Hi,
i recently got a UR28M for surround 5.1 recording,(through cubase 8 pro, windows 8 .1)
I’ve been going through the forum for Setup information as the the book does paint a clear picture on this,also its not detailed. Though i got a few ideas from the forum,
I was wondering if someone out there who can spell out the procedure in the greatest detail from scratch, for me and others after me.
Much appreciated !
Thank you!
jt
Software: cubase pro 8 on windows platform.
Are you certain you want to “record” in 5.1 - i.e. record 6 channels simultaneously? This is pretty straight forward and is more a question of setting up in Cubase than the UR.
If you mean you want to mix in 5.1 and use the UR to facilitate routing your tracks to the 6 speakers, then that’s something else, and I could give a more detailed description later if that’s what you want.
hi,
That’s right I want to mix in 5.1 and use the ur to route my tracks to the 6 speakers,
thanks in advance BriHar!!
Sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner.
I’ll describe a very simple project which you can quickly setup in order to demonstrate 6 channel surround with the UR28M. I’m assuming you have either 5 discreet active monitors plus an active subwoofer or a 5.1 channel amplifier with 6 input capability. I’m using a 7.1 amp leaving the side channels unused.
Create a new empty Project.
Open VST connections. For this example in order to keep things simple we will have the Control Room disabled.
Now set up inputs however you want though the nature of this project would suggest using mono inputs, but we won’t be using them in this example anyway.
Next create a single 5.1 output bus and route the 6 individual outputs to the 6 output Mixes of the UR28M In my case I have Left and Right to Mix 3L & Mix 3R, Center & LFE to Mix 1L and Mix 1R, and the Surround L & R to Mix 2L & Mix 2R (The reason I have L & R to Mix 3 is because I normalized it this way in my patchbay as normally those 2 speakers act as alternate reference monitors (C), so it’s just easier in my case). You can set these up any way you want however, keep in mind the outputs of the UR28M are always paired, so should always be routed to a L/R pair combination (or Center/LFE). It would for example be wrong to route Front Right and Rear Right to the same mix pair of the UR28M normally. This is just a guideline and not a fast rule, but lets keep it simple for now.
Close the vst connection window.
We now come to the heart of the matter.
Open the UR28M Hardware Setup (Menu Devices > Audio Hardware Setup. Click on the Master Levels Tab.
Set the Output Mode to Independent. You should also disable Link so you will have separate control of the individual pairs. ( Tip: You might want to generally turn the volume down before removing the link)
Create 6 Mono Audio Tracks in the Project or Mixer and name these according to the channel they should represent (normal sequence would be FL,FR,C,SUB,RL AND RR (as they were automatically created in the VST Output bus) this should correspond to the sequence of the meters in the output channel and so avoid any confusion in this regard.)
Route each track to it’s corresponding output channel FL to FL, Center to Center, etc.
Load an audio loop or file (use the medeabay unless you have a file at hand) It need only be about 6 bars long. Copy the same event or part to each track.
Now comes the real trick to this whole thing! Assigning the Outputs to the mixes. You need to have in your mind your actual routing as in step 4 above.
On the UR28M Press the output selector A then cycle the Mix Select until Mix 1 is selected. Next press output B and select mix 2 and finally Press C and select mix 3. From this point on don’t touch the mix selector anymore. You will see that as you switch between outputs A,B,C, the corresponding mix will automatically be selected.
Now when you press play (in loop mode with the locators set appropriately) you should be able to mute and solo and see that the sound comes from the corresponding speaker.
What we could do at this point is create a round robin effect where the audio jumps from speaker to speaker around the room. There are various ways you can do this, cut the events on each track into 5 sections and then using the mute tool to mute segments, or just slide the beginning and ends of the events.
And that’s it 
Some additional points might be helpful here though:
You might have noticed that the panners on your tracks are inactive. This is because we routed them directly to the speaker channels. If you route the tracks instead to the 5.1 out bus, the panner will be active and you can then use it to pan between any of the 5 speakers. The LFE track is generally left best directly routed to the LFE sub out however.
Also remember that a sub woofer usually has a very low pass filter so if there is no low frequency content in your audio you may not hear much coming from it.
Well I hope this helps you.
BriHar,
Sorry for taking so long to reply,
But I want to take this opportunity to thank you BriHar for such a brilliant walk through, simple and elegantly explained! I want to thank you for your patience and the time you’ve taken out to help me and others like me, now and in the futur. Kudos ! Cheers !
Glad to have been able to help.
(You can also use the thumbs up icon in the upper right to officially give a thank you if you feel so inclined )