Switched from Sonar to Cubase -- 2 short questions

I recently switched from Sonar to Cubase 5. I have figured out most of the work flow. But two issues remain unresolved.

  1. Is there a shortcut to quickly access a midi track’s corresponding audio track parameters/channel settings, mainly Volume fader and Send levels?
    I have tried to accomplish this via Quick Controls with no success. Hitting F8 to open the mixer means a lot of side scrolling to locate the channel when working with dozens of tracks.

  2. Is there a way to hear the instrument assigned to a midi track when working either on its audio track or FX/Group tracks? Sonar was no problem here.

Thanks.

I used CW back at rev 9, before I switched to SX, lol, in the last century, so I’m not sure I can help directly… But are you wanting the “solo” button for a midi track? That would give you just the midi track and the VST / Instrument it’s attached to for fiddling (specifically to fix your wet/dry mix to your fx channels)… Is there something more interesting that this?

As for corresponding audio and midi, I’m not sure exactly what this means. A midi track sends data to a midi device (either hw or plugin), but there’s no associated audio track… Well, if you freeze the VST there’s an implied audio track… Are you meaning midi/control parameters for a midi track? Or are you recording the audio froim the VST/Hw driven by a midi track, and then wanting to correlate those (which I could imagine might be useful)…

I apologize if I’m missing something obvious here…

Thanks CrypticMystic. To clarify, I have several VST instances set up, each with 8 midi channels and 8 stereo outs. I need to be able to access the stereo output/audio channels from the midi tracks very quickly. Right now, if I am working on a midi track and want to adjust the output volume or reverb send levels, I have to scroll down, open the VST folder, click on the audio track and then open its channel settings. AND, while I am on the audio/output track and adjusting the channel settings, I can’t hear the midi track instrument anymore. In Sonar, when working in the audio/output channel, I would still hear the instrument assigned to the corresponding midi track. I hope that clarified the issue.

The command you want is Edit VST Instrument. You can configure a key command for that.

Also have a look at the lowest-most module in the inspector for some other stuff regarding the instrument if it’s a midi track you are using, (as opposed to an instrument track)

edit: yes, I see you are using midi tracks…

Steve. That solved the problem! Those modules were actually “hidden” by default and I had to add them in the inspector set-up which I found by right clicking the inspector. Wow…this will definitely make things a lot easier. One thing though, I still have to click the drop down and select the audio track in the inspector module…it doesn’t sync with the midi track. For example, if I select midi track 2, I will have to click the VST drop down in the Inspector and select the corresponding audio track. But still a lot better than the multi-steps I had to perform before.

Thanks a lot!

EDIT: I stumbled into the answer to this one. Once I associate the audio track with the midi track in the Inspector drop down, it’s permanently done and will remember the association next time I come back to the midi track. That’s wonderful.

Ah, excellent!! Thanks for the clarification.

This project I do want to sort out having my drum vst create different audio tracks for each drum output (for offsite mixing/mastering)… So I’ll give this a try also :slight_smile:

Great, glad to be of help. For some reason I didn’t get a notification on your posting!

You can also use instrument tracks for stereo only instruments.

also, very helpful and quite neglected power feature of cubase is the multiple mixer views, you can
customize each of the three mixer views to show the devices of choice