Steinberg Cubase Essential 4 Getting Started French Version Manual

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Tutorial 5: Mixing and effects 
						

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Tutorial 5: Mixing and effects
Introduction
In this section we’ll draw from the last tutorials and finally 
get a mix ready with proper levels, EQs and effects. Auto-
mation will be added and then we’ll export the audio.
Setting levels
The first thing we want to do is to set the levels for our 
project. This helps us get a preliminary balance of the mix 
so we can add EQ and effects later.
1.Select the Mixer from the Devices menu.
The default key command for this is [F3].
2.Click the Start button on the Transport panel and lis-
ten to your mix.
3.Move the faders for each track so that you can hear all 
of the mix the way you like it.4.If for any reason you need to get the fader back to 0dB 
(the default setting), you can [Ctrl]/[Command]-click di-
rectly in the fader area.
5.You can also change the fader setting by double-
clicking in the “Channel Level” area and entering the level 
manually.
6.Be careful when it comes to how loud you raise the 
faders. Make sure you keep levels at a good volume so 
that they are as loud as possible without clipping. You will 
always know when you are clipping: when the “CLIP” indi-
cator lights up on the output channel. If it does, lower your 
levels and click on “CLIP”. This will reset the warning light.
That’s it for setting the levels. Let’s look at pan next.
!Load the project called “Mixing 1” found in the “Tuto-
rial 5” folder.Channel metersChannel fader
Channel Level Peak Meter Value 
						

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Tutorial 5: Mixing and effects
Setting pan
1.Setting the pan for each track moves its position in the 
stereo mix. It will either keep the signal balanced in the 
middle of the left and right speaker, lean to the left or lean 
to the right or be completely in the left or right speaker.
To get the panner back to the center (the default posi-
tion), [Ctrl]/[Command]-click anywhere in the panner area.
2.Let’s pan our two guitars slightly left and slightly right. 
This will spread them out a bit.
3.Keep the “Drums” track in the middle but let’s move 
“Loop 1” a bit to the left and “Loop 2” a bit to the right.
This will give our rhythm section a larger, more spacious sound.
That’s it for pan, let’s move on to Mute and Solo.
Mute and solo
For each track there is an “M” for mute and “S” for solo 
button. Mute will prevent you from hearing the track and 
solo will only play that track or tracks which have “S” high-
lighted.
You can have several tracks muted or soloed at a time.
When you solo a track, the other tracks become muted.
If you want to clear or deactivate all the mutes or solos, 
click on the “Deactivate all Mute” or “Deactivate all Solo” 
buttons in the common panel to the left of the Mixer.
There may be times when you want certain tracks to al-
ways play even if another track has solo active. If you [Alt]/
[Option]-click on the “S” button, this will place the track in 
“Solo Defeat” mode. This allows the track to always play 
even if you solo another track.
To take a track out of “Solo Defeat” mode simply [Alt]/
[Option]-click it again.
That’s it for mute and solo, let’s move on to adding EQ.
!Load the project called “Mixing 2” found in the “Tuto-
rial 5” folder.
Panner
Pan amount
!Load the project called “Mixing 3” found in the “Tuto-
rial 5” folder.
Solo
Mute
“Deactivate all Mute”
“Deactivate all Solo” 
						

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Tutorial 5: Mixing and effects
Adding EQ
EQ or equalization amplifies or attenuates frequencies so 
that we can place each instrument correctly in the mix. EQ 
is subjective and can be influenced greatly by the style of 
music that you are mixing.
We’re going to run through the EQ features that Cubase 
Essential has to offer, but feel free to experiment and try 
out the different presets on your mix.
1.Solo the Drums track and click the “Edit Instrument 
Channel Settings” button.
2.This will open the Channel settings window, where 
you can e. g. make EQ settings. Make sure you have a 
section of music looping so that you can hear the EQ 
changes you are making.
There are four bands of EQ on each track.3.Click the “EQ Band Active” button for each of the EQs 
to turn them on. You can also click in the EQ curve area to 
turn on an EQ.
4.Click and move the EQ point up, down, right or left. 
Moving the EQ point up or down raises or lowers the gain 
of the EQ. The gain makes that particular EQ louder or 
softer. The “EQ Band Gain” at the bottom of the EQ win-
dow gives you the value of gain.
If you hold down [Ctrl]/[Command], you can restrict the movement of the 
EQ to just up and down.
!Load the project called “Mixing 4” found in the “Tuto-
rial 5” folder.
Click the “EQ Band Active” button to turn on an EQ. Click in the EQ curve area to turn on an EQ.
Move the EQ up or down to 
raise or lower the gain.
“EQ Band Gain” amount 
						

