Steinberg Cubase LE 4 Getting Started Manual

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Tutorial 4: 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 middle (the default posi-
tion), [Alt]/[Option]-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 a “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.
!Load the project called “Mixing 2” found in the “Tuto-
rial 4” folder.
Panner
Pan amount
!Load the project called “Mixing 3” found in the “Tuto-
rial 4” folder.
Solo
Mute
Deactivate all Mute
Deactivate all Solo 
						

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Tutorial 4: Mixing and Effects
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.
Adding EQ
EQ or equalization adds or subtracts 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 
LE 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.
!Load up the project called “Mixing 4” found in the in 
“Tutorial 4” folder.
Click the “EQ Band Active” button to turn on an EQ. Click in the EQ curve area to turn on an EQ. 
						

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Tutorial 4: Mixing and Effects
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.
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.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.
Move the EQ up or down to 
raise or lower the gain.
“EQ Band Gain” amount
“EQ Band Freq” amount Move the EQ left or right to 
change the frequency
!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 4” folder.
“EQ Band Q” amount Moving the EQ up or down while hold-
ing down [Shift] changes the Q 
						

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Tutorial 4: Mixing and Effects
Audio effects
Now let’s start using some 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 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.About Automation
Automation allows us to make objects such as faders, 
pan, knobs and effects move by themselves. This is very 
handy in that we can tell Cubase LE 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 6” found in the “Tuto-
rial 4” folder.
!Load up the project called “Mixing 8” found in the 
“Tutorial 4” folder. 
						

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Tutorial 4: 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. Note that 
in Cubase LE there is only one automation subtrack for each track.
4.Select the Pencil tool.
5.In the subtrack that appears below the audio event 
use the “Draw” 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 LE was playing back. The automation can be 
placed into write mode and moving almost anything 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 LE 
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 4” 
folder. 
						

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Tutorial 4: 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 complete 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 outputs “Stereo Out (Ste-
reo)” for export. 
The exported file will be generated through the main stereo outputs that 
we 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 options at the bottom of the dialog, as 
these will import the audio back into Cubase LE after you 
export it and automatically create an audio track. The “Ex-
port 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 4” folder to see the results of this export. 
						

							Index 
						

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Index
A
Adding
EQ 52
Mono Track 25
Adding a fade 37
Advanced settings 20
All MIDI Inputs 18
Alt/Option key 7
ASIO 2.0 16
ASIO Direct Monitoring 16
ASIO DirectX driver
About 10
Setup 15
ASIO driver
About 10
Installing 10
Audio
Editing 31
Processing 38
Recording 22
Audio buffer size 20
Audio hardware
Connections 13
Setup application 14
Automation
About 54
B
Browsing Sounds 42
C
Click
Activating 26
Close
Project 24
Connecting
Audio 13
MIDI 17
Controller lane 47
Copying 35
MIDI notes 46
Ctrl/Command key 7
Cycle
Playback 28
Cycle recording 29
MIDI 44
D
Defragmenting
Windows 11
DirectX driver 10
E
Editing
Adding a fade 37
Audio 31
Copying 35
Erasing 37
Gluing 34
MIDI 40
Moving 35
Muting 36
Renaming 32
Repeating 36
Resizing 32
Sample Editor 38
Splitting 33
Effects 54
About 49
EQ 52
Equalization 52
Erasing 37
Event operations
About 32
Adding a fade 37
Copying 35
Erasing 37
Gluing 34
Moving 35
Muting 36
Renaming 32
Repeating 36
Resizing 32
Splitting 33
Exporting
Mixdown 55
G
Gluing 34
H
Hard disk
Considerations 20
I
Input
Adding 25
Input level 14
Input ports 16
Instrument Track
Creating 41
J
Joining 34
K
Key command conventions 7
Key Editor
About 46
L
Latency 19
Level Settings 25
Levels 50
Setting 26
Local On/Off 17
M
Metronome click
Activating 26
MIDI
Copying notes 46
Cycle Playback 44
Cycle recording 44
Editing 40
Erasing notes 46
Playback 43
Quantizing 45
Recording 40, 42
Recording modes with cycle 
off 44
MIDI Input
Setting 42
MIDI Interface
Connecting 17
Installing 11
MIDI notes
Creating 47
Drawing 47
MIDI ports
Setting up 18 
						

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Index
MIDI Thru Active 17
Mixing
About 49
Modifier keys 7
Monitoring
About 16
Moving 35
Mute 51
Muting 36
N
New Project 23
Create 23
Save 24
Normalize 39
O
Open
Project 24
Recent Projects 24
Optimizing the Hard Disk
Windows 11
Option/Alt key 7
Output
Adding 24
Output ports 16
P
Pan
Setting 51
Playback
About 28
MIDI 43
Start 28
Processing
Audio 38
Normalize 39
Reverse 39
Project
Close 24
Open 24
Q
Quantizing 45
R
Recent Projects 24
Recording
Audio 22
Cycle 29
Level Settings 25
MIDI 40, 42
Modes 29
Recording levels 14
Release Driver when Application is in
Background 15
Rename 32
Repeating 36
Resizing 32
Reverse 39
S
Sample Editor 38
Save
New Project 24
Setting 50
Setting levels 26, 50
Setting Pan 51
Solo 51
Splitting 33
Steinberg Key
About 11
Syncrosoft License Control 
Center 11
T
Track
Adding 25
V
VST Audio System 14
VST Connections 24
VST input ports 16
VST output ports 16