I should probably point out, as a purely technical matter, the way people here typically mix into groups, throwing whatever compressor or limiter on groups, that actually does not align with using VCA's because when the bus summing level goes down so does the level into the group compressor or limiter.
It would be of more value if you had like, 50 tracks not doing that, and you wanted to build multiple overlapping VCA groups from among those 50 tracks while not physically linking any of the channels. Having all of your overlapping VCA groups a fader away but never having to worry that moving any fader will move any other.
Part of not understanding it I think is maybe that some modern daw users really don't have a really good grasp on signal flows in general, the relationships of various signal flows. Not to mention, it's rarely the case that anyone would be making massive gain changes to groups of tracks in a pop song anyway, as opposed to something happening in post like maybe sound FX or foley.
When was the last time you faded your drum or vocal group down 6-10 db where it left the reverb out of balance to the child tracks? Like... never?
We saw a tiny bit of that way back when people talked about Cubase's warping or S1's audio bend or PT's elastic audio, how some were convinced that it wasn't that big a deal, offered various workarounds proving it not a big deal, until Justin actually coded it, and then it was the cat's pajamas.
heh.. Maybe Justin has VCA already coded and working in their internal 5.0 alpha version. In that case it must be hard to keep reading about VCA in the forums and not commenting anything. Or maybe they don't care and we will keep discussing VCAs for years.
Most people don't need VCA so it is not a priority I guess.
Most people don't need VCA so it is not a priority I guess.
That would be my guess. I was shocked that Steiny added it to Cubase. I was near certain that would be a Nuendo exclusive feature, but they also brought some other stuff down from Nuendo too so... something different I guess, this "Cubase Pro" thing they're doing.
You can always tell, like with Cubase 8, when a user base doesn't really need something. When you give it to them and most of them don't even know what it's for. Like I said earlier, most of them are just really tired of hearing PT guys talking about it so... one more thing off the list.
PT fans on the net are quickly running out of stuff to smack people with. They lost the Beat Detective bullet point some years back.
When was the last time you faded your drum or vocal group down 6-10 db where it left the reverb out of balance to the child tracks? Like... never?
With 30 vox under a folder, all with varying and carefully tweaked sends it doesn't take 6-10 dB (more like 2) for some delicate balances. I wouldn't be here if it did.
__________________ Music is what feelings sound like.
With 30 vox under a folder, all with varying and carefully tweaked sends it doesn't take 6-10 dB for some delicate balances. I wouldn't be here if it did.
Yeah, I didn't mean you specifically. I figured you might.
I meant most people who will typically do automation on the child tracks, not the bus track. That common example of reverb balance is a valid one for sure, but most regular users who do pop songs and the like probably don't automate busses so much as some others.
If they did they'd have already heard that, the FX balances going way off, and would have been complaining about it already, so they either aren't doing that or they actually can't hear the difference.
I don't recall a single help thread about that here ever. "Hey, I automate my busses and my FX balances go way off. How do I get around that? Thanks."
but most regular users who do pop songs and the like probably don't automate busses so much as some others.
Yea, that's one of the reasons it's almost never hit up against until a certain complexity is reached. It's literally (in my eyes) as if there is no possible reason to need them, then cross that line and begins slowing you down exponentially.
__________________ Music is what feelings sound like.
A certain unknown percentage of people asking for things they see elsewhere don't even need them... like with Beat Detective. Some wanted that just because PT had it, so they don't have to keep hearing people say their DAW doesn't have it, and really nothing else. A certain percentage asking were not quantizing live drums daily, they just kinda say that, because nobody can ever say or know if they're are or not.
This is not like that. The people asking would be asking regardless. They were banging that drum long before Cubase got VCA's.
Stuff like Elastic Audio I use a lot, aligning vocals, whatever. Stuff like quantizing real drums from a band recording, almost never.
To me ignorance means not knowing because of ignoring the question which still results in, heh heh, not knowing.
Do you mean you didn't notice the examples in this thread? Or maybe the other threads? I know there are plenty of them running around every so often.
The only other questions I saw were additional questions trying to deny every explanation given. It's just that VCA behavior is good for so many different scenarios, each person tends to explain the scenario they use the most, so where it might look like the idea is all over the place, the truth is, VCA behavior is helpful all over the place. So much so there is no single explanation of benefit.
TBH, I'm of the opinion this makes it very hard to code properly, especially in retrospect. It becomes quite exponential coding wise when you think of all the possible combinations that would need to be addressed.
__________________ Music is what feelings sound like.
Last edited by karbomusic; 12-07-2014 at 03:47 PM.
TBH, I'm of the opinion this makes it very hard to code properly, especially in retrospect. It becomes quite exponential coding wise when you think of all the possible combinations that would need to be addressed.
Absolutely karbo, and I think that's some of what I'm trying to get at here. Because of the mapping involved I don't think anyone's truly explained the real scenario.
I've not seen any pictures or schematics to show how it all connects which I think is important in understanding the whole thing.
On the other hand I don't think one needs to totally understand the whole picture if they at least understand the concept.
Something else I might add is that most of us know that a reverb sub-bus and all the tracks sent to it have to all end up at the same destination with out another bus or track in between. That goes without saying.
Because of the mapping involved I don't think anyone's truly explained the real scenario.
Something else I might add is that most of us know that a reverb sub-bus and all the tracks sent to it have to all end up at the same destination with out another bus or track in between. That goes without saying.
All I can suggest is to create a test project to replicate the scenario I gave and watch the problem in action? Otherwise, I don't know how much simpler it could be. Remember James HEs "sistered busses" and all that complexity? Guess why he had to do that? It wasn't because there was a simpler way. I'll go ahead and step aside on this one since there is not a reply I know how to give to get past this current amount of confusion and disdain. Shouldn't be this hard and the feature has been showing up in various DAWs for a reason. Next...
__________________ Music is what feelings sound like.
Last edited by karbomusic; 12-07-2014 at 05:44 PM.
P.S. They did something odd with Aero, and require Aero. Really, it won't even launch unless Aero is on. Take note of that non standard title bar with menus on it at the top of the screen. It's almost like the global menu bar in OSX, kinda odd in Windows really. That's not a parent window, it's a menu bar stuck to the top of the screen with no conventional Windows title bar.
I guess this is their solution to Windows users complaining about the MDI windowing.
All I can suggest is to create a test project to replicate the scenario I gave and watch the problem in action?
Hi karbo, no I don't need to do that because I know exactly what you're talking about and you're right about that. that's why I said what I said, I don't put myself in a corner like that, that's all I meant.
Hi karbo, no I don't need to do that because I know exactly what you're talking about and you're right about that. that's why I said what I said, I don't put myself in a corner like that, that's all I meant.
Then we must disagree on what is a corner. For me it makes more sonic sense but I digress and done trying. There isn't an easier way without more work.
__________________ Music is what feelings sound like.
Last edited by karbomusic; 12-07-2014 at 06:33 PM.
Then we must disagree on what is a corner. For me it makes more sonic sense but I digress and done trying.
Humm, not sure what you mean, I'm talking about painting your self into a corner where you have a reverb bus going to one destination while the track sending to it might be going to another destination.
Believe me I understand what you mean about sending tracks to a reverb-bus, but that reverb-bus output ends up going to the Master (or anywhere), while the sending tracks go somewhere else first. It puts adjustments after the fact out of balance. That's why I said it goes without saying.
It's unbelievable making Aero a requirement. I've never used Aero.
Speaking about non conventional windows title bar. In Reaper it seems conventional title bar but I cannot right click it to display the menu to minimize, maximize, close etc...
Humm, not sure what you mean, I'm talking about painting your self into a corner where you have a reverb bus going to one destination while the track sending to it might be going to another destination.
A global FX + using folders is painting myself into a corner how? Because Reaper doesn't allow it? If so, that logic invalidates most FRs doesn't it?
Yes I know. But my point was that it's further simplified if you remove the intermediary tracks sending to folder track's aux channels, and instead send directly from the children. That way I think the setup is quite convenient.
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^Sounds to me like you wouldn't have this problem if you hadn't painted yourself into a corner. I get by fine without it.
Heh heh, okay karbo, I don't know where you're coming from here. You and I are obviously on different pages. I was just using a metaphor but I thought I explained it pretty well, maybe not.
And what does "UnDo Points" have to do with any of this. That request for no "Undo Points" is a valid request that was actually born out legitimate problems that materialized using Python scripts.
I think I'm missing something here, but that's okay, I'm an old fart and it's easy to do.
I've put some links to requests back my signature. Makes it easier to find.
If you want to know how VCA, or rather as some prefer to call them DCAs (digitally controlled amplifiers instead of voltage..), you need to know how Reapers track groups work first.
Once you know how track groups work, you'll grasp how different this DCA stuff really is. The Cubase 8 videos help too, plus there's quite a bit of video material out there on Youtube on how they're used on live consoles(analog and digital) as well as Protools, and perhaps even Sequoia.
By default, DCAs relative volume fader levels, as well as the read/trim volume fader level(remember, Reaper actually has TWO faders per track), are combined at the time of playback/render.
Some DCA implementations offer the user to commit those relative levels to the DCA slaves as well. This is most often called coalescing.
Here's the picture from the request. The normal track groups of Reaper do not exhibit this kind of connection.
And here's a normal track without any DCA relationships :
It seems that some folks find it hard to research, so here's me helping you out. And nobody really needs to worry about understanding it to a large degree, as long as the devs do their research properly, it'll be fine.
It's like more advanced editing. Everyone gets there once they put some time in to it. DCA functionality is like that too. You'll find a use for it, once you get to play with it and discover they help you do stuff you could not do before that easily.
Way to go cubase. That looks to be a very intuitive and visual way to use VCAs in a daw.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lawrence
Cue to 3:20 for a nice little automation bit.
P.S. They did something odd with Aero, and require Aero. Really, it won't even launch unless Aero is on. Take note of that non standard title bar with menus on it at the top of the screen. It's almost like the global menu bar in OSX, kinda odd in Windows really. That's not a parent window, it's a menu bar stuck to the top of the screen with no conventional Windows title bar.
I guess this is their solution to Windows users complaining about the MDI windowing.
It's just that VCA behavior is good for so many different scenarios, each person tends to explain the scenario they use the most, so where it might look like the idea is all over the place, the truth is, VCA behavior is helpful all over the place. So much so there is no single explanation of benefit.
Don't doubt that for a second that it's useful, but how useful.
And my major concern is that you won't f-k up more than you solve.
If like me, others that are fond of the ability to nested structure of projects - would all be concerned.
VCA cannot maintain the sound on parallell compression - widely used. You have to listen and readjust that mix manually if having to change dry level. So you might have to be able to exclude certain level in your nested structure, or by a certain branch. A checkbox like "exclude as slave" or something.
VCA don't work on anything non-linear in effect-chain actually.
If using consistent flat structure, VCA is fairly simple to implement - as many decade of programming I can see it's another ballpark with the flexibility that Reaper has.
So working otherwise on analog consoles - VCA style of working is very easy to use as well. All tracks are on same level basically. If you've got parallell compressor somewhere, it's easy to exclude(not include) that as a VCA slave.
In Reaper you obviously do the dry/wet mix inside a folder and never have to worry about it. If you do that will all your tracks you don't have to worry about anything.
Get rid of spagethi routing - and introduce structured routing through the use of track folders. Different animal than analog consoles offers - but will make the same boost to audio production as object oriented programming did to programming.
With a nested structure you may have have a configuration issue for VCA making it really complex - maybe more complex than it's worth doing at all - it's easier to go through a branch and adjust manually.
If I overcome the pitfalls with other daws I will use that and don't give a damn about Reaper anymore and what happends. Until then, I care. But all for VCA ability as long as it does not introduce limitations on current work flow for us not needing it.
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The same reason why all of the other standard stuff from recording consoles is completely missing in modern daws, because guys who go to school to become professional software developers aren't audio engineers and apparently aren't asking or consulting, and the modern customer base by and large has never operated a professional console so they'll never miss it anyway?
It's the same reason why you can't solo a track in Reaper or S1 or many others without muting stuff because the idea of a solo bus is a foreign concept if you haven't actually used a console much. There's a reason most of that stuff is in PT, because the user base who drove the development back then knew what it was.
There is - tons - of great stuff from good consoles that aren't in DAWs. VCA's are just one thing of many.
Does it ever occur to anyone else how unnecessarily comparatively limited daw mixers actually are? Faders to sends would be another example of something that doesn't show up most anywhere. The gap is huge. Ask anyone who's spent any time on a really good recording console. The track routing Reaper does, for example, that people rave about, is par for the course on any decent digital console, route anything to anything.
For pete's sake, in most "popular" daw mixers you can't even solo a FX return.
This!
How about a decent patchbay? Then there is simple one-button side-chaining. Tracks-to-channels and other straight-forward routing functions and buttons. In my studio, I can record to four different systems at once or even mix them.
And as Lawrence pointed out elsewhere, there just is no separate monitoring, so solo kills the stereo out. Not good!
There is so much you can do in a proper studio that has a decent mixer - where's the talk-back in a DAW??
In a studio, I can feed anything into anything. I can feed the reverb into itself, creating a throbbing reverb loop. I can send stereo and 5.1 out simultaneously and monitor them separately. I can create virtual surround in a stereo signal and create a conventional stereo and/or 5.1 at the same time and send them out at the same time.
DAWs are great and I would be lost without stretching and aligning stuff, but all that is absolutely no replacement for a studio mixer.
Yes I know. But my point was that it's further simplified if you remove the intermediary tracks sending to folder track's aux channels, and instead send directly from the children. That way I think the setup is quite convenient.
Thanks and when I need it again I might try it and see. Much of my involvement in this thread was to show one example of VCA usefulness since usefulness etc. was and still is being questioned.
__________________ Music is what feelings sound like.
Last edited by karbomusic; 12-08-2014 at 07:16 AM.
Way to go cubase. That looks to be a very intuitive and visual way to use VCAs in a daw.
Yes, it seems to be a good design but it's new and I don't think it's on the level of some other designs. I don't have the Pyramix demo anymore and of course there is no Cubase 8 demo yet, but in Pyramix you can assign tracks to multiple overlapping VCA groups. Not sure if Cubase allows that or not.
Also, in Pyrmix the VCA group assignments are color coded, banded. Every fader that's assigned to a VCA group has a color band on the fader cap, like if a track is assigned to 3 VCA groups you'll see three little color strips on the fader cap, yellow, purple, blue, whatever.
Pyramix has some of the best ideas anywhere. It will even highlight - all - the tracks in the mixer that the selected track has any routing to, like with busses or sends, the idea being that they know it's post users will typically have very large projects where things can get visually confusing so they graphically help track that stuff with some really nice channel highlighting.
How about a decent patchbay? Then there is simple one-button side-chaining. Tracks-to-channels and other straight-forward routing functions and buttons. In my studio, I can record to four different systems at once or even mix them.
I know right?
There are some things that daw mixers do very, very well... better than hardware could ever do it, but they stop way too short on the overall fundamental design. When I stopped mixing on my d8b and started mixing in the box, those thing became really apparent.
Mixing on the d8b was great. I mostly just got tired of always doing real time prints.
And my major concern is that you won't f-k up more than you solve.
Please see this...
Quote:
Originally Posted by karbomusic
TBH, I'm of the opinion this makes it very hard to code properly, especially in retrospect. It becomes quite exponential coding wise when you think of all the possible combinations that would need to be addressed.
So it sounds to me that we are back to herding cats which usually happens anytime VCAs are mentioned.
__________________ Music is what feelings sound like.
... since usefulness etc. was and still is being questioned.
Yes, that's the root of it all.
To those people I would say, look at the master section of any good recording console, the buttons and functions. You will see things there that you may not even know what they're there for, why they're there, and that's perfectly ok because nobody understands everything everywhere.
But they're all there for a good reason or they wouldn't be there. There is quite literally nothing on those desks that doesn't have a good use, a good purpose. In most daws you can build unlimited cue mixes (unlimited sends, great) but you can't easily directly monitor any of them because the signals go straight out of the hardware output and nowhere else. On a console you can hit a button and directly monitor any aux output or pair, in isolation, without disturbing anything else, because consoles have monitor busses.
So we ask the question, "How am I supposed to build a cue mix if I can't even directly hear the aux output?"
That's probably why most large studios still have consoles because most daw mixers don't really measure up.
So it sounds to me that we are back to herding cats which usually happens anytime VCAs are mentioned.
Lol. It seems some have difficulty understanding the difference between a discussion and a demand.
This is a discussion of a function, not a demand for that function. They'd only do it if...
1. They actually want to, which they may not... and...
2. It's practical or viable to do here, which it may not be.
Steiny may have spent years fleshing that out of their architecture. Nuendo users have been asking for it for like 10 years. In something as complex as a pro digital audio workstation I would think "easy to do" doesn't apply to very much.
Justin is certainly a AAA major league coder but he's not Jesus, he can't code any and everything people may want just because they want it. Some things are probably "hard" for him too. Some of these things may take teams of people with different skill sets to tackle, we never know. One thing we - do - know, to date no small shop daw has most of it.
I don't doubt that in the Steiny lab they have guys working on Cubase 9/10/11 stuff already, testing the viability of various things, it's not just 3 guys coding it and they most certainly have the budget to buy into any underlying tech they may need. VCA's may have been on the Steiny test bench since version 4 or 5, we don't know.
Let's keep this in perspective. Studio One and Reaper shamed Cubase with things like their track lists, things Cubase should have had years ago, and they noticed. Their response was to do it better... because they can... and they did. The Cubase 8 track visibility thing is obviously a good bit more functional than either of the other two. I can see that just looking at the videos. You can always do that when you have the resources to do that, and they do.
What these great new products kinda did was wake up a sleeping giant... kinda shook them out of their relative apathy.
Lol. I try to always give Justin his due, he's certainly earned it, he's definitively proven that his skills are top notch beyond any doubt.
With that said, I think some users expectations just don't align with reality. Some things do take the effort or collaboration of many good coders, no one or two guys can ever do it all... like no one guy could have ever made the A-Bomb, it took many smart guys working together to crack that nut.
As much as we hate the corporate structure, that's what it's good at, collecting the people and resources to solve tough problems.
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