Steinberg Cubase Ai 5 Manual

71
The mixer
The common panel
The common panel appears to the left in the mixer window 
and contains settings for changing the look and behavior of 
the mixer, as well as global settings for all channels.
Selecting what channel types to show/hide
You can specify what channel types to show or hide in the 
mixer. In the lower part of the common panel you find a 
vertical strip with different indicator buttons. Each indica-
tor represents a channel type to show or hide in the mixer:
To hide or show a...

72
The mixer
About the Command Target
Command targets let you specify which channels should 
be affected by the “commands” (basically all the functions 
that can be assigned key commands) when working with 
the Mixer, e.g. the width setting of the channel strips, etc. 
You can set command targets using the Mixer common 
panel or the context menu.
The Command Target Controls on the common panel
The following options are available:
 All Channels – Select this if you want your commands to af-
fect all...

73
The mixer
The audio-related channel strips
All audio-related channel types (audio, instrument track, 
output channels, group, effect return, VST Instrument) ba-
sically have the same channel strip layout, with the follow-
ing differences:
 Only audio and instrument track channels have a Monitor and 
Record Enable button.
 Output channels do not have sends.
 Instrument track and VST Instrument channels have an addi-
tional button for opening the instrument’s control panel.
 Output channels have...

74
The mixer
The output channels
The output busses you set up in the VST Connections 
window are represented by output channels in the mixer. 
They are shown in a separate “pane” (to the right of the 
regular channel strips), with its own divider and horizontal 
scrollbar. The output channel strip is very similar to other 
audio channels.
For information on how to set up input and output bus-
ses, see the chapter “VST Connections: Setting up input 
and output busses” on page 9.
How to route audio...

75
The mixer
About the level meters for audio channels
When playing back audio in Cubase AI, the level meters in 
the mixer show the level of each audio channel.
Directly below the level meter is a small level readout – 
this shows the highest registered level in the signal.
Click this to reset the peak levels.
If the peak level of the audio goes above 0 dB, the numer-
ical level indicator will show a positive value (i.e. a value 
above 0 dB).
ÖCubase AI uses 32 bit floating point processing inter-...

76
The mixer
Setting pan in the mixer
The pan control
The pan controls in the mixer are used to position a chan-
nel between the left and right side of the stereo spectrum. 
By default for stereo audio channels, pan controls the bal-
ance between the left and right channels. You can change 
this in the Preferences. By selecting one of the other pan 
modes (see below), you can set pan independently for the 
left and right channel.
To make fine pan adjustments, hold down [Shift] when 
you move the pan...

77
The mixer
Every channel has its own channel settings window (al-
though you can view each in the same window if you like – 
see below).
The Channel Settings window is used for the following 
operations:
 Apply equalization, see “Making EQ settings” on page 77.
 Apply send effects, see “Audio effects” on page 85.
 Apply insert effects, see “Audio effects” on page 85.
 Copy channel settings and apply them to another channel, see 
“Copying settings between audio channels” on page 79.
Changing channels in...

78
The mixer
The Equalizers + Curve pane in the Channel Settings win-
dow consists of four EQ modules with parameter sliders, an 
EQ curve display and some additional functions at the top.
Using the parameter controls
1.Activate an EQ module by clicking its on/off button.
Although the modules have different default frequency values and differ-
ent Q names, they all have the same frequency range (20 Hz to 20 kHz). 
The only difference between the modules is that you can specify different 
filter types for...

79
The mixer
In the Inspector (Equalizers tab) and in the Channel 
Settings window, click the Bypass button (next to the EQ 
button) so that it turns yellow.
Click again to deactivate EQ Bypass mode.
EQ bypass in the mixer, the Channel Settings window and the Inspector
EQ reset
On the Presets pop-up menu in the Channel Settings win-
dow and in the Inspector, you will find the Reset command. 
Select this to turn off all EQ modules and reset all EQ pa-
rameters to their default values.
Using EQ presets...

80
The mixer
Initialize Channel and Reset Mixer
The Initialize Channel button can be found in the lower 
part of the Control Strip section in the Channel Settings 
window (if this section is not shown in the Channel Set-
tings window, open the context menu and select “Control 
Strip” on the Customize View submenu). Initialize Channel 
resets the selected channel to the default settings. 
Similarly, the mixer common panel holds a Reset Mixer/
Reset Channels button – when you click this, you will be 
asked...