Direct Routing in Cubase 12

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Direct Routing in Cubase 12

hello everybody andrew blake from thedigitalaudiomanual.com today we are going to discuss direct routing in cubase 12. but before we start i want to remind you that there's a link below to the free content navigation guide which is an easy to navigate webpage with links to all the content on this channel and besides that in the near future i'm going to begin adding tips and other bits of information that will only be available there you know things like simple steps that will get you started and up and running quick things that are in the videos but are written down in simple steps that serve as quick reminders when you need information down the road if you're working with programs like wavelab or cubase plug-ins or the cable guys shaperbox2 and many many other projects that are in the works then i know you're going to find just like i have that this is an invaluable study aid and the other thing i want to make sure you understand is that this is not a simple pdf this is a constantly updated page that has any information that is new or anytime videos are changed really anything updated and once you have it you will always have the latest information constantly updated so if you haven't gotten it already go to the link below click on it and save it to your favorites it's my gift to you and it's absolutely free okay so let's get started direct routing what is it it is really cool that's what it is it's an option that cubase gives you to route things in slightly different ways than the way it defaults and by default for example if i look down at this highlighted pattern where my mouse is spinning and as i go up the channel there's a routing tab right here and in this routing tab it basically says where this channel is going in the mixer ultimately everything goes over here to the right to what's called the stereo output bus okay everything winds up here this is like the final destination and then it comes out to your sound in the process of using that you can set up groups and different ways of you know moving the information around the sound from one place to the other but it usually goes in a very linear beginning at one place and traveling through and then ending up with this stereo output what the direct routing offers is alternate you know paths i'm going to give you a couple of scenarios so you can see why it's useful probably the most typical way it's useful that most people would use it is in setting up parallel processing if i have drums going and i have my drums coming out and going over to the stereo maybe i want to also send those drums to a another channel where i can set up heavy compression and run both of those channels together into the stereo output that's what they call setting up a parallel processing the direct routing allows you to do that but it really allows you to do more things than that there are so many times where i have had a scenario where i'm in a song and i have something set up maybe a few synthesizers in a folder and a group somewhere and i say oh for a minute i could just for this one part of the song if i could just send these out to something else completely different than the path they're on but typically in a normal scenario because everything is moving from one group to the other and ultimately to the stereo it turns out to be more difficult and i wind up not doing it at least i did in the days when i didn't know about the direct routing option with the direct routing option you can send it out to your stereo but you can take you can take that same stuff and send it to another location at the same time and set it up and process it a whole different way so let's look at some of the ways this happens in the mixer that we're looking at you have uh these things here that are known as the racks okay they're just various you know the eqs and the sends and the routing all these are considered racks and up here on the top right there's a button that says racks and as you go down and it gives you all kinds of options and again you can check or uncheck all of these as i look through this rack currently mine shows routing inserts cues sends and if i go up here to racks and i look down the list there's also an option that says direct routing and if i click on that guy it opens up another option and it says direct on it and that's the direct routing option but there's another area to this that needs to be set up and i want to show it to you as well if you look up and there's a little down arrow next to the racks and as you look down that that also has an option that says direct routing this one says direct routing summing mode and it says on and it gives you the option to check that so i'm going to show you that in a second let's stay away from that for a moment so let's set up a basic direct routing and then uh you'll be able to see how this goes so i'm looking at a drum track right here a groove agent drum track and i have drums coming out of this as i move up and look at the direct routing tab right now mine says submaster and that's where it's going that's going to a bus all right but let's say i want to also send this to another area that i'm going to add some heavy compression to and do parallel processing to it so first i'm going to set up a destination so i'm going to go over i'm going to right click in my mixer and i'm going to actually create another group and i'm going to call this group drum parallel because that's where i want to send it so i'm going to set that up now i have another channel set up called drum parallel it's not doing anything it's just sitting there you know at the moment and it's being ignored because nothing is going to it when i go back over to my drums and i look up my drums my drums are going to this sub master which is where i send all my tracks but now if i look below the next slot below the submaster i now have a drop down list that i can click on and this gives me all the different outputs on my you know mixer that i can send and in this list i also have the thing that