Get The Most Out Of MixConsole

The mixer offers plenty of cosmetic adjustments plus many ways of speeding up your workflow

MixConsole scaling does have frustrations, especially the way icons sometimes go missing, and even the highest resolution screen might be hard-pushed to display everything in the channel Rack at once, but a bit of patience pays off. Cubase has three mixer windows that can all be adjusted separately. By default only one gets a key command, but adding keys to the other two means you can assign them all to a new window and move between them with ease. The Pre Rack features two of the most useful (and simple) mixing tools: the low and high-cut filters. Both have five selectable filter slopes (from the polite 6dB/octave to the almost brickwall extremes of 48dB/octave). Before diving for more complex parametric EQs, explore how basic filters can help shape your mix. Use the high-pass to clear space for the main bass elements, and low-pass to push things further away. It’s all about balance though. Another time-saver is the Linking feature of MixConsole. Linking allows changes to one channel to be mirrored in another. This might be Volume and Mute/Solo status, though sharing extends to many aspects of mixing and control, including the selection and editing of plug-in Insert effects. For a more stealthy approach, use the Q-Link button to temporarily link all parameters on selected channels. The <Alt/Option> allows you to make unlinked edits. Like the Project windows there are Visibility Agents (and the two can be synchronised). Using the Filter Channel Types button in the MixConsole toolbar allows you to set up each of the mixers differently – perhaps one for Audio Tracks, one for Instruments and MIDI and one for Groups and Effects. Don’t forget to streamline what appears in the Racks. For example, if you use only third-party plug-ins, you can lose the Channel Strip and EQ racks. Group Channels are another time-saver. Route similar elements to a common group to make level-setting in big mixes easier, or apply processing in one go to save time. While there is a place for the individual processing of tracks and separate application of compression and EQ, there are times when processing things together can lead to better results. Try routing all your drums to a Group Channel and applying compression here before doing anything else. VCA Faders are a relatively new addition and sit somewhere between Group Channels and Linking. In essence they provide a master control fader for a set of channels. Though initially you wonder why they might be useful, they really come into their own as a great way of automating a channel, or group of channels, while still allowing you to tweak the original levels or relative balance. In fact, it is possible to have one VCA fader control another.