Steinberg Cubase 7 User Manual
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221 The Control Room (Cubase only)The Setup Pane The Setup Pane The Setup pane contains additional settings for the channels. To open the pane, click the Setup tab at the bottom right of the Control Room. Input Gain For external inputs, Monitor speaker outputs, and Talkback inputs, you can set the input gain. This can be useful in the following situations: •Use the Gain settings on the external inputs to balance the level of CD players and other sources to the Main Mix level, for A/B comparisons. •Use the Gain settings on each Monitor to balance the level of your monitor systems, so that switching between sets of speakers does not change the playback volume. Input Phase For external inputs and Monitor speaker outputs, you can reverse the input phase by activating the corresponding button.
222 The Control Room (Cubase only)The Setup Pane Insert Effects Each Control Room channel has a set of insert effect slots. Inserts for the Control Room Channel •Use the inserts on the Control Room channel for metering and spectral analysis plug-ins. All solos including the Listen bus will come through the Control Room channel allowing analysis of individual sounds. •A brickwall limiter in the last insert slot of the Control Room channel can prevent accidental overloads and damage to speaker systems. Inserts for the Talkback Channel To view and adjust the insert effects for the Talkback channel, activate the TALK button for the Control Room channel. If this button is activated, the Talkback inserts are shown instead of the inserts for the external inputs. You can easily see which inserts are shown in the section, because the Talkback channel has eight, and the external inputs only have six insert effect slots. Once the Talkback is disabled, the external input inserts are displayed again. •Use the inserts for the Talkback channel to control the dynamics of the talkback microphone. This will help protect performers’ hearing and ensure that everyone can be heard over the talkback microphone. Monitor Inserts Each Monitor channel has a set of eight inserts, all of which are post Control Room fader. The Monitor inserts are most useful for surround decoding or brickwall limiting to protect sensitive monitor speakers. The Meter Pane When you click the Meter button, the meter is shown. This is described in detail in a separate chapter, see “Metering (Cubase only)” on page 203.
223 The Control Room (Cubase only)The Setup Pane The Main Mix and the Control Room Channel The channel configuration of the Main Mix determines the channel configuration of the Control Room channel. Switching between a project that has a stereo Main Mix to a project that has a 5.1 Main Mix will cause the Control Room channel in the Control Room Mixer to change from a stereo to a 5.1 configuration. The Control Room configuration also determines the layout of the solo buttons of the channels panner. If the channel is stereo, the solo panel only contains a left and a right speaker. Any external input that has more channels than the Main Mix will not be heard correctly when routed to the Control Room channel. Only the channels available will be heard. ÖIf a 5.1 external input is routed to a stereo Control Room channel, only the left and right channels are heard even if a 5.1 Monitor is selected. Only two channels can be routed through a stereo Control Room channel. Control Room Preferences There are several preferences for the Control Room Mixer. These are found in the Preferences dialog (VST–Control Room page). •Show Control Room Volume in Transport Panel This option makes the small fader at the right-hand side of the Transport panel control the Control Room level. When this option is not activated or the Control Room is deactivated, that fader controls the level of the Main Mix bus. •Disable Talkback during Recording This option deactivates the Talkback channel when the transport enters record mode. It is advisable to set the Talkback DIM level to 0 dB when using this feature so as not to radically change the mix level when punching in and out of record mode. •Use Phones Channel as Preview Channel When this option is activated, the Headphone output is used for Preview options such as import preview, scrubbing, offline process preview and certain Sample Editor operations. Note that when using the Headphones output for preview, the Control Room channel will no longer output preview audio. •Dim Studio during Talkback When this option is enabled, the cue mix heard in a studio is dimmed by the amount set in the Talkback Dim Level field below the TALK button, for as long as the Talkback channel is used. When it is disabled, the cue mix level remains the same during Talkback. •Exclusive Device Ports for Monitor Channels When this option is activated, the port assignment for Monitor channels is exclusive, see “Exclusive Assignment of Monitor Channels” on page 214.
