[TIP] VCA faders - sort of

If you’re like me, then you wish Nuendo had VCA faders like protoolsHD. Steinberg says… " Hey, but we have Link faders so we’ll never give you VCA, keep asking though because we think it’s funny."

It’s a standoff that is years old at this point. I surrender. Link faders is cool, but it’s a pain to search through mixer especially when your in a large session and the client is sitting right behind you. Group busses can also sort of work like VCA as far as what you’re hearing is concerned, but there are so many occasions where it’s just not practical to create a new group buss for these little details.

Personally, I like generic midi hardware buttons. You set them, they don’t change. They become second nature and your can do it in the dark. I’ve got two here but these can easily be assigned to key commands also.
Command - Mixer - Link Channels
Command - Mixer - Unlink Channels

As long as the mixer window is open, this will quickly give you control of multiple tracks from any fader in the group. And unlike VCA’s. these are temporary, there’s hardly any set up time and you can jump in and out as needed with out taking your eyes off the picture to read through a bunch of right click commands.

~NOTE: if you add a presonus faderport to a larger array like mackie or Avid, the fader port will always default to the selected channel… in this case, it will always control your linked faders from a central location.

Also, using this command string as a base [TIP] How to create quick custom mixer views on the fly - Nuendo - Steinberg Forums
you can quickly access tracks that are spread far apart or tracks that are in different mixer views.

The end of the command string will leave you at the Naming Dialog window for the mixer view, and your tracks will already be selected and ready for linking. Regardless of Nuendo key commands, the HOME key will always select the first track in the mixer when the mixer window is open. SHIFT-END will select every track in your mixer view. This is good to know when you want to select all the tracks in a view at a later time.

So you can quickly select tracks in your edit window that you want to link. Run the mixer view command string. - Link channels Hotkey… takes just a few seconds.

From here you can switch back to another mixer view that contains one or more of your Linked group and continue to make the moves you want to make, perhaps while balancing against other tracks from any mixer view that are not in the group etc etc.

When you’re done, you can leave it grouped if you want to… or… you can select the new mixer view you made that contains all of the Linked channels… HOME - SHIFT END… UNLINK

In a nutshell, this technique is faster and more flexible then VCA faders IMO.

Good luck

It’s a pity linked faders have been broken since Nuendo 5. VCA faders please!

broken how? Just curious.

What do you want them to do that they don’t?

Broken as in often you can move a fader that’s part of a linked group and it will adjust that fader only (ignoring the link status). Also problems if you import tracks (groups etc) from a template which also contain linked faders - this confuses Nuendo. Makes it next to impossible to use them reliably and it is a known issue.

I’ve seen that - but for what its worth I have not seen it when using the MCU - I was very surprised at first - but I noticed that not ony did the faders stay locked - they all wrote automation when just touching one. I remember only the touched fader working with auto in the past - I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts!

Trim auto when grouped definitely does not work however

An even easier way to emulate pseudo-VCA faders is to utilize FX tracks for them.
Just use subgroups for effect returns, and assign outputs of all you would route to a VCA to an FX track instead.
Job done.

+1 on proper VCA groups though, and mute groups as we used to have on FOH consoles please.

I’m not sure how FX channels would be any different to using a group channel and unfortunately they don’t do what a VCA fader would do.