Stems and Groups in Cubase
Wednesday, August 12th, 2009I wish to mix my tracks live into 4 parts- bass, drums, keys and odds & ends and have them running concurrently on 4 Audio tracks live .
We would call these “STEMS” or “GROUPS. Are these “stems” recorded to their OWN tracks or do you want to be able to mix them into “GROUPS” Live?… So that you could make adjustments WITHIN the “groups” or “stems”? IE: All drums would be coming out of a “STEREO PAIR” but, you may want to be able to raise or lower the snare live… For this tutorial I will assume that all your tracks are separate…
I need to learn how to send these out of Cubase 4.5.2…
You will need to create GROUP tracks in Cubase…
PROJECT>ADD TRACK>GROUP CHANNEL…
In the OPTIONS box that appears, choose to create 4 and make them STEREO.
You will now have 4 STEREO GROUP CHANNELS.
NAME each one just like you name an AUDIO TRACK . IE: DRUMS / BASS / KEYS / ODDS&ENDS.
In the MIXER you can now select an output destination for each instrument…
So… You can now set the OUTPUT of each audio track to the appropriate GROUP…
IE: Kick – to DRUMS / Snare – to Drums, Hat – To DRUMS, etc…
Once you have completed the routing, you will have 4 FADERS (The GROUP tracks) that “contain”your different “groups” or “stems” of instruments.IE: 1 fader controls the volume of ALL drums, another fader controls ALL Keysboards, etc. NOTE: They will appear at the extreme RIGHT of the Mixer.
…to an M-Audio Firewire 410 interface , and then route these 4 audio tracks into the mixing desk that I will have on stage.
The FireWire 410 has 8 Line outputs on the back so, you can use these “line outs” in pairs…
IE; 1+2 = Drums / 3+4 = Bass / 5+6 = Keys / 7+8 = Odd & Ends… You would then just connect these
physical output “pairs” to your mixer… Just make sure that the pairs of faders on your mixer are
panned HARD LEFT & RIGHT to maintain the stereo imaging (if there is any).
To ROUTE the AUDIO that is coming from the FADER GROUPS directly to the various outputs
of your FireWire 410 you will need to set some things up in your VST Connections window…
Like this: Open VST Connections…
And you will see this – Make sure you have clicked on the OUTPUTS TAB!!!
Next, click on the ADD BUS button and add 3 Stereo buses.
Then click OK.
You will now see something like this…
Note that EACH pair of stereo outputs is assigned (in the device port column) to outputs 1-8
of MY Device. You should be able to achieve the SAME with your FireWire 410.
Finally, we need to set the OUTPUTS of our newly created GROUP tracks.
Open the mixer, locate the group channels we created earlier and set the outputs like this…
And this…
And this…
And so on.
If everything is set correctly, you will hear your groups out of the separate
pairs of outputs on the back of your FireWire 410.
NOTE: If you are ONLY monitoring the “MAIN” stereo out, you will NOT
hear anything routed to outputs 3-8 until you hook them up to your mixer.
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