UR816C Hardware Rack not expanding in Cubase

Hi, could someone please put me out of my UR816C misery?

I’ve just bought this new interface to replace my MR816 and I’m using it with Cubase 10.5 under MacOS Catalina. My problem is that I can’t seem to configure the set-up properly. Either that or the Yamaha USB driver 2.0.3 (and 2.0.2 which I’ve also tried) doesn’t work as I’d expect. I have installed Tools for UR-C as instructed and the driver shows up as expected in the Audio-Midi Set-up window.

In Cubase I can either get the Hardware Rack to appear in the Mix Console but I can’t open/expand it (a “not allowed” symbol comes up) OR I get no Hardware Rack appearing at all despite there being an audio track present using the UR816C. The outcome seems to depend upon which project I load. Either way, there is no usable Hardware Rack in the Mix Console.

As a result I can only record incoming audio data with the UR816C FX effects “in line”. In other words I am recording a “wet” signal whereas I wish to record the signal dry and use the Hardware Rack to adjust the recorded sound going into the mix. Looking at YouTube videos I know this can be done, but with no expanding Hardware Rack, I can’t do it.

I’ve also tried the Steinberg-suggested workaround of selecting starting up as normal, selecting No Driver and then selecting the UR816C driver - no joy there.

Any ideas, please?

Micky

I am not on Mac, but have you activated the direct monitoring in cubase? And no controlroom activated?

Hi, thanks for responding. Yes to both, direct monitoring is ON and I have Control Room disabled. Still no joy.

Regards
Micky

I am not using the hardware rack in cubase, becquse i want to use the controlroom.
I make all adjustments needed for recording in the dspfx mixer.
No problems with dry or wet recording.
I tried pnce to use the hardware rack, but not in the mixconsole, only in the arrangewindow, i don’t know if that makes any difference in usage.

Its use in the Arrange Windows is solely for pre-recording. I want to use it post-recording.

Okay, sorry I can’t help you with that, I don’t use it post recording, I don’t see any benefit of that for me.

Okay, I did some tests with my UR816C and NO controlroom activated. Then you can use the hardware rack, but only in the Arrange-window. I cannot see it in the cubase mixer anywhere.
What you can do in the mixer however if you want the harwarerack postrecordings, is using the seperate plugins from the UR816C as inserts, they are in the Steinberg folder.
In the arrangewindow you have the hardwarerack on the audiotrack you want to record on, but indeed it is with the used effects in series so no dry signal can be recorded (as far as I can tell).

So as I said before, I never use the UR816C in this way, even if I wanted, because I always use the Controlroom and then the Hardware rack does not function(still weird, but that’s the way it is).

Instead of this I always have the DpsFX mixer open to make all my adjustments, and then you can record the dry signal while listening to all the effects included.
Hope this helps.

Ca-booter, you are a life-saver. Thank you for your help. I never thought to look in the Steinberg VST folder. All works perfect now.

Thanks
Micky

Glad I could help, enjoy making music!

The routing in the UR816c is a bit fiddly, but I’ve more or less gotten the hang of it. Instead of connecting physical out buses to physical outputs, with the UR816c you connect “DAW Direct” outs (virtual output buses) to the physical outputs. So, DAW Direct out 1 to physical output #1, connected to the first channel in on the headphone amp, etc.

The drivers for the UR816c are superb. I can track 16 mono tracks and 8 stereo tracks (all just through a common input, but I don’t think that matters) at 48 samples (5ms round-trip latency) - all while playing a youtube video in the background, adjusting preferences, setting up key commands, checking and unchecking the “direct monitoring enabled/disabled” button - with no dropouts over about a 7 minute period.

The one thing that makes me crazy - and I hope they find a fix for it - is the routing with respect to the built-in FX. Let’s say you have a singer who wants some of the reverb in their phones. Fine… set up your input bus, enable the RevX reverb, monitor the singer in the control room… hear the singer and the Reverb… great. Nope. Singer says, “can you give me the reverb please?” The reverb (or whatever other FX, channel strip, whatever) - it seems - can ONLY be routed to a physical output - not a virtual output. That’s why I hear it in my monitors, but can’t route it to the phones.

