Recording with or without Direct Monitoring? | CUBASE TIPS

let's talk about recording especially direct monitoring which is something that seems to be a bit confusing for some so that's why i decided to make this video and explain to you everything you need to know about direct monitoring in cubase hey what's going on crystalline here from mixdown online very happy that you are here today i'm very excited to make this video for you let's jump right in and check this out okay in cubase there's two things i want to show you that i want to focus on today the first one is on an audio channel we have this option called monitor and this is something we are going to look at and on top of that we will go into studio setup and look at what we have here that is called direct monitoring mine is grayed out right now so i'm going to explain to you why later on all right so now let's start with this monitor feature that we have on an audio channel when activated this will monitor the incoming signal coming from your audio interface straight in cubase so you'll be able to monitor yourself when recording so this is a very important a very important tool and feature that we have on an audio channel now i'm just going to go back one step and explain to you the route that the signal is going to take when you record into your daw okay especially the monitoring signal because this is what we are going to focus on today the signal that we are monitoring in our headphones when recording so basically when we record the signal goes straight into the sound interface on the computer straight in cubase or any other dw and then out of cubase to the sound interface out to your speakers or headphones when you're recording so this way you can monitor the signal that you are recording and this is exactly what this little guy is going to do it's going to allow you to listen to hear that signal that you are recording what i'm using on this video is the evo 8 sound interface that i reviewed not too long ago i'm going to leave the link on top if you want to watch this out and i have the lc t640 plugged into the uh the evo 8 as my main microphone for cubase okay so now if i click on this monitor button there you go now i can hear myself if i put on my headphones i can actually hear myself okay through cubase and this is a very simple way to monitor your signal while recording the only thing you need to know about doing it this way is latency and latency is the time it takes for the signal to uh to take the full route that i explained earlier so the time it takes for the signal to go from the microphone to the sound interface the computer to cubase out of cubase out to your sound interface and then out to your headphones that takes some time and this is what we call latency now you can manage the amount of latency when recording and to do this in cubase you just need to open the studio setup by going in under studio and then let's do this again studio and then to studio setup and you will get this window you select your sound interface mine is the audient usb audio for the evo 8 and you click on control panel so this will open the software that comes with the evo 8 so essentially you're not going to get the same window when you're going to click on your control panel if you're not using the same sound interface so this will open the settings window of your sound interface so that window will be different from a sound interface to another and this is where i'll be able to manage the amount of latency so this one is under set a0 buffer size and mine is set up to 64 samples at the moment which is actually pretty low um so at this moment i think if i close this one out that will give me a latency of the 2.5 milliseconds which is very low and workable for most recording purposes the only thing though is uh if the buffer size is too low and you have like a bunch of plugins already into your recording session you might end up with some glitches and stuff you know so you in that case you will need to readjust that buffer size and bring it a bit higher the thing to understand is that the the lower the buffer size the harder it is on your computer cpu and if your buffer size is higher your cpu is going to work less okay which is going to be better for cpu usage however it's going to add latency to your sound so if i bring that up to 2048 i'm going to end up with 52.5 seconds which is like actually crazy um so actually you can hear the difference that amount of latency if we listen to the monitored signal you can hear that huge amount of latency which is kind of annoying so you want to avoid that so you can bring this up to 64 or 128 that is going to work well for most recording purposes now the good thing about this is that you'll be able to use plug-ins while recording so if you're recording with if you're recording like an electric guitar using a vst amp virtual amp you'll be able to do it this way you just activate the monitor on the channel insert a vst guitar and plug-in and you can monitor straight using the sound of that plug-in on your incoming signal and voila you know that simple but for other sources like vocals and drums in my opinion anyways it's a bit hard to work even at a lower buffer size like 128 or 64. if i'm recording drums i'm going to hear that tiny fuzzing effect that is actually going to bug me a lot and this is just a personal taste and same for vocals in my opinion you know the way i work i usually don't do it this way but a lot of people are going to be okay with that amount of latency like 64 samples or 128 128 samples which is going to work fine for the most part but at this point it's a personal taste you know so this is how you can manage that in cubase and monitor yourself with plugins straight from cubase the second way you can monitor yourself in cubase while recording is by using the audio interface itself to monitor the signal so you bypassing cubase all together and this is something that is available on most sound interfaces some will call that direct monitoring they will have like a button straight on the interface itself called direct monitoring while activating that button you will hear the direct signal coming out of the interface blended with the signal coming out of cubase which is going to be your music the playback so this way you can avoid latency you don't need to check the latency level the buffer size and so on so you're kind of putting that aside and you deal with the direct signal which is way more comfortable when recording in my case if i'm using the evo 8 i'm going to go straight to my mixed console out of the evo 8 software and i'm just going to bring up that fader and this is going to send the signal straight into my headphones and now as you can tell you can see that pc1 and two is the playback coming out of my computer in my case out of cubase that i can balance with my direct signal for the perfect mix balance now i'm just gonna remove the monitor option here out of cubase because in that case i'm not gonna need this option i'm gonna need to turn this monitor option off okay or else i'm gonna end