I also bought Apematrix after I listened to a comment above and watched his video and I’ve been experimenting with it because I really need a real auxiliary bus in Cubasis as I mix and master songs using only my iPhone.
There is a way to stop phase shifts when using Apematrix in Cubasis 3.
If you set up Apematrix (send receive) as an auxiliary bus with a reverb and eq on it for instance and send your snare to it, you might have a phase shift if that same snare is also routed to a drumz bus. To prevent phase shift just send the drum bus to the reverb if the snare is routed to it. Meaning, any track you’re sending to the reverb or any auxiliary, shouldn’t be routed to any other bus except the master bus or mix bus.
I hope you understand what I mean.
Hi. I’d be glad if you could share more information on that. I am really disappointed to get such a bad result. I believe that Cubasis routes the fx send (with the send/receive plug in) to the output and sums it with the original track.
Thanks a lot.
Thanks. I have noted not only phase shifts but also crackles and distortion.
Maybe it is only me?
Phase issues can actually be fixed, even by simply moving the track directly. But doing this process for each track would be super long, because it’s movements of milliseconds. Otherwise, the real problem is above all that of the distortion and the gain generated. You can quickly experience. Send the desired track in the audio track with Apematrix and freeze it. Observe the waveform. You will see that it is bigger (so gain increased), but you will also see that harmonics have been added (normally at the level of the substain of the waveform, we can see that the frozen track is more loaded than the track original).
For crackles and distortion, if you’re using Bluetooth headphones that will happen sometimes. But if not, then increase the latency in Cubasis audio section to the highest and the (multi-core processing) guard buffer to MAX. That should solve that issue.
I’m using Cubasis 3 with an iPhone 12 Pro Max, what device are you using Cubasis 3 on.
I am on iPad.
I am just conducting tests right now, with the tablet speakers only, with only a drum loop so I don’t think the issue comes from cpu overuse (anyway the meter remains way below 10%).
Besides, the phasing is so annoying that even without crackles, this is not usable for quality mixing.
As said below, I believe that the send bus is routed to the stereo mix output anyway so the root cause is probably that.
I don’t know how Dovjgoldman did it on his video earlier in this thread.
@alexandreallaliy my tests showed that the send busses are not routed to the stereo mix bus.
I’m sure the issues you and others observed are occurring, but I’m only aware of the latency issue.
I am working on arranging/sequencing a song. When this is done (likely in a few months as this is a very part-time endeavor) I will use Cubasis again to record. At that point I will do some more testing.
Thank you for your answer.
I’m pretty sure that the bus gets routed to the 1/2 output on my device, since level gets louder as soon as the send is activated.
So, perhaps it’s a matter of configuration or hardware.
@alexandreallali sorry for the slow response. As I stated earlier, I’m working on other aspects of my project.
I did test to see if the audio sent into ApeMatrix Mixer Send Receive is added to the stereo bus, and I am disappointed to report that I am seeing the same result. The audio does appear to be added to the stereo bus.
I’m giving up on this approach to busses. It’s clearly not supported by the current Cubasis.
After some testing, it seems that the “Send Busses” appears to do enough to support pushing multiple tracks through, for example, the same reverb or delay “space.”
Ideally, I would prefer real busses like Cubase supports. For now, using FX send busses enables me to move on and start mixing my project as envisioned.
Curiously, it seems the FX Send busses themselves may actually cause additional latency. Auv3 effects that don’t cause latency, seem to when placed in an effects send bus.
Has anyone experienced this?
Further testing confirmed to me that even when included as an “insert” and not “send” effect, Mixer Send Receive causes latency.
Sadly, not a solution.
Onwards and upwards with effects on send busses.
Hi,
I neither read the complete thread, nor Mr. Decker’s book. I worked as a professional video and audio engineer, almost using analog mixing consoles.
I wish to see proper sub group routing in Cubasis, too.
What Cubasis 3 provides at the moment is quite useless. Depending on the task I’m using one out of three DAWs on an iPad Pro. Cubasis 3 and 2 other DAWs and FWIW non of those DAWs is Garage Band or something like this. The real competitors to Cubasis have got their pros, but also cons compared to Cubasis 3.
