VST Quick Controls & Track Quick Controls (Need Mapping Tips)

[Aleque]

Hi. So, I have assigned my 8 faders to VST Quick Controls.

Now I am bit confused about what I can do with my 8 knobs. I have set up my 8 knobs in MIDI Remote and they are all responding. As far as I understand, I can either assign my knobs to Track Quick Controls. Or to my MIDI Remote Mapping Assistant?

Would someone kindly explain the difference and perhaps give a few tips? I have googled a bit about it, and it’s mostly some dry information from a manual without specific examples, pros and cons.

What could I assign my knobs to, to get the most out of them?

[m.c]

Have you assigned your controls to the “Focus Quick Controls”? Could you attach a screenshot of the assignments? This would be helpful to answer your questions.

[Aleque]

Hey, do you mean this?

Btw, I “talked” to ChatGPT again (I’ve sent it a PDF copy of my manual for my midi keyboard), and it helped me with remapping my knobs and faders. I understand how it’s done now.

Knobs = CC 24-31
Faders = CC 10-17

I hope it won’t create any conflicts with anything else, assigning those CC values.

[m.c]

If you double click on any of your controls, the mapping assistant shows up. What do you see there? Can you post a screenshot of this new window?

[Aleque]

Here you go. As you can see, I didn’t map anything yet, because due to my lack of experience I wouldn’t know the difference between a good setup vs a lousy setup.

[m.c]

I see. I recommend that you start with assigning them to to the “Focus Quick Controls” (QC1-QC8):

As their name suggests, they will control whichever entity has the current focus.

So, say, we’re in the project window with no vst window open at all. The FQCs will then control the Track quick controls.

Now, if we open an instrument window, we’ll see that the FQCs are now reflecting the QCs of the instrument.

If we open an FX window, they will reflect the QCs of this effect.

Finally, if having multiple windows open, whenever we choose one (setting focus to it) the FQCs will be synced with the QCs of this specific window.

[raino]

@m.c

Finally, if having multiple windows open, whenever we choose one (setting focus to it) the FQCs will be synced with the QCs of this specific window.

Although there is an option for a Window to lock the Focus Quick Controls so it still controls stuff in that Window even when the Window loses focus.

[m.c]

Certainly. In my screenshot, it’s the “Focus QC Lock State” and it’s another powerful option in the QCs environment.

[Aleque]

You’ve shown me how to assign my 8 faders to VST Quick Controls inside of Studio Setup.

An old MIDI keyboard and slider problems

Sure. Let’s take a VST example, say Retrologue. If we open it, we can see: [image] Now, on the top right corner we see a button named QC. Let’s click it: [image] On the top frame we now see 8 parameters (Filter Cutoff, Filter Resonance etc). These are our Quick Controls. These quick controls can be directly accessed by a special setup in file Studio→Studio Setup→VST Quick Controls [image] Here, we can actually MIDI Learn our keyboard’s faders, by first checking the box Learn. When we s…

Now I see my 8 faders work with every VST, once I press the QC button. And I just learned that that the assigned parameters of these quick controls are different for each VST. And that Cubase will save a set of these 8 assigned parameters for that particular VST every time I make a new project and launch that particular VST. All this makes sense to me.

But how will the role of my 8 knobs be different from that? The 8 faders are already assigned to QC of VSTs.

“As their name suggests, they will control whichever entity has the current focus.” ← So, what if a VST – that already has 8 faders assigned to its QC – is in focus? Wouldn’t knobs just override that?

You also say: “FQCs will be synced with the QCs of this specific window”. I still don’t get it. If my faders are already assigned to VST-specific quick controls (QC), then what function will the knobs serve?

Can you provide a specific example of a scenario where 8 faders and 8 knobs are assigned to different things without conflicting or overlapping each other?

[m.c]

First of all, I’m sorry, I totally missed the part that you’ve already assigned quick controls to faders.

However, these assignments you’ve done as I’ve instructed in an earlier post, is strictly for the QCs of the VST Instrument of the Selected Track, since this was actually the thread’s scope. The Focused Quick Controls that I suggest are more powerful: If for example you open the window of an insert effect, the Focused Quick Controls will work for this one too. And in the Project Window, you’ll get to control the Track Quick Controls. So, even there will be an overlap when we’re into an instrument’s window, this doesn’t really hurt. Note that, some users tend to have both knobs and faders assigned to the very same functions. This is because, some of us prefer for example to control ADSRs using the faders, while other filters using the knobs.

