- #What is vca in mixing live sound how to
- #What is vca in mixing live sound update
- #What is vca in mixing live sound pro
- #What is vca in mixing live sound free
#What is vca in mixing live sound how to
Let’s take a look at how to set these up and how they can help you with your next track. They are a jump back to how analog consoles worked, but they worked there for a reason. These are great to use when you want to group and link tracks together but not sum them to a bus channel.
#What is vca in mixing live sound update
To force all the tracks in a VCA group to be controlled by the VCA master for Input Monitoring and Record Enable, Option/Alt click on the VCA master's Input Monitoring or Record Enable switch respectively.The Studio One 3.2 update now includes VCA channels in its arsenal. So if a kick drum & snare track is record enabled in a group, its VCA master's Record Enable switch will work on just these two tracks ignoring any other tracks in the group. The Input Monitoring and Record Enable will only be controlled by the VCA Master for the tracks that already have those parameters enabled. The VCA Master only controls Volume, Mute, Solo, Input Monitoring and Record Enable. You can enable more parameters in the group but the VCA Master will not control them. This is because the VCA Master will control those parameters either way. You will notice the 'Edit' option is now greyed out and if you click on Attributes you will see that Volume and Mute are also greyed out (if 'Follow Globals' is unchecked). You will see the same window you saw while creating the group. If you go to the Groups Tab, right-click on a group name and select Modify. The ON/OFF state is applicable mainly for regular groups. Once it's assigned to a VCA, it functions irrespective of its ON/OFF state. In fact, the group doesn't even have to be ON in the Groups tab for it to work.
So you kinda get the best of both worlds which would not be possible with regular groups. The VCA master should now be simultaneously controlling the faders of the slave tracks in the group and you can still control the individual slave tracks independently by just moving its fader directly. If you have already created the VCA Master, the group can be assigned to one by choosing it from the VCA option in this dialog box.
If you make the group an Edit group it won't work as a VCA group. Do make sure that the group is either a 'Mix' or 'Mix/Edit' one. It will still work with this option checked but it's best to leave the global settings for regular groups. In the dialog box, give the group an appropriate name and uncheck 'Follow Globals'. Select a few tracks from your session that you would like to control with a VCA and group them by going to Track > Group. Once the VCA Master have been created, they need to be assigned to groups in order for them to control the 'slave' tracks. The maximum number of useable VCAs is defined by the maximum number of groups which is 104.
#What is vca in mixing live sound free
This also means that it does not take up any voices, so feel free to add as many VCA Masters as you need. So the track type is defined by the tracks it is controlling. This is because VCAs are not actual tracks, they just control other tracks. You will notice that the option for creating a mono, stereo, LCR, quad etc. Go to Track > New and in the dialog box that follows, you can choose to create a VCA Master.
#What is vca in mixing live sound pro
Now you may think that the same can be achieved with simple groups or Aux tracks in Pro Tools but there is so much more to VCAs and I'm going to highlight some of their features in this article. So if you had a group of 6-8 tracks which represent an entire drum-kit (kick, snare, toms, hi-hat etc.) where each track is set at a different level, you could control all the tracks with just one VCA, while maintaining the offsets between them. The term VCA which stands for Voltage Controlled Amplifier comes from the analog world, where consoles would have these VCAs that could control multiple signals together and also maintain the relative balance between the signals. VCA masters (Pro Tools with Complete Production Toolkit or Pro tools HD) are a great tool for mixing large sessions in the box, especially if you do not have access to a control surface.