At this point, I seem to need to do one of two things to employ a workaround, neither of which I never had to do with the MR816.

  1. Physically connect the headphone out on the UR816c to a headphone channel input on my headphone amp.
  2. Disable Control Room.
  3. Set up a talk-back channel manually so I can communicate with the singer.

OR

  1. Strap the reverb plugin into an insert on the channel. (obviously the easier of the two options, and surprisingly doable with the drivers and the shockingly small amount of latency that can be achieved.

CT

Maybe there is more benefit - when you use a headphonesamp - to connect the physical outputs to the 4 mixes?
For my use that is a great disadvantage, because there are only 8 DAW directs instead of 16 (when using the extra ADAT) which I would prefer.
The extra 8 ADAT ouputs can only be used with the 4 mixes, and mix 1 is always the mains, so only 3 left.

I agree, great driver, very stable on the USB3 port and W10. The DspFX mixer software instead, could be improved.

I made a short and simple test just now:
I connected a mic to input 1 and connected a headphones to the phones 1 jack on the front. In this one you hear the dry signal which you also record. this phones is for the engineer
Then a second headphones is connected to the phones 2 output on the front and in MIX 2 you activate the REVERB Send and put some Reverb on the input 1. In this headphones you will here the mic+reverb for the singer. ALso here you can activate the channelstrip[ for some EQ, just for the singer, not to be recorded.
Is this what you mean?
If not and you want a physical output to go to yopur headphonesamp then you have to route MIX 2(with the reverb) to lets sday Line output 3/4 or any other outputjacks. do NOT use DAW direct outs for this matter, but MIX outs.
DAW DIRECTS is my usage and what I said earlier not that easy. These are the outputs from Cubase channels into the UR816C. I connect those to my extarnel EQ’s and compressors and from them back into the URC. But there are only 8 oh those. FOr the rest I have to use those 4 mixes and that is not very handy I can tell you.
Hope this helps

This thread has been so helpful. After reading this and reading the full manual from the SB website, I figured out how to make the UR816C appear in the inspector by adding channels to the output tab of the channel set up window (not sure what it’s called - I just hit F4) and I can see how to influence input with the UR816C FX.

What is completely eluding me at the moment is how to make the FX appear as VSTs that I can add after tracks are recorded.

I saw above that they are in the Steinberg folder and I found two of those on the C drive, made media bay scan them, but still don’t see them appear as VSTs. With the MR816 CSX, the VSTs would appear under a heading in the VST drop down that said something like MR816 but no such luck here. Also, I don’t think I even see any dll files for the UR816C in the Steinberg folders I found on the hard drive so am wondering where those files are.

I have made progress with this since installing it over the weekend and like the way it sounds so far, but I am still grappling with the routing (axemanchris’ posts are helping a lot) and have little doubt I am experiencing operator headspace that is keeping me from making the UR816C FX appear as VSTs. So, more specific information about where those little buggers are would help.

Please advise - thanks!

IF you take an insert on a channel in Cubase and look under STEINBERG/DISTORTION f.e. there are the Yamaha guitaramps that are part of the URC FX.

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Thank you @ca-booter . I think I understand what you mean, but I don’t see Steinberg in my drop down list so am wondering if I need to install or configure something else even though I can now get the UR816 to appear in the inspector. Here is what I see when I do what I believe you suggested:

image

Look under Distortion (GA Classics) and Dynamics (Morphing Ch Strip) and Reverb (REV-X)

They just appear among other plugins you might have.

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Is because you have installed the latest tools for UR and the hardware rack works only with the old version although everything was updated recently. You have to have 2 versions of the plugins. If I am not wrong 1.5.1 to use it as a vst insert and the old version (the one that looks like windows do) to use it with your hardware rack. The solution is to uninstall everything, install the tools again and than update the tools

You have the plugins sorted by TYPE not by MANUFACTURER. Then you will see “Steinberg”.

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This forum is so great. Thanks to all of you, I can now use the FX on the UR816C after recording a track - hooray! It was also news to me that we can sort the insert list by vendor as well as category so TIL. I didn’t take the meaning of the categories in that part of the manual, but now understand what was written there. I honestly don’t think I would have found these FX without your direction - thanks again!