However, parallel compression done with plugins, should always be provided as a feature of the compressor plugin. To expect frame accuracy based on plugin latency compensation by mixing a path with a compressor plugin and a path without a plugin is foolish. If Mr. Decker recommends this by his book, consider to trash the book.
There are a lot of compressor plugins out there aimed to do parallel compression.
Regards,
Ralf
Hi Ralf,
As a rank amateur working on pulling together my first song, I freely admit that what I know comes mostly from reading books, forum posts and the monthly dose of knowledge from Sound on Sound magazine.
My ears are trained by a lifetime of listening to music, and by my years of classical piano training. I can hear what I can hear, but I know that I have far to go train my ears to mix properly.
Decker does in fact recommend creating a series of busses for drum parallel compression, instrument reverb and delay, vocal instrument and delay. His template-driven method revolves around having 80% of your mix ready so you can focus deeply on the tweaks that make all the difference with each piece of music. Given my complete lack of experience, this seemed to be a good starting point.
2 of my 3 compressors have the controls needed for parallel compression. Of course, as I now know, Cubasis does not perform any plug-in latency compensation at all today.
I’m assuming you wouldn’t argue with using busses for time-based effects like reverb and delay, as opposed to parallel compression (please comment!).
I truly appreciate your experience and the advice.
Out of curiosity, do you do all or most of your mixing on the iPad?
Thanks!
Dov
For parallel compression, in reality, there is nothing complicated. There are two effective and simple solutions.
The first is simply to duplicate the track and compress it.
The second is to use a send. But the second is only useful if you already have a lot of process on the uncompressed track.
The first or second technique will not change the final result. The only difference will be in CPU consumption.
Regarding plugin latency compensation, this renders Cubasis completely useless. Not having this option means that no limiters, compressors and linear phase EQs can be used. It’s sad that we can forget these basic options.
Hi,
maybe everything is correctly described by the mentioned book. Perhaps it’s just a misunderstanding.
This is ok:
Drum instruments ---> Sub Group with parallel compressor insert plugin providing a wet/dry mix ---> Master
The plugin ensures that the mixed signals are in sync.
This is asking for trouble:
Drum instruments ---> Sub Group with compressor send plugin, bypassed unprocessed signal --->
Master
return full compressed, processed signal --->
Other DAWs with more routing abilities allow different paths, that are all asking for trouble, even with plugin latency compensation.
By theory you could have two sub groups on other DAWs to do the parallel compression wet/dry mix (not just by some odd return thingy), but in reality this will unlikely work with nowadays DAWs.
The signals most likely will be phase shifted by some frames.
Ok:
Track or Group with reverb send dry --->
Master
return 100% wet --->
This is ok, because a wet reverb signal is anyway delayed. Depending on the quality of the reverb there are more or less issues caused by the reverb, not by the DAWs routing, frame accuracy of the dry and wet signal paths is no concern.
Regards,
Ralf
For parallel compression only the insert approach works. There are several compressors available that provide parallel compression, for those who want to work this way. Any kind of send approach with Cubasis 3 routing abilities or better routing abilities of other DAWs most likely will not work. It also doesn’t work, if you copy a track and mix the unprocessed and the processed signals. This would require the perfect plugin and the perfect DAW with a perfect audio layer under the hood.
Plugin latency compensation usually doesn’t work that perfect, that it’s frame accurate. This usually doesn’t matter if you mix 2 different EQed signals, let alone reverb, delay, modulated signals. If you use one signal two times, one compressed, and the other dry, you need perfect sync.
Btw. plugin latency compensation isn’t the only pitfall when using plugins. Some plugins render the chosen bit depth useless.
@Hola_Panda thank you for the additional detailed responses!
@unknown_crewman Billy Decker does in fact advocate using a bus for parallel compression. Thank you for sensitizing me to the risk of timing issues.
I truly appreciate the knowledge-transfer from experienced engineers!
I have FabFilter Pro-C2, Pro-MB and Rough Rider 3, all of which directly support parallel compression. I see I need to be sure their “Mix” knobs are MIDI-mapped to my control surface so I have easy access…
@unknown_crewman @Hola_Panda is there a problem adding a second compressor as an insert to a Cubasis track, and using that second insert for parallel compression?