The Control Room V6 in Cubase

today we talk about

The Control Room V6 in Cubase

hello everybody Andrew Blake from Thedigitalaudiomanual.com Today we'removing on to the sixth video as wecontinue to discuss the control room inCubase but before we start I want toremind you that there's a link below tothe free content navigation guide whichis an easy to navigate webpage withlinks to all the content on this channeland besides that in the near future I'mgoing to begin adding tips and otherbits of information that will only beavailable there you know things likesimple steps that will get you startedand up and running quick things that arein the videos but are written down insimple steps that serve as quickreminders when you need information downthe road if you're working with programslike wavelab or Cubase plugins or thecable guys shaper Box 2 and many manyother projects that are in the worksthen I know you're going to find justlike I have that this is an invaluablestudy Aid and the other thing I want tomake sure you understand is that this isnot a simple PDF this is a constantlyupdated page that has any informationthat is new or anytime videos arechanged really anything updated and onceyou have it you will always have thelatest information constantly updated soif you haven't gotten it already go tothe link below click on it and save itto your favorites it's my gift to youand it's absolutely free Okay so let'sget started so we're on the sixth videonow of the control room in Cubase and asusual all previous videos are in thenavigation guide in the link below butlet's lead off today talking about firstof all what is considered the controlroom main Tab and that's what we'relooking at on the right Zone here of theproject window I'm going to bring up mymain mixer into view here which also hasthe right Zone open as you can see thecontrol room is in full view here andthe first thing you really want tounderstand is that if you want to changewhat you're looking at in the controlroom you really always want to go backto your studio menu go down to youraudio connections and understand thateverything you you have set up in hereis a reflection of what is in thecontrol room vice versa so if you wantto remove some references or cue mixesor whatever you've got in here becauseyou want your control room to not havethat stuff or you want it to have thatstuffstart by doing it here in the audioconnections now a feature that'sprobably not utilized very much but youwant to be aware of is that you canactually create presets in this windowso over the weeks that we've beenworking on the control room we've builtup phones and cues and all kinds ofthings we've put in here let's go aheadand make this into a presetI click on this middle window go down tosave the preset we'll call it controlroom tutorial stuff hit OK and now justfor demonstration let's take some ofthese things out of here let's startwith the phones I'm going to right clickon those and say remove the phones areyou sure yeah let's go up to the CDplayer that we made a few weeks agogo down to remove the CD player yeslet's remove Q4 out of here hit removeare you sure yep I'm going to take oneof my references out of here remove thereference and now I'm going to createanother presetI'll call this minimumand now if you look over on my controlroom it is also slimmed down to just afew more tabs than it had a lot of theextra buttons have been removed let's goback to our other preset we just had thecontrol room tutorial add that in thereand as you can see my control roomreflects it on the side with all the newbuttons and all the extra tabs in thereso you can quickly change betweendifferent configurations and experimentwith what you want so the next thing isthat everything that's happening in thecontrol room again is basically a sum ofeverything that you've set up in theaudio connections and all these thingsare opened up with tabs in other wordsthe cues I have tabs for them even themain one down here for the control roomhas some variation on the tab the phoneshave a tab as you're opening these ifyou want more than one open hold controland you can open up various ones orclick on them and close them backearlier on we created a CD externalinput and if we look down here in ourmain tab I have q mixes for a mix andexternal and the q1 and Etc you can seeI have this external one here whichwould be the CD if I put it in butthere's no tab here reflecting theseexternals because you got to have morethan one external in the mix before youyou're going to see a tab let's go aheadand put one more in here just to see andgo back to Studio Audio Connectionsright click and I have five left of myexternals I'll click on that externaltwo I'll keep stereo say Okay close thisout and now at the top I have a new tabthat says external which I can click onand I can pick my CD player or the otherexternal I may have hooked up or closethat back downmoving on I have some Cube mix tabs herewe've gone through the Q mixes alreadyand what these various buttons do nextup we have this channels Tab and againthis would reflect if you had any kindof sophisticated surround sound speakersetup it would all be here for me I