Virtual Instrument to audio track

Cubase
1

I was absolutely shocked to find the only way to record a virtual instruments output to an audio track in Cubase Artist 8.5 was to bounce an audio mixdown. I thought I was doing something wrong with the routing and couldn’t believe that a function so simple as routing a buss to an audio track input wouldn’t be available. I found it even more bizarre as there is no mention of this feature in the comparison page on the Steinberg site.

I actually got around the problem by routing the SPDIF out to my SPDIF in as a solution but it seems pretty ridiculous that I have to do this.

I hope Steinberg will incorporate an easy way to route a virtual instrument to an audio track in a future release as it seems like a pretty straightforward workflow thing.

2
  • Create Group track
  • Set VST instrument output to that group channel.
  • Create Audio track
  • Set the input for the audio channel to the group track…enable monitor / record and voila.
  • If you are using Elements, I believe the option to route instrument tracks to Groups is unavailable.
3

Yeah I tried the Group track route but that can’t be routed to an audio input either in Artist and I assume Elements.

I am still absolutely baffled why they wouldn’t allow such simple bread and butter routing. Audio mixdown is no good to me because what I do is mess around with Reaktor, Bazille or just a synth for 20 minutes, chop out good bits and drag them into Halion.

It is such a shame because Cubase Artist is more than enough DAW for my needs, it is certainly not worth me shelling out over £250 to be able to choose a buss as an input source. Luckily I have a spare SPDIF in and out to get around the limitation.

4

Yeah the bus routing thing is limited to Pro only I’m afraid.

Another workaround to avoid physical cabling is to use a plugin such as this one: