Routing question

[amagalma]

Hello!

I am still quite puzzled about Master Bus and Rack routing. I find the displayed names ("Front Left", "Back Center", "Top Right" etc) confusing. I would just prefer the names of my audiocard's inputs/outputs to be displayed - as in other VST hosts - so that I know where I route something.

I want to do the following and I don't know how to do it with the current selection of input/output names:
(I have a TC Konnekt Live audio card, which has 4 analog inputs and 4 analog outputs)
I connect my acoustic guitar to LINE IN 1 and my electric guitar to LINE IN-2 of my audio card. So far so good.
I then want to have two (mono) Racks. Rack A dedicated to processing only the acoustic guitar and Rack B dedicated to processing only the electric guitar.
The output of Rack A should go into input of Rack A2-reverb, which should be stereo; and the output of Rack A2-reverb should go to my audio card's LINE OUT 1&2. Similarly, the output of Rack B should go into the input of Rack B2-reverb (stereo again), and the output of Rack B2-reverb should go to my audio card's LINE OUT 3&4.

I can easily do this routing in Cubase 5, but in Cantabile I have not yet managed to do it! How could I achieve it?

Thank you!

[amagalma]

Here is an example Cubase 5 project about the simple routing I am talking about...

[bradr]

Hi amagalma,

This is exactly the sort of routing that Cantabile can do but is awkward to setup. I do plan on fixing this, but in the meantime...

First up, you can rename the channels to whatever you like. In the Configure Master Bus dialog, select a channel and hit "Edit Channel" to rename it. Once you've create an arrangement you can then save it by clicking the "Presets" drop down and choosing "Save".

Now to try to explain the master bus and routing through plugins and racks...

* Think of the master bus as a very wide bus. All racks share the same master bus format.

* The Assign Audio Channels button in the audio driver settings controls which master bus channels are mapped to which audio card inputs/outputs.

* At input, incoming audio is placed on the master bus (as specified by the Assign Audio Channels dialog). The master bus is split and routed to any rack that has Input Connect enabled.

* Each rack processes plugins in order, pulling signals from the master bus and mixing new signals back onto it. The plugin's audio channel assignments controls which master bus channels are mapped to which plugin channels and the wet/dry controls determine how much of the incoming signal and how much of the plugin's output signal are passed on.

* Master bus channels that aren't assigned to a plugin's inputs or outputs are passed along unaffected.

* When racks are routed to each other, all channels are routed.

* After all racks are processed, their output is mixed and passed to the audio driver's output.

* Master bus channels don't need to be assigned to an audio driver input/output, allowing them to be used as auxiliary channels for passing audio internally between plugins.

So, bearing all this in mind, the easiest way to setup the routing you describe would be:

1. Setup a master bus with 6 channels, called Mono 1, Mono 2, Stereo 1 L, Stereo 1 R, Stereo 2 L, Stereo 2 R.
2. In Options -> Audio Engine -> Assign Audio channels, assign Mono 1 and 2 to your two mono inputs and the other 4 channels to outputs 1 through 4.
3. Create the racks/plugins as you've described.
4. For mono plugin 1, map Mono 1 to its input and its output to Stereo 1 L and R.
5. For mono plugin 2, map Mono 2 to its input and its output to Stereo 2 L and R.
6. For stereo plugin 1, map its inputs and outputs to Stereo 1 L and R
7. For stereo plugin 2, map its inputs and outputs to Stereo 2 L and R

To explain this a little.

* Audio input arrives on channels "Mono 1" and "Mono 2" - your two mono inputs.
* Mono plugin 1 pulls the signal from Mono 1, processes it and outputs to Stereo 1 L and R.
* Mono plugin 2 pulls from Mono 2 and outputs to Stereo 2.
* Stereo plugin 1 pulls from Stereo 1 L and R, and pushes back to the same two channels.
* Stereo plugin 2 does the same for Stero 2.
* All four stereo channels are sent to audio card outputs.
* The signal on Mono 1 and 2 are discarded.

Perhaps some ascii art will help:

Code: Select all

    Audio Input 1
       |
       |
       |
    Mono 1   Stereo L   Stereo R
       |        |          |
       |        |          |
       +------------------------------+
       |        |          |          |
       |        |          |     [MonoPlugin]
       |        |          |          |
       |        +---------------------+
       |        |          |          |
       |        |          +----------+
       |        |          |
       |        |          |
       |        +------------------------+
       |        |          |             |
       |        |          +----------+  |
       |        |          |          |  |
       |        |          |     [StereoPlugin]
       |        |          |          |  |
       |        |          +----------+  |
       |        |          |             |
       |        +------------------------+
       |        |          |
       |        |          |
    Mono 1   Stereo L   Stereo R
                |          |
                |          |
                |          |
             Audio       Audio
             Output 1    Output 2

A variation on this might be:

* Assign the mono plugin's output back to Mono 1.
* Assign Mono 1 to both of the stereo plugin's inputs.

I hope this helps. Yeah I know it's messy, but it's also flexible and allows decoupling of the session from the current hardware. It's also reasonably easy to understand - once you get it!

[amagalma]

Thank you very much Brad for your detailed response/explanation!!