havestrictly just stereo speakers althoughyou can use those if I'm playing my songand I want to hear just the stereo I canhit one sideor the otheragain you won't hear that unless you'relistening in headphones below it youhave various buttons to allow you totest your surround sound if you had itwhere you hit the front and the centerand all the various configurations whichwould allow you to test your speakersystem make sure it's working properlythere is a plug-in associated with thisand another thing I'm going to show youif I double click on this it opens upthis mix convert plugin this wouldrequire a whole video in itself tounderstand all the different optionsavailable here but basically it allowsyou to see what your input channels andyour output channels are doing and youcan check things and set thingsdifferently in any number of things withyour speaker system and then that bringsus down to this down mix preset Tab andthis is another one of those very greatfeatures part of the control roombasically allowing you to pick stereoand mono down mix presets if you haveyour sophisticated surround sound youcould mix convert thing again and youcould set up various presets for yoursurround sound system and this is onething I can't remember I don't rememberever setting it up myself when I firstopened the control room so I think itkind of Auto configured this but forexample if you look here it says stereoand mono and to the right there's abutton that you can select the outputsand you can choose stereo or mono oropen up that mix convert plug-in but thegreat thing about this is by havingthese down mix presets example stereoand mono when you're in the control roomat the bottom here on the tab as you'relistening to your your mix you canquickly switch between stereo and monoand here you're mixed that way all withone click of a buttona great option when you're mixing movingdown the line the next tab I have hereis monitors which I only have onemonitor set up let's go and put anotherone in just to see what happens go backto the studio menu Audio Connectionsright click down here I have three moremonitors so let me put one in we'll justcall it monitor two stereo okay so now Ihave monitor one monitor two if I clickon itgoes completely silent because I have nospeakers but if I had speakers I couldcheck that out as well moving on we goto the phones we've already talked aboutphones in another videoand then that brings us down into ourmain area and this is really theimportant one because this is therepresentation of what you have set upnow as your main output when you startusing a control room so taking a quicktour in this area your first button hereis your ability to activate anddeactivate the control room whichthere's really no reason to everdeactivate it once you've started usingit because basically you'll shut off allyour speaker systems but you have abutton for it and then another one ofthose things that you probably don't paymuch attention to and yet it's a verygreat little option you have this bigred button as I talk it's going to turnme down turn me back up turn me down ifI hold Ctrl I can reset it this isbasically nothing but a monitoredlistening level and it has no effect onwhat comes into your master faders oranything that's happening out here inthe recording environment it's strictlyfor you to listen at the volume you wantand some of the great options on this isyou basically can set up your recordingenvironment the way you want you knowwherever you think your faders are goingto be and all the kind of things you setit up as turn your speakers in your roomactually up to the vine you want tolisten and then you can take this knoband independently again I shouldn't dowhat I'm talking but you can set it towhatever you want as a referencelistening level and it won't affectanything else that's happening just usethis to basically balance out what'shappening in your room in other wordsonce you have your faders at whateverlevel they're at and the speaker systemin your room turned up if it's too loudyou can bring this down a little bitwhatever you need this to be and thiscan be said a number of different waysin other words if you find out that atsome point as you're going along well Iturned it down now to like negative 11.let's say negative 11 is where it'sgoing to be in my room at the bestvolume and I want to keep it that wayall the time if I go up to my edit godown to my preferences and look down mylist of preferences down into the VSTarea and the control room I can set thatreference level to whatever I want rightnow I have it at zero but if I wanted anegative 10 or any other number that Iwanted I could set it there and thenwhen I go to this red knob hold Ctrl andclick on it it would always go to thatallowing me to set a quick referencelevel all the time for what I know Worksin my studio so this is a really goodoption to understand connected to thisis the dim control and you may seepeople doing this from time to timethey'll listen to their mixes at acertain level but then they want to hearthem at a lower level as wellbecause certain things will happen whenyou hear your mix at a lower level maybethe drums aren't punching through