![]() The second is the stuff that is more mundane or hidden from view – window management and the audio engine performance. Sometimes that is the definition of ‘Pro’.Īlongside these new features there are two other areas Steinberg has been working on, the first is the most visible – new instruments and effects and the chord pad feature. Actually having audio wave forms directly above the mixer channel is not just cute but more importantly will impress the client no end. It looks fantastic and maybe having ‘lookahead’ built into the mixer will be a boon for those mixing against the clock who don’t have the screen space for the project screen as well as the mixer. This turns your meter bridge (which normally hides in the ‘Set Up Window Layout’ button top left of your screen) into a set of live scrolling audio meters – only for audio tracks though. One of my favourite new features is ‘wave meters’ in the mixer. However there’s no render to mono – but there are workarounds, of course. Rendering some mono keys into stereo was straightforward and on completion you have the option of a nice shiny new stereo track. There are options for how much of the signal path (processing) you want to include. ![]() You can render tracks, or events, MIDI parts or range selections. Well the Steinberg feature fairy was listening and Pro 8 has a render in-place function. As someone said about Cubase 7.x – ‘the only thing missing is render in-place’. And suppose you have a drum VCA and a ‘glock and marimba’ VCA you can then nest them inside a ‘master’ percussion VCA. So you have automation on your snare and toms and kick tracks but you also want to apply automation to the drum mix as a whole – the VCA lets you do that. Pan, EQ, dynamics, sends, inserts, routing and even automation can all be included in the VCA group. Nuendo will get VCAs (and possibly a more powerful implementation) when version 7 arrives later this year.Īnd, being super flexible, Cubase Pro 8 allows you to ‘VCA’ more than just gain. I’m sorry to have laboured the point and I’m sure many audio grandmothers are throwing their eggs out of the basket by now, while others are thinking, ‘Ah but I can achieve that effect by dedicating drum processing and sending it to the same group or by using channel link.’ Welcome to the world of cat skinning (don’t try that at home!), but a VCA is quicker and remember, of course, competition is the name of the game and VCA implementations are available in other high-end software, so it is only fitting that Cubase joins the party. When you push back the level of your VCA group, the individual track faders move down and therefore the post fader sends to your effects chains will be proportionally reduced. The VCA doesn’t sum the track outputs, it changes gain by ‘moving’ the faders of the members of that VCA group up and down. This is because the change in level has taken place at the group stage while the individual track fader is in the same place, sending the same amount of snare to the reverb. Now assuming your FX sends are post fade (and mostly they are) then if you were using a group and you nudge the group fader down, the level of your dry drum sound will decrease, but the amount sent to reverb from a given track will remain the same. ![]() The sound you are working towards is a mix of ‘dry’ audio, direct from the track, and the ‘wet’ contribution coming back from the processing. If you want summing to apply uniform processing, then a group works better.īut if you have a range of post fade sends to effects processors, for instance, then a VCA group is a better bet. In that sense VCAs are examples of linking. So you cannot insert a processor into a VCA group output – there isn’t one. A VCA (the acronym standing for voltage controlled amplifier, reflecting the idea’s origin in proper mixing desks) does not sum together a number of inputs to make a new output. So why the excitement about VCAs? Don’t we already have that functionality in the form of groups and the linking feature?Īnd the answer to that is yes and no and, well, maybe. In fact, my review setup, which paired a Prism Sound Lyra 1 to Pro 8 is less than £1,500 all in – now that the Lyra has been reduced to under a grand – and what’s more Cubase Pro 8 has no control volts to worry about. Look how far we have advanced – now in 2015 with the latest release of Steinberg’s Cubase Pro 8 you get VCAs for a few hundred notes. Never has Wagner’s Ring been more painful. All was going well until halfway through the gig when the control volts fell off the VCAs turning everything up to a Spinal Tap-style 11. My colleagues told a story of a live opera broadcast from an OB in Glasgow with our A-Type vehicle boasting a desk proudly furnished with VCA groups – cutting edge at the time. For perspective consider when hardware VCAs arrived on good old analogue desks you were talking mortgage money. High on the list of pro features is the addition of VCAs to Cubase mixing.
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