Steinberg Cubase 6 Manual

21
Setting up your system
The MIDI signal from the keyboard will be recorded in Cubase 
and at the same time be re-routed back to the instrument so 
that you hear what you are playing, without the keyboard “trig
-
gering” its own sounds.
• If you use a separate MIDI keyboard – one that does not pro-
duce any sounds itself – MIDI Thru in Cubase should also be 
activated, but you don’t need to look for any Local On/Off set
-
ting in your instruments.
• The only case where MIDI Thru should be deactivated is...

22
Setting up your system
Connecting a synchronizer
When using Cubase with external tape transports, you will 
most likely need to add a synchronizer to your system. All 
connections and setup procedures for synchronization are 
described in the chapter 
“Synchronization” on page 493.
Setting up video
Cubase plays back video files in a number of formats, 
such as AVI, QuickTime, or MPEG. QuickTime is used as 
playback engine. Which formats can be played back de
-
pends on the video codecs installed on...

23
Setting up your system
Some program functions may “eat up” all the available 
memory, e.
 g. recording, the use of effect plug-ins, and the 
pre-loading of samples (see also 
“RAM requirements for 
recording” on page 92 and “Smart plug-in processing” on 
page 188).
Always keep in mind the RAM limitation of your operating 
system when setting up your projects.
CPU and processor cache
It goes without saying that the faster the computer proces-
sor, the better. But there are a number of factors that...

24
Setting up your system
Optimizing processor scheduling (Windows only)
To get the lowest possible latencies when using ASIO un-
der Windows (on a single-CPU system), the “system per-
formance” has to be optimized for background tasks:
1.Open the Control Panel and select the System settings.
2.On the left, select the “Advanced system settings” 
option.
The System Properties dialog opens.
3.Select the Advanced tab and click the “Settings…” 
button in the Performance section.
The Performance Options...

3
VST Connections 

26
VST Connections
About this chapter
This chapter focuses on the settings you can perform in 
the VST Connections window. Here you can set up input 
and output busses, group and FX channels, external ef
-
fects, and external instruments. Furthermore you can use 
this window to configure the Control Room (Cubase only) 
and access the Control Room itself. 
Since input and output busses are vital for working with 
Cubase, a large part of this chapter concentrates on bus
-
ses and this is also the reason...

27
VST Connections
Let’s say you are using audio hardware with eight analog 
inputs and outputs and digital stereo connections (10 in
-
puts and outputs all in all). Furthermore, you work with a 
surround setup in 5.1 format (Cubase only). In this sce
-
nario, you may want to add the following busses:
Input busses
• Most likely you need at least one stereo input bus assigned to 
an analog input pair. This will let you record stereo material. If 
you want to be able to record in stereo from other analog...

28
VST Connections
Mac OS X only: Port selection and activation
On the settings page for your audio card (opened via the 
Device Setup dialog, see above), you can specify which 
input and output ports are active. This allows you to use 
the Microphone input instead of the Line input or even to 
deactivate the audio card input or output completely, if re
-
quired.
ÖThis function is only available for Built-In Audio, stan-
dard USB audio devices and a certain number of other 
audio cards.
Adding input and...

29
VST Connections
Adding child busses (Cubase only)
A surround bus is essentially a set of mono channels – 
6
 channels in the case of the 5.1 format. If you have a 
mono track in the project, you can route it to a separate 
speaker channel in the bus (or route it to the parent sur
-
round bus and use the SurroundPanner to position it in 
the surround image). But what if you have a stereo track 
that you simply want to route to a stereo channel pair 
within the bus (Left and Right or Left Surround and...

30
VST Connections
About monitoring
The VST Connections window allows you to set up the 
busses used for monitoring, activate/deactivate the Con
-
trol Room and open the Control Room Mixer. For details 
about using the Control Room and setting up the Studio 
tab in the VST Connections window, see the chapter 
“Control Room (Cubase only)” on page 172.
When the Control Room is disabled on the Studio tab of 
the VST Connections window, the Main Mix bus is used 
for monitoring. In this case you can adjust...