One advantage to having the console emulation last is that it makes a track (channel in console speak) behave more like the analogue world when you overdrive a channel or a bus.  You get an analogue type distortion which is far more forgiving than digital distortion.  Putting the emulation first means you don't necessarily get this.

BTW the fact that you cant quick grouping enable/diable for all tracks and buses simultaneously will be addressed in the next update.

To clarify I meant well try and do this for the console emulators and external PC modules at most. 
In the general case quick grouping will continue to work on its data type. i.e. if you are in the track pane it will affect tracks and in the bus pane it will affect buses. It could be unexpected if across the board it applied to both tracks and buses, since if you were quick grouping track volume you wouldn't want it affecting bus volumes.

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk
]

BTW the fact that you cant quick grouping enable/diable for all tracks and buses simultaneously will be addressed in the next update.

To clarify I meant well try and do this for the console emulators and external PC modules at most. 
In the general case quick grouping will continue to work on its data type. i.e. if you are in the track pane it will affect tracks and in the bus pane it will affect buses. It could be unexpected if across the board it applied to both tracks and buses, since if you were quick grouping track volume you wouldn't want it affecting bus volumes.

Thanks again for clarifying.
 
As I said, I can't think of a time I've wanted to quick group Tracks and Buses until I wanted to A/B the Console Emulation.  It didn't bother me because I couldn't imagine another instance when I'd want to..

Silicon Audio


One advantage to having the console emulation last is that it makes a track (channel in console speak) behave more like the analogue world when you overdrive a channel or a bus.  You get an analogue type distortion which is far more forgiving than digital distortion.  Putting the emulation first means you don't necessarily get this.

Sure you can, you just drive the signal with trim. That is how one would do it on an analog console, "trim" up or down before hitting it. In actuality, on a console, you'd get some kind of input coloration as well as on the way out of the channel and then so on and so forth down the line to the bus. But at least for this set up what I and some others were driving (no pun intended...screw it, pun intended!) at the point of if one were looking for a real world set up so to speak, then using it first allows you to use other effects like an insert point. 

Transcending Music

Silicon Audio


One advantage to having the console emulation last is that it makes a track (channel in console speak) behave more like the analogue world when you overdrive a channel or a bus.  You get an analogue type distortion which is far more forgiving than digital distortion.  Putting the emulation first means you don't necessarily get this.

Sure you can, you just drive the signal with trim. That is how one would do it on an analog console, "trim" up or down before hitting it. In actuality, on a console, you'd get some kind of input coloration as well as on the way out of the channel and then so on and so forth down the line to the bus. But at least for this set up what I and some others were driving (no pun intended...screw it, pun intended!) at the point of if one were looking for a real world set up so to speak, then using it first allows you to use other effects like an insert point. 

The problem I see with trying to use it like a real world analogue scenario is that all other effects would need to be inserted in the middle of the Console emulation.
 
Overloud have tried to emulate all the disparate components of a console.  Your signal would pass along part of it, be sent out to outboard gear, re-inserted, sent to others (or pass through internal comps etc), to tape, then exit the strip, through the faders,  etc.
 
This is not possible with a single plug in.  So we need to find the best place to make the most of what we have, until Cake come up with FX chains within modules, which I think is a bit much..  "I want to insert a compressor inbetween the modeled resistor 'there', and 'that' transformer. And I want it to sound like it's a wet Autumn afternoon in a cold room with condensation on the trim pots..  Near the north pole, where the tape behaves differently.."
 
We need to put it where it serves its purpose best..

Indeed, as I was mentioning earlier that if one were to, for arguments sake, set up a real world flow, you'd need console input and output with all of our signal manipulation in between. Something like you mentioned, the intermittent FX chains within the module itself.  But we don't have that right now so the argument for either first or last has no merit regarding this signal flow.

Regarding "serving its best purpose" however, I could say conversely that the best purpose is to use these in a way were one could set the gain staging for the console and leave it (of course carefully driving here and there if desired) PLUS it would force you to be more judicious with other processing. This is a key thing here for any holistic emulated system, whether it's tape or console, etc. To add an overall character so that one uses less processing to achieve a good mix. Not to mention, again, putting it first you get to at least use PC fx or fx bins as insert points and chalk up the following bus input as the coloration after the channel since we don't have ch output coloration happening. IMO there are several good reasons to stick with it being first.   

Transcending Music

Silicon Audio


One advantage to having the console emulation last is that it makes a track (channel in console speak) behave more like the analogue world when you overdrive a channel or a bus.  You get an analogue type distortion which is far more forgiving than digital distortion.  Putting the emulation first means you don't necessarily get this.

Sure you can, you just drive the signal with trim. That is how one would do it on an analog console, "trim" up or down before hitting it. In actuality, on a console, you'd get some kind of input coloration as well as on the way out of the channel and then so on and so forth down the line to the bus. But at least for this set up what I and some others were driving (no pun intended...screw it, pun intended!) at the point of if one were looking for a real world set up so to speak, then using it first allows you to use other effects like an insert point. 

It depends whether you want your analogue non-linearity or distortion before or after your FX chain.  Personally, I nearly always want it after.  There's a reason guitarists usually put something like a wah pedal before an overdrive or distortion pedal - 9 times out of 10 it sounds a whole lot better.  A modulation of the signal produces different character in the over-driven stage.

If you do it all at the front end and you have FX that add gain, any resulting overdrive will not be very analogue-like.

The reality is that a real console has it's FX patched at insert-points, so there are analogue stages both before and after the FX.  That said, in my time doing live sound, over-driving with the trim at the preamp stage NEVER sounded good.

But as Noel says, there's no absolute rights or wrongs here, because we're working in a whole different paradigm.

Hi Silicon A., I think we may have posted at the same time. My post above yours addresses your post in light of this system. 

Transcending Music


Hi Silicon A., I think we may have posted at the same time. My post above yours addresses your post in light of this system. 

Yep 


You know, the cool thing in this new digital world we live in is that we can have diametrically opposing points of view and still both be right 

Maybe put one instance before and one instance after is the best way to go then?

If you're using amp sims, it would make sense though to put any emulation AFTER, for obvious reasons.

I wish I wasn't so busy with work and life that I could spend more time on X2. I'm mainly sticking to X1 at the moment while I work on my album incase I find some big probs with X2 and can't take the project back. I'm mixing a practise song on X2 though so hopefully that will give it enough of a run through on my system to trust it. Missing some of the new features so much though whilst I'm working on X1 :(