Steinberg Cubase LE Getting Started Manual

4
Setting up your system 

CUBASE LE4 – 32 Setting up your system
Setting up audio
❐Always make all connections with all equipment turned off!
Connecting audio
Exactly how to set up your system is a very personal matter, the follow-
ing connection diagrams should be taken as examples.
The audio connections below may be digital or analog, it doesn’t matter.
Stereo input and output – the simplest connection
If you only use a stereo input and output from Cubase LE, you might 
connect your audio hardware directly to the input source,...

CUBASE LESetting up your system 4 – 33
Multi-channel input and output
Most likely however, you will have other audio equipment that you 
want to integrate with Cubase LE. This will require a mixer, preferably 
one with a group or bus system that can be used for feeding inputs on 
the audio hardware.
In the example below, four buses are used for feeding signals to the 
sound hardware’s inputs. The four outputs are connected back to the 
mixer for monitoring and playback. Remaining mixer inputs can be used...

CUBASE LE4 – 34 Setting up your system
Word Clock connections
If you are using a digital audio connection you may also need a word 
clock connection between the audio hardware and external devices. 
Please refer to the documentation that came with the audio hardware 
for details.
❐It is very important that word clock synchronization is done correctly or 
there might be clicks and crackles in recordings that you make!
Driver and helper application setup
The audio hardware setup application
Most audio...

CUBASE LESetting up your system 4 – 35
VST Multitrack setup – Basic Settings
1.In Cubase LE, select Device Setup from the Devices menu and click on 
VST Multitrack in the list.
Make sure the “Setup” tab is selected.
The VST Multitrack panel in the Device Setup dialog.
2.Select your audio hardware from the ASIO Driver menu.
There may be several options here that all refer to the same audio hardware:
❐Under Windows we strongly recommend that you access your hardware 
via an ASIO driver written specifically...

CUBASE LE4 – 36 Setting up your system
•Under Windows, you can open the control panel by clicking the Con-
trol Panel button in the VST Multitrack panel.
The control panel that appears when you click this button is provided by the audio 
hardware manufacturer and not Cubase LE (unless you use DirectX or MME, see be-
low). Hence it will be different for each audio card brand and model. The settings may 
include options for buffering, synchronization, digital input and output formats etc.
The Control...

CUBASE LESetting up your system 4 – 37
If you are using audio hardware with a DirectX driver (Windows only)
❐If your Windows audio hardware doesn’t have a specific ASIO driver, a 
DirectX driver is the next best option.
There is an ASIO DirectX driver available with Cubase LE, “ASIO Di-
rectX Full Duplex”. This driver allows both audio recording and play-
back. However:
• To be able to take full advantage of DirectX Full Duplex, the audio hard-
ware must support WDM (Windows Driver Model) in combination...

CUBASE LE4 – 38 Setting up your system
If you are using audio hardware with a Windows Multimedia (MME) driver
When you select the ASIO Multimedia Driver for the first time, the sys-
tem will ask you whether you want to test the configuration. We strongly 
recommend that you perform this test. If it fails, or if you for other rea-
sons need to make adjustments to your ASIO Multimedia configuration, 
click the Control Panel button to open the ASIO Multimedia Setup con-
trol panel included with Cubase LE....

CUBASE LESetting up your system 4 – 39
About monitoring
In Cubase LE, monitoring means listening to the signal being recorded 
while preparing to record or while recording. There are basically three 
ways to monitor:
External monitoring
External monitoring (listening to the input signal before it goes into 
Cubase LE) requires an external mixer for mixing the audio playback 
with the input signal. This mixer could be a stand-alone physical mixer 
or a mixer application for your audio hardware, if this...

CUBASE LE4 – 40 Setting up your system
Setting up MIDI
❐Always make all connections with all equipment turned off!
This section describes how to connect and set up MIDI equipment. If 
you have no MIDI equipment you can skip this section.
Connecting the MIDI equipment
Below follows a description of a typical but small setup example. You 
might need or want to hook things up differently!
In this example we assume that you have a MIDI keyboard and an ex-
ternal MIDI sound module. The keyboard is used both...