Steinberg Cubase 5 Operation Manual

61
Playback and the Transport panel
About Pre-roll and Post-roll
These items are described in the chapter “Recording”, 
see “About Pre-roll and Post-roll” on page 84.
Changing the Transport panel setup
You can customize the appearance of the Transport panel 
by right-clicking anywhere on the panel and selecting/de-
selecting the corresponding options on the context menu.
This is described in detail in the section “The setup con-
text menus” on page 471.
The numeric keypad
In the default Key Command...

62
Playback and the Transport panel
About the Transport panel display formats
Primary time display (left) and secondary time display (right)
The time unit shown in the ruler can be independent from 
the time unit shown in the main time display on the Trans-
port panel. This means that you can display timecode in 
the transport position display and bars and beats in the 
ruler, for example. In addition, there is a secondary time 
display to the right of the primary time display which is 
also independent,...

63
Playback and the Transport panel
The Shuttle Speed control (Cubase only)
The shuttle speed control (the outer wheel on the Trans-
port panel) allows you to play the project at any playback 
speed, forwards or backwards. This provides a quick way 
to locate or “cue” to any position in the project.
Turn the shuttle speed wheel to the right to start play-
back.
The further to the right you move the wheel, the faster the playback 
speed. 
If you turn the wheel to the left instead, the project will 
play...

64
Playback and the Transport panel
Playback functions
Apart from the standard transport controls on the Trans-
port panel, you can also find a number of functions on the 
Transport menu that can be used to control playback. The 
items have the following functionality:
ÖIn the Preferences dialog (Editing–Audio page) you 
will find the option “Treat Muted Audio Events like De-
leted”. When you activate this option, any events over-
lapped by a muted event will become audible.
About Chase
Chase is a...

65
Playback and the Transport panel
The Virtual Keyboard 
The Virtual Keyboard can be displayed in the Transport 
panel. It allows you to play and record MIDI notes by using 
your computer keyboard or mouse. This is useful if you have 
no external MIDI instrument at hand and you do not want to 
draw in notes with the Pencil tool. The Virtual Keyboard can 
perform all functions that can be controlled by external MIDI 
keyboards, e.g. playing and recording MIDI notes.
You can choose between two different...

5
Recording 

67
Recording
Background
This chapter describes the various recording methods 
that you can use in Cubase. As it is possible to record 
both audio and MIDI tracks, both recording methods are 
covered in this chapter.
Before you start
This chapter assumes that you are reasonably familiar with 
certain basic recording concepts, and that the following 
initial preparations have been made:
You have properly set up, connected and calibrated 
your audio hardware. 
You have opened a project and set the project...

68
Recording
If you activate recording during playback, Cubase will 
immediately enter Record mode and start recording from 
the current project cursor position.
This is known as “manual punch in”.
Activating recording in Sync mode
If you are synchronizing the Cubase transport to external 
equipment (Sync is activated on the Transport panel) and 
you activate recording, the program will go into “record 
ready” mode (the record button on the Transport panel 
will light up). In this case, recording will...

69
Recording
Audio pre-record
This feature allows you to capture up to 1 minute of any in-
coming audio you play in Stop mode or during playback, 
“after the fact”. This is possible because Cubase can cap-
ture audio input in buffer memory, even when not recording. 
Proceed as follows:
1.Open the Preferences (Record–Audio page).
2.Specify a time (up to 60 seconds) in the “Audio Pre-
Record Seconds” field.
This activates the buffering of audio input, making Pre-Record possible.
3.Make sure an audio track...

70
Recording
The higher the bit depth, the larger the files and the 
more strain is put on the disk system.
If this is an issue, you may want to lower the record format setting.
Setting up the track
Creating a track and selecting the channel configuration
Audio tracks can be configured as mono, stereo or sur-
round tracks (Cubase only). This allows you to record or 
import a file containing multiple channels and treat it as 
one entity, with no need to split it up into several mono 
files etc. The signal...