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Tutorial 5: Mixing and effects
5.Moving the EQ point right or left changes the frequency 
of the EQ. The “EQ Band Freq” setting at the bottom of the 
EQ window gives you the value of the frequency.
If you hold down [Alt]/[Option], you can restrict the movement of the EQ 
to just right or left.
6.Holding down [Shift] while moving the EQ point up or 
down changes the quality of the EQ. Many people refer to 
this as the width of the EQ. The “EQ Band Q” setting at the 
bottom of the EQ window gives you the value of the quality.7.The “Preset Management” button allows you to recall 
and store presets. Choose from the list to get a sound 
that’s close to what you want and then adjust it slightly. 
You can then store it as a new preset.
8.You can bypass the EQs by clicking on the “Bypass 
Equalizers” button. If you [Alt]/[Option]-click, you can reset 
the EQ. A dialog window will open to confirm if you are sure 
you want to reset the EQs. If you are sure, click “Yes”.
Experiment with the EQs on all your tracks in this tutorial. 
A good tip when using EQ is that it’s usually better to take 
away EQ (lower the gain) than to add it.
Now let’s move on to effects.
“EQ Band Freq” amount Move the EQ left or right to 
change the frequency
“EQ Band Q” amount Moving the EQ up or down while hold-
ing down [Shift] changes the Q
!We’ve made a whole bunch of EQ changes to this 
tutorial. Listen and see the changes by loading the 
project “Mixing 5” found in the “Tutorial 5” folder. 
						

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Tutorial 5: Mixing and effects
Audio effects
Now let’s start using some effects. We can add effects by 
inserting the effect directly on a track or we can create an 
FX channel and use the auxiliary sends of each track to 
send to that FX channel.
Insert effects
1.Make sure the Mixer is open.
You can open the Mixer from the Devices menu or by pressing [F3].
2.Begin playback and loop or cycle a section of music 
so that you can hear everything.
The tutorial project has its locators and cycle already set for this. Feel 
free to change this if you like.
3.Click on the “Edit Audio Channels Settings” button on 
the Bass track to open the VST Audio Channel Settings 
window.
4.Let’s add compression to the Bass track to smooth it 
out. Click on the “Select Insert Type 1” slot and choose 
“VSTDynamics” from the Dynamics submenu.5.Make changes to the settings in the Compressor sec-
tion. At the end of this section, you can load the next tuto-
rial that will contain all of the changes we have made.
FX channels
Now let’s show you how to create and use FX channels.
1.Close the Mixer and choose “FX Channel” from the 
Add Track submenu of the Project menu.
2.Choose “Stereo” for “Configuration”, select the “Ping-
PongDelay” effect and click OK.
3.We are going to put delay on the “Elec Guitar” track. 
Experiment until you find the best effect settings.
The included effects are described in detail in the separate pdf docu-
ment Plug-In Reference.
4.With the delay set, click the “Edit Channels Settings” 
button of the “Elec Guitar” track.
!Load the project called “Mixing 6” found in the “Tuto-
rial 5” folder. 
						

