Quick Switching Master Faders

[James Steele]

I came across this little trick when I was trying to quickly hear an external hardware synth coming into DP through an Aux Track play in time with VI tracks. When a limiter is on Master Fader latency is introduced and VI tracks get shifted earlier (?) making hardware synths coming into the audio interface sound late. By making a redundant Master Fader track for the same outputs without any plug-ins, you can then move it to the left of the other Master Fader track and then it takes precedence.

Yes, I know... rather than use Aux tracks in DP to monitor external hardware synths, why not use the AVB Mixer instead? Good point. But it was just interesting to me to see that this was possible and that you can assign more than one Master Fader to the same outputs, and DP gives precedence to the left most Master Track in the Mixer Window and essentially deactivates the ones to the right. You could use this behavior, for example, to quickly audition different mastering chains by shuffling around different Master Fader tracks that have different combinations of plug-ins on them.

[Phil O]

Thanks for that tip, James. I was trying to figure out how DP assigns precedence to redundant Master Fader tracks just yesterday. Now I know.

Your friendly neighborhood Phil

[James Steele]

Yeah... just realized alternatively you can just deassign the Master Fader from the main stereo out.

The one good thing about using the swapping Master Faders trick is that you can put a Trim plugin on the "low latency" version without the mastering limiter, etc. and then crank the gain so there won't be a big drop off in volume when you swap them out.