up with two signals like right now and it's gonna create that kind of a fuzzy effect and you don't wanna have that so keep that one off when direct monitoring straight from the sound interface the downside of using it this way is effects you don't have any effects because you're bypassing cubase the signal goes straight from the microphone to the sound interface and then back out of the sound interface to your headphones you're bypassing cubase so you don't have access to any effects so if you want to add a reverb to your vocal while recording you're going to have to use outboard gear or you can actually do it another way you know in cubase that is kind of a workaround or if you have like a sound interface that has a dsp option like the dsp mix effects that is included with the steinberg usbc series and the ax r4 that i have in the back that also has a dsp with the dsp mix effects where i can actually use some effects while recording only to monitor while recording straight from the sound interface itself without again going into cubase so the good thing about that is you avoid latency and there's probably other other brands that that provides a dsp option on the interfaces um so this is a very cool option if you have access to this if you don't here's a workaround that you can use in cubase and i made a video on that years ago but i just want to recap this and show you briefly how you can work this out in cubase so what you can do okay is to first of all the main vocal track that you're going to use to record your vocal for example you make sure the monitor is out and you monitor yourself straight from the sound interface what you do then is you create yourself a second audio channel a stereo one let's say you want to use a reverb for the singer to sing with you know without necessarily recording the reaver but just for monitoring purposes you create yourself a stereo channel and you insert a reverb that's it so i just inserted this reverb from arturia this one is going only on this verb channel which is a nodule a stereo audio channel and i'm gonna route this one to the same input so mono in one and i'm gonna make sure that the monitor button here is on and this way when i'm gonna bring my fader up i'm gonna have some reverb i'm gonna put on my headphones so now i have some reverb and i have my direct signal at the same time and i can balance that out the straight in cubase by you know bringing up and down that channel that reverb channel which is again an audio channel with the monitor button on and if i look at my mixer the sound interfaces mixer so i have my direct signal and i have the reverb that is coming out of cubase and then it's just to balance that out with the music and you're good to go doing it this way will add latency to the signal of this channel which is the reverb signal but that doesn't matter whatsoever since you're probably gonna end up adding a pre-delay on your reverb during mixing anyways this workaround will work with effects like delays and reverbs mainly and you can also route this channel by using a qmix if you have cubase pro you can use a qmix only to monitor the effect if you want to that's another option now if we go back to studio setup we have the option of direct monitoring that we can check on or off by default this option is off by activating direct monitoring that will monitor the signal via your sound interface but controlled via cubase instead of controlling the monitored signal via the design interfaces software so you're gonna do this part straight from cubase and that's why it's not all sound interfaces that will support that like the evo 8 doesn't support it this way you have everything that you need via their own software but some other audio interfaces will let you do so so i'm going to change my audio interface to my axr4 and i will show you how that works on this system that supports direct monitoring okay now i have my axr4 loaded and i have direct monitoring available this time so this is the xr4 software that i can monitor from and if i click on direct monitoring and i click on ok now as you can see channel number three where is the microphone plugged in is da controlled that means that cubase is controlling this channel but the signal is still not monitored through cubase but only controlled with cubase this one actually i'm just going to turn this one down i'm not going to need this anymore uh this way if i click on direct monitoring there you go i'm going to see the signal in cubase i'm going to be able to control the level of the signal of my monitors straight from cubase and even with my axr4 i'll be able to control the gain you know all those parameters that i have available out of my sound interface straight from cubase now this might not be the case for all interfaces but to the minimum you'll be able to control the amount of level if you're not using a similar interface as i do and again the cool thing about this is you control everything within cubase without latency like near zero latency because your signal is not going into cubase but the downside is all the parameters of your channel are not going to be available all the inserts channel strip sends you know all of these are going to be bypassed the only thing you'll be able to monitor is the signal coming from the interface itself because you're bypassing the dos or you're not going to have access to any effects so this is the downside of doing it this way but if you're using a sound interface like the one that i have or like the urrt4 that i have in the back somewhere which will give you access to the dsp mix effects which you can control straight in cubase now you'll be able to monitor yourself with some effects again effects that are not coming from cubase but that are coming from the dsp side of your sound interface like i have here with this interface and also the urc series from steinberg also has a dsp mix effect similar to what i have with the ax r4 now as far as the integration goes with the axr 4 the dsp mix effects and cubase i'm planning on making a video talking about this in the next few months i'm just waiting for an update for the axr4 and i'm going to jump on this video so just stay tuned for this one so this is basically all the choices that we have when recording in cubase so there you go friends this is what you need to know about direct monitoring in cubase i hope that was helpful if you have any questions or comments you can leave everything down below and also if you enjoyed the video don't forget to share and to like and also to subscribe if you're new here on the channel until next time take care and see you

Channel: Chris Selim - Mixdown Online

Views: 27,094

Keywords: audio, audio engineering, audio mixing, chris selim, cubase, cubase 9, cubase pro, home recording, home studio, home studio mixing, home studios, mixdown, mixdown online, mixing, mixing audio, mixing tip, mixing tutorials, music, recording audio, steinberg, the recording revolution, tips, tutorial

Id: UJcpLXKI-HU

Length: 14min 25sec (865 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 24 2021