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Tutorial 5: Mixing and effects
5.Select “FX 1-PingPongDelay” from the “Select Send 
Destination” pop-up menu.
6.Click the “Activate Send 1” button to turn on the send. 
This will allow you to send the guitar to the “PingPong-
Delay”.
7.Move the slider to the right to raise the level of the 
send to the “PingPongDelay” effect. You will begin to hear 
the guitar being delayed. Clicking the “S” (solo) button on 
the track will allow you to hear this more clearly.8.The great thing about FX Channels is that the channel 
looks and feels just like a regular audio channel. When you 
set an EQ for an FX Channel, only this effect will be 
changed by the EQ. In our case changing the EQ on the 
“FX 1–PingPongDelay” FX channel will only change the EQ 
of the delay.
About automation
Automation allows us to make objects such as faders and 
knobs move by themselves. This is very handy in that we 
can tell Cubase Essential to make changes over a period 
of time and those changes will be remembered and will 
occur again without our attention.
1.We created a fade-in on the “Elec Guitar” track earlier. 
Let’s remove the fade on this audio event and create some 
automation instead. Zoom in so that you can see the first 
audio event more clearly.
2.Select the event and choose “Remove Fades” from 
the Audio menu.
!Load the project called “Mixing 7” found in the “Tuto-
rial 5” folder. 
						

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Tutorial 5: Mixing and effects
3.Click the “Show/Hide Automation” button at the far 
left of the track. 
You may need to hover your mouse over the far left bottom area until you 
see the button appear as this is only shown when you need it.
4.Select the Pencil tool.
5.In the subtrack that appears below the audio event 
use the Pencil tool to draw in automation so that it resem-
bles a fade in.
6.You can also use the “Line” tool to draw in automation 
in a straight line. Perfect for fade in automation.
7.Listen to the fade in automation we created.You may have noticed that when we used the Pencil 
tool to place in automation, the “R” button (Read Enable) 
for the track became highlighted. This means that the au-
tomation on this track is being read or played back. You 
can turn this off and the automation will not be read. In our 
case we drew in volume automation, and so in turning it off 
the volume will not fade in but stay at one level.
There are so many examples to show when it comes to au-
tomation. For example we could have automated our effects 
or our send levels. We could have even automated objects 
while Cubase Essential was playing back. The automation 
can be placed into write mode and moving almost any thing 
will create automation that we can edit for fine tuning later!
Make sure you read the chapter “Automation” in the Opera-
tion Manual to fully realize how exciting automation can be.
Exporting
Now that we have our project mixed we will want to export 
it so that we can import it into another program such as a 
CD burning application like WaveLab.
Before we can export our mix we need to tell Cubase 
Essential how many bars to export. We accomplish this by 
setting the locators.
1.Set the left locator to bar 1 and the right locator to bar 
65 on the Transport panel. This will make sure we have all 
the music for export.
2.On the File menu–Export submenu, select “Audio Mix-
down…”.
!Load the project “Mixing 8” found in the “Tutorial 5” 
folder. 
						

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Tutorial 5: Mixing and effects
3.The “Export Audio Mixdown” dialog opens.
This dialog is described in detail in the chapter “Export Audio Mixdown” in 
the “Operation Manual”. Please refer to this for more detailed information.
4.“File Name” is for naming the file for export. Let’s name 
our’s “Mixing Mixdown”.
5.The “Path” is where you wish to save the exported file 
on your computer. Use the “Choose” button to navigate to 
the folder you wish to save to. For convenience there is 
the option “Use Project Audio Folder” which will store the 
exported file in your project’s audio folder. This is one of 
the best places to keep it so it won’t accidentally become 
erased or lost. Make sure “Use Project Audio Folder” is 
activated for this export.
6.Normally you’ll want to save your exported file as a 
“Wave File” under “File Format”. This of course chiefly de-
pends on what file format the other application such as a 
CD burning program requires.
7.Choose the main stereo output “Stereo Out (Stereo)” 
for export.
The exported file will be generated through the main stereo output that 
you can see in the Mixer.
8.Choose the “Sample Rate” and “Bit Depth” that will 
be required for your export. 44.100 kHz and 16 bit are 
common for CD burning.
9.Activate the three options at the bottom of the dialog, 
as these will import the audio back into Cubase Essential 
after you export it and automatically create an audio track. 
The “Export Audio Mixdown” window will also close after 
export.10.When you are done making all the settings, click the 
Export button.
11.You will now see the exported stereo mix on a new 
stereo track.
12.You can check to see if the audio mixdown sounds the 
way you want it by soloing the mixdown track
!Load the project called “Mixing 9” found in the “Tuto-
rial 5” folder to see the results of this export. 
						

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Tutorial 6: Media management