theway you want and so you're going to wanta dim level to be able to make thosekind of comparisons and the same thingyou can set the dim level when you goback up to your edit and yourpreferences and then down here it saysthe main dim volume and you can put thatin there the way you want and select itwe've looked at these kind of things butagain you have these Source selectorbuttons where it allows you to switchbetween your main mix and the externaland the Q mixes all right here you canjust press a button like I demonstratedearlier when I was using a referencetrack I can move between one and theother very quickly besides going intoyour preferences and doing that you canactually set your reference level righthere in other words if I turn this downit's at negative three if I hold alt andI click this buttonand then I'd move this back up again nowwhen I hit this reference level italways goes down to that or back on soyou have control of setting thatreference leveldown below that you can turn themetronome on and offyou can set the click level to whateveryou wantto change the panning on the clickall your monitor other buttons are hereyour down mix preset your TalkBack whichwe talked about in another video allright so now that brings us down intothis area that shows the listen optionand this most definitely can beconfusing if you have no idea what itmeans I'm going to just lead off bysaying for our discussion it's basicallyan alternate to your solo option if I'mplaying my song and I hit soloeverything but that instrument is thenmuted on the other hand if you use thislisten function which you have to enableby hitting this button here instead ofhitting the solo button if you hit thelisten button now the little L you willhave the same effect where you will hearin this case the drum was beingbasically sold but you're able to alsochange the amount of background musicthis will kill my microphone when I doit so I'm just going to play it anddemonstrate it I'm going to hit listenand then adjust the background music[Music]foreignyou also have the option of whether youwant this listen to be before the feederor after the feeder it says here AFL orpfl being before the fader and so ifit's before the fader the fader willmake no difference let me play it I'mnot going to talkso I can change that fader up or downbut it doesn't change the level in anyway and you're hearing that mountedright into the pre-fader signal when youenact this you also have a volume thatcontrols what you're hearing through thelisten functionforeign[Music]you have a similar function when you'reusing the TalkBack microphone where youcan hit this dim and bring down thebackground music or the backgroundmicrophones if you need to and then thelast thing to really discuss here isagain on the control room itself youhave the main and then you have theinsert Tab and on every one of thesetabs that we've now looked at you havethe option to as well add effects if youwant typically a compressor or a limiterbut really anything you feel like youneed maybe metering or any number ofother things some of these channels whenyou click on them not only will theyhave the inserts for the effects but atthe bottom you have an area that showsthe meter and an area that you canadjust the gain not every one of thesehas that the externals you can do thatyou can turn the volume up or down onthose in case your CD player comes intoo loud you also have some of thesethat give you the option to change thephase in case something is out of phaseand you want to just change that in yourcues you have effects for pre and postas you go towards the bottom and samething on the final monitor here I canchange the can put a limiter on this ifI wanted to change the volume and adjustthe phase if I needed to and thatcompletes our discussion of the controlroom as usual if you haven't grabbedyour navigation guide be sure to grabthat before you go has links to all thecontent on the channel ever growing freeto useyou can use it when you need to learnsomething but you can also use it sixmonths from today when you need to comeback and review something the controlroom a powerful set of features do youfeel like you understand it better thanyou did when we started this I can tellyou my favorite features for the way Iuse it would be the Q mixes and the wayI use it for reference tracks that beingprobably the number one thing I reallylike this reference level button thatallows me to set my room speaker levelif I need to without affecting anythingand the mixer itself of course theability to turn my metronome on and turnthe click level up or down and very verygreat feature is to be able to make thedown mix from stereo to Mono when I'm inthe middle of mixing I can quicklychange to a mono setting and see if Ihave any problems that wayI'm sure for others it's a great optionwhen you're trying to send alternatemixes to other people in your sessionall in all just no reason not to use itand just stay with just speaker outputsyou're missing out on so much sodefinitely enact your control room andtake advantage of whatever suits yourinterest and that's it as usual it'sgreat to have you guys here I'll see youon the next video