@Aleque

Can you provide a specific example of a scenario where 8 faders and 8 knobs are assigned to different things without conflicting or overlapping each other?

Sure. Have a look at the following screenshot:

We can see an instrument window open (it doesn’t really matter, your quick controls will still function with it closed by the way) and an effect in the insert slots of this instrument/track.
Now, if you use the quick controls assigned via the “Legacy” setup, you’ll see the instrument’s quick controls properly responding. At the same time, if you move to the window of the effect, the knobs assigned to the Focused Quick Controls, will control this effect’s parameters. Your Legacy quick controls will still control the Instrument’s ones.

I tried to create an overview of the different areas each type of quick controls covers, in this older post:

MIDI > QC focus, need explaination please

Hi, Each VST entity, be it an instrument or an effect (insert or member of the channel strip) has a list of parameters. Here are some options that we have: When we want to control parameters on the selected track (or even a track as member of a mixConsole bank), we can actually assign these, using the MIDI Remote to our controller’s elements (encoders, faders, buttons). If we’re targeting the instrument, we need to make assignments to these: [image] Now, if we want to target the inserts, w…

Now, since you’ve already got into the MIDI Remote, I would suggest that you abandon the “Legacy” Quick Controls, and place your faders to the MIDI Remote surface you’ve created, IF you fill you need more functionality, as it seems to be the case.

By doing that, you can have better control. For example, you can assign all your faders and knobs to 16 parameters of the instrument track, instead of the limiting 8.

Then, you can even create “mapping” pages, and set your faders/knobs to perform different things, based on the page selected.

For example, you can have in a second page, the controls for your insert effects:

But if you don’t want to dive into these things, my suggestion for using the Focused Quick Controls is still valid.

[raino]

@m.c

some users tend to have both knobs and faders assigned to the very same functions.

I do this for my MIDIMIX control surface. Using the FQCs, each Fader and the 2 Knobs directly above it are assigned to the same Quick Control #, but they are each set to different pick-up modes (not sure of the jargon here). Then I can use the control that behaves the way I want.

[m.c]

Yeah, totally common way!

@raino

MIDIMIX

A friend of mine owns one, and we had good fun setting it up to control Jup-8 and Jun-6 replicas. We even setup the buttons properly. Pretty good device and extremely affordable.

[Aleque]

I really appreciate your detailed explanation. All of these options, choices and possibilities seem a bit overwhelming to me right now. Maybe because I still lack proper practical experience within the software, and I can’t identify the value of these different possibilities, yet. But I could always refer back to this topic in the future, once I better understand the basics.

I will also try and read through the other topic you linked to.

As I wrote in my earlier topic, my MIDI keyboard is old. I have accepted that my transport buttons will never work properly, and that is fine. There are always other possibilities where I can assign transport functions to some USB devices, and on top of that use AutoHotkey to streamline and automate a lot of annoyances.

The same goes with my my main volume fader - I’ve just put a piece of tape over it. And that is fine. I have other 8 faders that work.

The challenge, that I think, I will be facing is remembering what each knob and slider does. First, I have to figure out what to bind them to (parameters, etc.). Then I have to figure a way to remember that setup. I have put a little piece of masking tape next to each knob and slider so I can write, what each of them does. But the problem is if 1 fader has different functions depending on if it’s a Project Window, a VST or an Insert Plugin - then you can see, that what I write on my labels will not make sense, because one fader could have several functions, depending on what is “in the focus”.

[raino]

@Aleque

The challenge, that I think, I will be facing is remembering what each knob and slider does. First, I have to figure out what to bind them to (parameters, etc.). Then I have to figure a way to remember that setup.

This is one of the advantages of using the Focus Quick Controls. Once you set it up, Knob A always controls the same Focus Quick Control X. And you don’t need to remember what that FQC is changing because the GUI shows the parameter’s name. For example in @m.c 's screenshot FQC 1 changes the Left Delay Time for the Delay Brigade, while on the JUN-6V it controls the DCO LFO Modulation