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Last week i purchased Cubase 4 and i decided to review and redesign my templates.

Since i want to leverage the 8 "subgroups" (read" ADAT ports) and their hardware effects (Reverb, Compression and EQ) i decided to follow the "ADAT loopback" suggestion. The loopback itself works fine, however there are several ways to intergrate the 828 in the Cubase Mixer. I've found 2 scenario's which i would like your oppinion on:

Scenario 1: Setup the ADAT outs as 8 stereo output pairs and te ADAT ins as 8 stereo input pairs

This gives you 9 busses in total : (Main Stereo Mix + ADAT A1-2 < B 7-8 )
i've found a few problems with this setup:
1. You either need to disable the "main mix roll up" in the CuemixFX mixer, or you should not assign any tracks to the Stereo Mix in Cubase. Otherwise you will hear doubles.
2. There is a clear latency between what's routed through the ADAT busses and what directly goes to the main mix. You can solve that by routing everything through the ADAT busses but then you can't use the main mix (and the mixdown/export function inCubase
3. Mixdown results still gives doubles/flanging effect, which you don't hear when monitoring your mix. (seems that the export function routes differently?

Scenario 2: Setup the ADAT busses as External effects.
In this scenario you get 8 stereo "effect busses" which you can assign to the main mix. You need to make sure that your inputs are muted in CuemixfX, otherwise you will hear doubles again. This option works quite well and you can fully leverage the Main Mix channel in the VST mixer.

However, again when using the export function to mix down towards a stereo file hear latency/flanging/doubling in the result which i don't hear when auditioning the final mix.

Welcome your feedback and potential aternatives, seem that i am nearly there, but i appearently are overlooking something obvious.

the Export doubling sound is solved by turning of ASIO Direct Monitoring in Cubase, remains the queston which scenario is better or are there even better setup alternatives?

Just a thought, but since you're routing through external device, you need to select the Real-Time Export option when exporting the audio mixdown. You may already have that enabled, but just in case...

Nobody else found better alternatives than the External FX option? or am i the only Cubase use here?

I've found a third way:

Setup the ADAT ports as FX in a group channel:
- You still create the external FX for ADAT 1-3-5-7-etc.
- however you do not set them up as an FX channel, but as an insert on a group channel. in this way you can choose whether you want the processing to be pre (slot 1-6) or post (slot 7-8)
- you can also then still insert other effects before of after the 828 comp and EQ

For me this is currently the way that seems to make most sense, though i am still wondering why all that DSP power could not be made available via a VST plugin (as done with SSL DUENDE or TC PowerCore)