Control Room - Setting Up In Cubase 5


Our last post covered the relevance of a control room mixer in a small studio and how it can impede the wearing out of physical knobs and faders.

 This post takes a look on how to set up a simple monitor and headphone control room mixer on Steinberg's Cubase 5. We'll also explore a more manual way of achieving this on just about any DAW even though most already have a set up for it.
Setting Up a Monitor and Headphone Control Room Mixer in Cubase 5

 1. Open the Devices tab on the menu bar
2. Click on VST Connections.


3. On the Outputs page, ensure your master out ports are not connected.



 4. On the Studio page of the same VST connections window, enable the control room.



 5. Click the Add Channel button and select Add Monitor from the drop down.



6. Name this channel as you please.


7. Click the Add Channel button again, only this time click Add Headphone from the drop down



8. On the Device Port column, connect the monitor and headphone channels to their appropriate physical outs on your sound card.



9. Close the VST Connections window, click Devices on the menu bar and select Control Room Mixer


10. There you have it, a headphone and monitor control room mixer!



Manual Set up
  •  By default all tracks should be routed to the master channel, this will serve as our monitor channel.
  • Create a new group channel or bus.
  • Connect the newly created channel to an extra physical out on your sound card from your DAW.
  • For ease, this port should be a stereo jack (3.5mm or 1/4" TRS) so a head phone can easily be connected to it.
  • Using the DAW's mixer sends, send audio from any channel of interest to the "headphone" bus. This will most likely be the beat and any other previously recorded vocals.
  • Voila! You now have a Monitor and Headphone mixer. Now even when you turn down the master out fader, the headphone mix still gets played and you can control all right from your DAW.


Written by,
Chidi 'Tite' Nnadi


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