224 The Control Room (Cubase only)Cue Channels and Cue Sends •Reference Level This setting determines the Control Room level used when the “Reference Level” button is activated. •Main Dim Volume This is the amount of gain reduction applied to the Control Room channel when the DIM button is activated. Cue Channels and Cue Sends Cue Sends are used to create discrete cue mixes that performers can listen to during recording. They can be displayed in the MixConsole and in the Inspector of the Project window. Essentially, cue sends are stereo aux sends that are routed to cue channel outputs in the Control Room Mixer. Cue Sends only become available when a cue channel has been created in the VST Connections window. For every cue channel defined in the VST Connections window, each channel in the MixConsole has a cue send, with level, pan, and pre/post-fader selection. •In the MixConsole, the cue sends are shown if you activate the Cues option on the Racks pop-up menu. •In the Project window Inspector, the cue sends for a track are shown on the “Cue Sends” tab. If the “Cue Sends” tab is not shown in the Inspector, right-click on an Inspector section and select the “Cue Sends” option on the context menu. To hear the cue sends mix in the cue channel output, the input source must be set to “Cues”. Setting up a Cue Mix You can create a cue mix from the fader and pan levels that are already used in the MixConsole and alter them to meet the needs of the individual performers. Proceed as follows: 1.In the MixConsole, select the channels from which you want to copy the settings. 2.In the Control Room, right-click on a cue channel and open the “From selected mixer channels” submenu. This submenu contains all the cue send functions for that cue channel.
225 The Control Room (Cubase only)Cue Channels and Cue Sends ÖTo apply the function for all cue channels, click anywhere but on a cue channel to open the context menu. The following options are available: •Use Current Mix Levels This copies the fader levels of the selected tracks to the cue sends. This option sets all cue send levels for the selected tracks to the level of the main channel fader. It also changes the cue send status to pre-fader, so that changes in the main mix do not affect the cue sends. •Use Current Pan Settings This copies pan information from the main mix to the cue sends of the selected tracks. If the cue send is mono, the pan setting is copied, but the output of the cue send is the sum of the left and right channels. •Enable Cue Sends This activates the cue sends of the selected channels. To be able to hear the cue mix for a cue channel, the cue sends must be enabled. •Disable Cue Sends This disables the cue sends of the selected channels. •Reset Cue Sends This changes the send level of all selected channels to -6 dB and sets the signal source to post-fader. This way, any changes to the main mix also change the cue mix. For “more me” channels, raise the level on that channel. Adjusting the Overall Cue Send Level Levels in the main mix are often optimized for the loudest signal level possible without clipping. However, when you are creating a “more me” mix, you may find that there is not enough headroom available in the cue send to raise levels without introducing clipping. In this case, you can adjust multiple send levels at the same time, allowing you to keep the blend intact while lowering the overall volume to make room for “more me” signals. Once you have created a cue send mix, proceed as follows to adjust their relative levels: 1.Select the channels that you want to modify. 2.Right-click on a cue channel in the Control Room to open the context menu for this channel. 3.On the “From selected mixer channels” submenu, select “Change Cue Sends Level”. 4.Activate “Relative Mode”. This way, you adjust the existing levels. If you deactivate “Relative Mode”, all cue sends are set to the same absolute level. 5.Adjust the gain as necessary. The level of all selected cue sends is adjusted by the set amount. 6.Click OK.
