted”). Huh?
My expectation would be that in both scenarios, track 3 would always play no matter what. No?
I haven’t seen this behavior described in Steinberg literature so I’m wondering if it truly is by design or if this is something that can be changed.
It’s also a bit of a problem, as I have a solo-defeated SMPTE generator track in my sessions that is sent out its own output on the audio interface, and when I solo any track in my session, the SMPTE LTC signal stops being output.
Very nice use case to make it clear, it should’t behave like it does right now.
Actually, when I’m thinking about it, the issue is not in the Solo Defeat itself. The issue is, the output channel (in general, it could be Group or even FX) is not forced to be soloed by the Solo Defeat. I cannot try it now, but I would say, this use case will also not work (if my expectation is correct):
Track 1 → Group
Track 2 –> Stereo Out
Track 3 [Solo Defeat] → Group
Group → Stereo Out
Scenarios:
Solo Track 1 = OK
Solo Track 2 = issue (the Group is not forced to be Soloed, so the Track 3 signal doesn’t pass over the Group channel).
Could you try this, please? Am I right? Then I would really consider this as a bug, but at the other hand, then I can imagine it’s not so simple to fix it.
However this isn’t quite the same issue if you think about it. It would make sense that all paths to the output would need to be solo-defeated by the user for a solo defeat to reach the output. So I believe your example is correct/expected functionality. You want Track 3 to be solo-defeated only within its scope.
However, at the top-most scope (ie: physical audio interface I/O) this logically should not be the case.
And I think I just discovered the solution to my problem. In the MixConsole, with output channels visible, physical I/O channels actually have the ability to be put into solo-defeat mode. I wouldn’t have thought to have done that originally as I suppose it’s not intuitive, but now it makes sense.
Huh. Always amazed that after using Cubase for decades there are still things I’m learning.
I’ll mark the thread as Solved and hope this can help anyone else who couldn’t figure it out.
OK, there is some logic in it. You really have to “mark” tho whole signal path as Solo Defeat, to make it work in those special cases. But I would’t expect it, for the first try.