Well, I think I get it now.. it is flexible, but it's quite complicated too.. certainly very different from the kind of routing that I am used to in other VST hosts/DAWs..

I am going to test it next week when I get back home, as at the moment I have only one guitar and one cable with me.

Thanks again for your time and your quick response!

[amagalma]

I am back again with new questions and problems!

Here it is:
1) How can I make my Master Bus configuration preset the default one that loads when you open Cantabile?
2) How can I force a vst plugin to load in mono mode? Most vst plugins come as a single .dll file. In Cubase, if you load the .dll file into a Mono channel, then the plugin becomes mono; if you load it into a Stereo channel, the plugin becomes stereo. There are very few vst plugins that come as separate .dll files for mono or stereo usage. So, being able in Cantabile to choose between loading the mono or the stereo version of a vst plugin .dll file is essential!
3) What exactly is "placement in recordings" in the channel configuration of the master bus? How does "front left" differ from "back left" for example? Or how does "unplaced" differ from "don't record"?
4) Similarly, what exactly is the "panning behaviour"? How does "don't pan" differ from "left" or "right"?
5) I still cannot get why each rack slot has separate input and output channel assignments.. Shouldn't only the rack have input and output channel assignments? And shouldn't each plugin in each rack slot receive audio from the previous plugin above and route its audio to the following plugin below?
For example, now there is the following problem:
I have set-up everything as you said. In Rack A let's say that I have two plug-ins, PlugA followed by PlugB and then I send the output of Rack A (mono) into Rack B (stereo) as we said. Now, what happens is that (depending on the routing of PlugA and PlugB) I either get no sound if I bypass PlugB or get no sound if I bypass PlugA. Try it, with various routing settings for PlugA and PlugB, and see what I mean...

See for example this Cubase 5 project. It took less than 2 minutes to set up, I can bypass whichever plugin in the chain without muting the signal row and it is very easy to see and understand how it works with just a glance. Perhaps Cantabile would benefit from a re-working of its routing capabilities.. In the meantime, I believe that if plugins could be forced to load in either mono or stereo, things would be a lot easier.

[bradr]

1) How can I make my Master Bus configuration preset the default one that loads when you open Cantabile?

Setup the configuration you want, then in Options -> General -> Default Session -> Set. Now whenever you create a new session it will have that configuration.

2) How can I force a vst plugin to load in mono mode? Most vst plugins come as a single .dll file. In Cubase, if you load the .dll file into a Mono channel, then the plugin becomes mono; if you load it into a Stereo channel, the plugin becomes stereo. There are very few vst plugins that come as separate .dll files for mono or stereo usage. So, being able in Cantabile to choose between loading the mono or the stereo version of a vst plugin .dll file is essential!

To be honest, I'm not really sure about this. As far as Cantabile is concerned a plugin just has a number of inputs and a number of outputs. A mono plugin can be mapped to stereo and back by creating multiple assignments to/from one of it's inputs.

3) What exactly is "placement in recordings" in the channel configuration of the master bus? How does "front left" differ from "back left" for example? Or how does "unplaced" differ from "don't record"?

This is related to recording of wave files and mostly can be ignored unless you're trying to create surround sound style recordings. It's used to declare the how the channel should be designated in the output recording.

4) Similarly, what exactly is the "panning behaviour"? How does "don't pan" differ from "left" or "right"?

This determines how the channel should be affected by Cantabile's pan slider. A left channel will get louder when panning left, quieter when panning to right. Don't pan, means this channel isn't affected by panning.

5) I still cannot get why each rack slot has separate input and output channel assignments.. Shouldn't only the rack have input and output channel assignments? And shouldn't each plugin in each rack slot receive audio from the previous plugin above and route its audio to the following plugin below?

It's just the way Cantabile has evolved from it's early stereo only days. The main benefit of this approach is it allows plugins to be inserted/deleted/reordered without having to reconfigure the plugin to plugin assignments each time.

I hope this helps, and thanks for your excellent comments... they'll be very useful in trying to resolve these issues in the coming weeks. If you've got other suggestions on improving it, please let me know.

Brad

[amagalma]

Thank you for your reply Brad!

I can say that now I feel more used to the routing of Cantabile as it is and there is certainly a way to do any routing I can think of. The downside is that in order to achieve some routings in Cantabile, one has to spend more time or has to think and organize more than if he wanted to do the same thing in Cubase, for example.

To be honest, I'm not really sure about this. As far as Cantabile is concerned a plugin just has a number of inputs and a number of outputs. A mono plugin can be mapped to stereo and back by creating multiple assignments to/from one of it's inputs.

This case is not problematic at all. Things get more difficult when you have a mono input (audio) and a stereo plugin. You can map the mono input to both inputs of the stereo plugin; in terms of routing, this is not a problem; but I think it is a bit of a waste of CPU power, if stereo processing is not a necessity (i.e. if the plugin is an equalizer or a compressor and not a stereo reverb or delay).

Another thing that I would like to see in a future update/version of Cantabile is (better) support of VST shell plugins (like the waveshell of Waves)..

If I have any other ideas, I 'll contact you.. Thank you again for this wonderful program and for listening to us!