226 The Control Room (Cubase only)The Control Room Overview The Control Room Overview You can access the Control Room Overview from the Devices menu. The Control Room Overview displays the current Control Room configuration. The window shows all possible channels. Channels that have been added in the VST Connections window, are highlighted, channels that have not been added are grayed out. The Control Room Overview allows you to see the signal flow through the Control Room Mixer. All the routing functions of the Control Room Mixer are duplicated in the Overview. If you open the Control Room Mixer and the Control Room Overview windows side by side, you can see the various squares light up as you operate the controls, indicating changes in signal flow. You can also click the squares in the overview to make changes. Direct Monitoring and Latency The Control Room and Cue Sends functions use the internal processing power of the host computer system for all routing and processing, which means they are subject to the computer’s latency. When recording with several performers at once, a system capable of running at very low ASIO buffer settings will be necessary to take full advantage of all the cue send features. Cue Sends are not capable of controlling the Direct Monitoring features of various audio hardware interfaces. This means that unless the internal latency of the system is very low (128 samples or less), monitoring of record-enabled tracks through the cue sends will have some delay that can affect performers during recording. In the situation where internal latency is too much for record monitoring, it is advisable to use the cue sends for monitoring of tracks that have already been recorded and use normal Direct Monitoring for tracks currently being recorded.
227 Audio effects Cubase comes with a number of effect plug-ins included. This chapter contains general details about how to assign, use and organize effect plug-ins. The effects and their parameters are described in the separate PDF document “Plug-in Reference”. Overview Audio effects can be used in Cubase as follows: •As insert effects. An insert effect is inserted into the signal chain of an audio channel, which means that the whole channel signal passes through the effect. This makes inserts suitable for effects for which you do not need to mix dry and wet sound, e. g. distortion, filters or other effects that change the tonal or dynamic characteristics of the sound. You can have up to eight different insert effects per channel (and the same is true for input and output busses – for recording with effects and “master effects”, respectively). •As send effects. Each audio channel has eight sends, each of which can be freely routed to an effect (or to a chain of effects). Send effects are practical for two reasons: you can control the balance between the dry (direct) and wet (processed) sound individually for each channel using the sends, and several different audio channels can use the same send effect. In Cubase, send effects are handled by means of FX channel tracks. •By using offline processing (Cubase only). You can apply effects directly to individual audio events – this is described in the chapter “Audio processing and functions” on page 302. About VST 3 The VST 3 plug-in standard offers many improvements over the previous VST 2 standard and yet retains full backwards compatibility. Cubase is able to run plug-ins originally developed for different platforms: you can use a 32-bit plug-in with the 64-bit version of Cubase under Windows 8 64 bit and Mac OS X 10.8. ÖThis functionality is provided to allow you to load older projects including their original plug-ins on current computers. However, the plug-ins will require higher CPU performance when compared to their native platform. Therefore, it is recommended to use 64-bit versions of such plug-ins or instruments once available. !This chapter describes audio effects, i. e. effects that are used to process audio, group, VST instrument, and ReWire channels.
228 Audio effectsOverview Smart plug-in processing The VST3 standard features smart plug-in processing, i. e., processing by a plug-in can be disengaged if there is no signal present. This can greatly reduce the CPU load, thus allowing for more effects to be used. This is achieved by activating the “Suspend VST3 plug-in processing when no audio signals are received” option in the Preferences dialog (VST–Plug-ins page). When this is activated, VST 3 plug-ins will not consume CPU power on silent passages, i. e. when no audio data runs through them. However, be aware that this can lead to a situation where you added more plug-ins on “transport stop” than the system can handle on playback. Therefore, you should always find the passage with the largest number of events playing simultaneously to make sure that your system offers the required performance. ÖActivating this option can increase your system performance a lot in certain projects, but it also makes it more unpredictable whether the project can play back fine on any timecode position of the project. About side-chain inputs Several VST3 effects feature side-chain inputs. This means that the operation of the effect can be controlled via external signals routed to the side-chain input. The effect processing is still applied to the main audio signal, see “Using the side-chain input” on page 240. About plug-in delay compensation A plug-in effect may have some inherent delay or latency. This means that it takes a brief time for the plug-in to process the audio fed into it – as a result, the output audio will be slightly delayed. This especially applies to dynamics processors featuring “look-ahead” functionality. Cubase provides full plug-in delay compensation throughout the entire audio path. All plug-in delays are compensated for, maintaining the sync and timing of all audio channels. Normally, you do not have to make any settings for this. However, VST3 dynamics plug-ins with look-ahead functionality have a “Live” button, allowing you to disengage the look-ahead to minimize latency, if they are to be used during realtime recording (see the separate PDF document “Plug-in Reference”). You can also constrain the delay compensation, which is useful to avoid latency when recording audio or playing a VST instrument in real time, see “Constrain Delay Compensation” on page 265. About tempo sync Plug-ins can receive timing and tempo information from the host application (in this case, Cubase). Typically, this is used to synchronize certain plug-in parameters (such as modulation rates or delay times) to the project tempo. •This information is automatically provided to any VST plug-in (2.0 or later) that “requests it”. You do not have to make any special settings for this. •You set up tempo sync by specifying a base note value. You can use straight, triplet or dotted note values (1/1 to 1/32). Please refer to the separate PDF document “Plug-in Reference” for details about the included effects.