says drum parallel so i'm going to go ahead and choose that guy so i click on that and now i have two options above my groove agent drums i have one that says sub master and i have one that says drum parallel one's kind of highlighted in green and one is gray showing that it's not active yet the way it's set up right now is it's kind of a either or situation meaning my drums are going to go out through the sub-master but if i hit this drum parallel they're going to shoot over to my bus that i've set up for drum parallel and then continue on but they're not going to go to the sub-master anymore in other words it's kind of like a stop light at the intersection that's telling us my drums are going to go one place or the other so i haven't really set up anything in parallel yet i've kind of just made a choice i'm going to send it one place or the other and there's various times and uses you'll want to do this because maybe you want to just quickly have different options for testing or whatever your sound you know whatever you're trying to do you want to have an option to send it from one thing to another but again they're not being used at the same time it's one or the other but if we go up to the right into this little arrow and now we choose this option that says direct route summing on and i hit that guy now i can hold control on my keyboard hit this drum parallel and they both light up so i have a sub master lit up and i have the drum parallel lit up and so now what's happening is my drums are now going out to two unique destinations they're going to the submaster like they always have and they're just shooting onto the stereo out but they are also being sent equally to this drum parallel bus which is over here to the right of a little bit and then they're continuing on to the stereo bus so they're in essence they're going to two separate destinations allowing me to control two separate destinations and then ultimately going to the stereo out so now this comes up with this kind of sound situation in other words if i start my drums and then i turn up the submaster where they originally were going this is my drums as they were they're coming out of the drum channel going to my sub master heading out the stereo output i can turn this down and i can turn up instead the drum parallel processing channel which i now have the drums coming through with heavy compression and that's the second destination i can turn that down so now when i turn up the original sounding drums i can now add in the parallel processing and i have drum parallel processing the drums are coming through the original spot but they're heading to two separate ultimately two separate destinations my sub master and my drum parallel so the direct routing is great in that way it just allows you to set up this kind of a scenario very easily but like i said it doesn't just start and stop with parallel processing the option to be able to create this uh these separate outputs in the direct routing there's so many uses for it i'm not going to begin going into them but i can tell you like i said there's um you know if you take something out of one channel and then it typically goes into a group if you were to try to send it from that one channel into another group and maybe that group to whatever the routing you can do certain things but this direct this direct routing just makes the whole thing so much more achievable now couple things to be aware of the direct routing can allow you to set up seven different slots and every time you add something in it basically let's go ahead and do it here put one more in here every time you add another thing it allows then expands to show you another slot and you can keep going until you have seven of these slots filled with different routing options but they recommend that you always leave this top one to be your main outputs in this case i have my stereo and my submasters these are the ones that are like the main outputs that i use all the time they don't recommend that you start putting your new uh direct routing outputs things whatever you're setting up into these top slots these are supposed to be reserved always for the main output so keep that in mind you're setting this up then from then on down every slot after that can really be whatever you want all right now if that's not enough you can actually automate where these things go so in other words now i have my drums coming out of the sub master i also have my drum parallel processing which is inactive at the time if i go down and i hit my right automation turn that on temporarily and i play my track if i come up and i click my drum parallel it actually will write in an automation lane turn this off and now it will turn the channel on or off as needed as this moves through this will now turn the parallel processing on or turn it off all in real time and this is not limited to a single output you can automate any one of these turning them on off however you need them and not only that you can do it on multiple channels and then the last tip i want to give you if you're going to use this summing mode up here on the top in this arrow turn this on first before you activate the direct routing in the racks i have found that if you turn them on in the racks first it gives me it fights me from trying to turn them on in the summing mode so if you're going to use the summing meaning you want to use more than one output at the same time turn that option on first so there it is direct routing it is definitely a power user feature in cubase 12. the possibilities with direct routing and the fact that you can automate turn them on and off just really a great option for so many things as usual if you haven't grabbed the navigation guide be sure to grab that before you go links to all the content on the channel ever growing there free to use i use it for learning stuff and i use it when i want to review stuff a year later after i've forgotten something i learned a year ago direct routing an excellent option when you need to route things creatively it's great to have you guys here we'll see you on the next video