Steinberg Cubase 5 Operation Manual

181
Surround sound (Cubase only)
Background
What is Surround sound?
Surround is a common name for various techniques for po-
sitioning audio in reference to the listener. Whereas regular 
stereo is limited to left/right positioning, within a relatively 
narrow field, surround sound opens possibilities of posi-
tioning an audio source anywhere around the listener.
Surround sound comes in many flavors, from the ill-fated 
Quadraphonic format for vinyl discs launched in the 70’s, 
to today’s more successful...

182
Surround sound (Cubase only)
Surround in the mixer
Surround sound is supported throughout every stage of 
the signal path in the Cubase mixer, from input to output 
bus. Each bus or audio channel can carry up to 6 surround 
speaker channels.
In the output channel section of the mixer you can control 
the master levels for configured busses. The level meter 
for a bus (or channel in the mixer) that carries multiple sur-
round channels will show multiple level bars, one for each 
speaker channel in the...

183
Surround sound (Cubase only)
Child busses
Essentially a child bus is a bus within a (wider) bus. Typi-
cally you may want stereo child busses within your sur-
round bus – this allows you to route stereo tracks directly 
to a stereo speaker pair within the surround bus. You may 
also want to add child busses in other surround formats 
(with fewer channels than the “parent bus”).
Once you have created a surround bus, you can add one or 
several child busses to it by right-clicking the bus and se-...

184
Surround sound (Cubase only)
Using the SurroundPanner
Cubase has a special feature for graphically positioning a 
sound source in a surround field. This is actually a special 
plug-in which distributes the audio from the channel in 
various proportions to the surround channels.
1.Open the mixer and locate the channel you wish to 
position.
This could be a mono or stereo channel.
2.From the Output Routing pop-up menu, select the 
“whole surround bus” option (not a specific speaker 
channel).
A...

185
Surround sound (Cubase only)
Mode – Standard/Position/Angle
The Standard Mode/Position Mode/Angle Mode switch 
allows you to work in three modes:
 In both Standard and Position mode, the speakers in the front 
are aligned, as they would normally be in a cinema-type situa-
tion. This means that the front speakers are at a varying dis-
tance from the center. Standard mode (default) is the best 
mode for moving sources between speakers without level at-
tenuation.
 Angle Mode is the traditional surround...

186
Surround sound (Cubase only)
The LFE encoder (all modes)
If the selected surround setup includes an LFE channel, a 
separate LFE level encoder is available in the Surround-
Panner window. Use this to set the signal amount sent to 
the LFE channel. You can also set this using the small red 
strip to the right of the SurroundPanner in the mixer chan-
nel strip, or by typing in a number in the LFE value field in 
the larger SurroundPanner that can be shown in the ex-
tended channel strip.
The...

187
Surround sound (Cubase only)
Exporting a Surround mix
When you have set up a surround mix, you can export it 
with the Export Audio Mixdown function. This function ex-
ports a single selected output bus – this means that all 
channels that you want to be part of the mix must be routed 
to the surround output bus.
You have the following export options when doing sur-
round work:
Export to “split” format, resulting in one mono audio file 
for each surround channel.
Export to interleaved format,...

14
Automation 

189
Automation
Introduction
In essence, automation means finding and recording, for 
each and every moment of your project, the right values for 
a particular mixer parameter. When you create your final 
mix, you will not have to worry about having to adjust this 
particular parameter control yourself – Cubase will do it 
for you.
Cubase provides very powerful and yet intuitive automa-
tion of virtually every mixer and effect parameter.
The following sections provide detailed descriptions of the 
Cubase...

190
Automation
There are two approaches you can use to create automa-
tion curves:
“Offline”, by manually drawing the curves on automation 
tracks in the Project window.
See “Editing automation events” on page 200.
“Online”, by enabling the Read button and adjusting 
parameters in the mixer or channel settings window while 
rolling through the project in realtime. The value settings are 
recorded and displayed as a curve on the automation track.
In the following sections, this online writing of...