229 Audio effectsInsert effects Insert effects As the name implies, insert effects are inserted into the audio signal path – this means that the audio channel data will be routed through the effect. You can add up to eight different insert effects independently for each audio-related channel (audio track, group channel track, FX channel track, VST instrument channel or ReWire channel) or output bus. The signal passes through the effects in series from the top downwards, with the signal path shown below: As you can see, the last two insert slots (for any channel) are post-EQ and post-fader. Post-fader slots are best suited for insert effects where you do not want the level to be changed after the effect, such as dithering (see “Dithering” on page 233) and maximizers – both typically used as insert effects for output busses. ÖApplying several effects on several channels may be too much for your CPU to handle! If you want to use the same effect with the same settings on several channels, it may be more efficient to set up a group channel and to apply your effect only once, as a single insert for this group. You can use the VST Performance window to keep an eye on the CPU load. Routing an audio channel or bus through insert effects Insert effect settings are available in the Inserts rack of the MixConsole, the Channel Settings window, and the Inspector. The examples below show the Channel Settings window, but the procedures are the same for all the inserts sections. 1.Bring up the Channel Settings window. The insert slots are found on the Inserts tab. 2.Move the mouse over the first insert slot, click on the arrow symbol that is displayed, and select an effect from the selector. Input gain Insert effect 1 Insert effect 2 Insert effect 3 Insert effect 6 EQ Volume (fader) Insert effect 7 Insert effect 8 Insert effect 4 Insert effect 5
230 Audio effectsInsert effects The effect is loaded and automatically activated and its control panel opens. You can open the control panel for a loaded effect by double-clicking in the middle of the insert slot. •If the effect has a dry/wet Mix parameter, you can use this to adjust the balance between the dry signal and the effect signal. •To remove an effect, open the pop-up selector and select “No Effect”. •You can add up to 8 insert effects per channel this way. •You can reorder the effects by clicking and dragging. •You can copy an effect into another effect slot (for the same channel or between channels) by holding down [Alt]/[Option] and dragging it onto another effect slot. •You can open all plug-ins inserted for a particular track at once by holding [Ctrl]- [Shift]-[Alt]/[Option] and clicking the edit button for that track, either in the Inspector or in the MixConsole. [Shift]-click the edit button to close any insert plug-ins for the track. Deactivating vs. bypassing If you want to listen to the track without having it processed by a particular effect, but do not want to remove this effect completely from the insert slot, you can either deactivate or bypass it. Deactivating means to terminate all processing, whereas bypassing means to play back only the unprocessed original signal – a bypassed effect is still processing in the background. Bypassing allows for crackle-free comparison of the original (“dry”) and the processed (“wet”) signal. •To bypass an effect, click the button on the left in the insert slot. When an effect is bypassed, the slot turns gray. •To deactivate an effect, hold [Alt]/[Option] and click its Bypass button. •To bypass all inserts for a track, click the “Bypass Inserts” button. This button can be found on the right of the header of the Inserts section in the Inspector or the Channel Settings window. It lights up in yellow to indicate that one or more inserts of this track are bypassed. This effect is deactivated. This effect is bypassed. This effect is activated.