Steinberg Cubase SL/SX 3.1 Manual

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The Stereo Pan Law modes
In the Project Setup dialog there is a pop-up menu named “Stereo Pan 
Law”, on which you can select a pan mode. These different pan modes 
provide gain compensation. This is necessary because without com-
pensation, the gain of the sum of the left and right side will be higher 
(louder) if a channel is panned center than if it’s panned left or right. 
This is described in the chapter “The mixer” in the Operation Manual.
• You can now...

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 32 Working with the new features
Inspector sub panels
Normally, when a MIDI track is routed to a VST instrument, a new sub 
panel (with the name of the instrument) is added to the inspector for 
the selected track.
This is now also the case in the following situations:
• When a MIDI track is routed to an external instrument or effect that has an as-
sociated MIDI Device. In this case, the new sub panel gets the name of the 
device.
• When a MIDI track is routed to an effect plug-in that...

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Editing – MIDI
Freezing track parameters
This function affects the following settings for MIDI tracks:
• Several settings on the main tab of the Inspector (program and bank selection 
and the Delay parameter).
• The settings on the Track Parameters tab (i.e. Transpose, Velocity Shift, Ve-
locity Compression and Length Compression).
• The settings on the Inserts tab. (If you are using an arpeggiator for example 
and want to convert the added notes into real...

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Dissolving parts
The option “Optimized Display” has been added to the Dissolve Part 
dialog. The Dissolve Part function still splits parts into separate chan-
nels or pitches (depending on your settings), but you can now auto-
matically remove the silent (empty) areas of the resulting parts by 
activating the “Optimized Display” checkbox.
The Legato dialog
One new feature has been added to the Legato dialog. Previously, 
when the Legato function was applied,...

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Working with the new features  35
Selecting notes of equal pitch (Edit menu)
On the Edit menu–Select submenu, you will find the options “Equal 
Pitch – all Octaves” and “Equal Pitch – same Octave”. These are not 
new in this program version, but the functionality has been modified. Up 
until now, selecting one of these menu items selected all following 
notes of the same pitch, on all octaves or on the same octave, respec-
tively. In version 3.1 of the program, this has changed. Now all...

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Extracting MIDI automation
On the MIDI menu–Functions submenu, the command “Extract MIDI 
Automation” has been added. This allows you to automatically convert 
continuous controller data of a MIDI part into MIDI track automation 
data.
Proceed as follows:
1.Select the desired MIDI part containing the continuous controller data.
2.From the Functions submenu on the MIDI menu, select “Extract MIDI 
Automation”. (This command is also available on the Key editor...

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Working with the new features  37
External instruments/effects (Cubase SX only)
Since the release of version 3 of Cubase SX, the program supports the 
integration of external effect devices into the sequencer signal flow.
With Cubase SX 3.1, you can also integrate external instruments, e. g. 
hardware synthesizers. You can use the External Instrument tab in the 
VST Connections window to define the necessary return ports and 
access the instruments through the VST Instruments window.
You may...

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Connecting the external effect/instrument
To set up an external effect or instrument, proceed as follows:
1.Connect an unused output pair on your audio hardware to the input 
pair on your external hardware device.
In this example, we assume that the hardware device has stereo inputs and outputs.
2.Connect an unused input pair on your audio hardware to the output 
pair on your hardware device.
Once the external device is connected to the audio hardware of...

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Working with the new features  39
4.Click OK. This adds a new External FX bus.
5.Click in the Device Port column for the Send Bus “Left” and “Right” 
ports and select the outputs on your audio hardware that you connec-
ted in step 1 in the section “Connecting the external effect/instrument”.
6.Click in the Device Port column for the Return Bus “Left” and “Right” 
ports and select the inputs on your audio hardware that you connec-
ted in step 2 in the section “Connecting the external...

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How to use the external effect
If you now click an insert effect slot for any channel and look at the ef-
fect pop-up menu, you will find the new external FX bus listed on the 
“External Plugins” submenu.
When you select it, the following happens:
• The external FX bus is loaded into the effect slot just like a regular effect plug-in.
• The audio signal from the channel will be sent to the outputs on the audio 
hardware, through your external effect device...