Steinberg Cubase SL/SX 3.1 Manual

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Setting up external instruments
1.Open the VST Connections window from the Devices menu.
2.Open the External Instrument tab and click “Add External Instrument”.
3.In the dialog that appears, enter a name for the external instrument 
and specify the number of required mono and/or stereo returns. If you 
want to set up a MIDI device corresponding to the external instrument, 
click the Associate MIDI Device button.
Depending on the type of instrument, a specific number of mono and/or stereo return 
channels is required. When clicking Associate MIDI Device, you can use the MIDI De-
vice Manager functions to create a new MIDI device. For information about the MIDI 
Device Manager and user device panels see the chapter “MIDI devices” in the pdf 
document “MIDI Devices and Features”.
4.Click OK. This adds a new external instrument bus.
5.Click in the Device Port column for the Return Bus “Left” and “Right” 
ports and select the inputs on your audio hardware to which you con-
nected the external instrument.
6.If you like, make additional settings for the bus.
These are found in the columns to the right. Note however that you can adjust these while 
actually using the external instrument – which may be easier as you can hear the result.
Setting Description
Delay If your hardware device has an inherent delay (latency), you should 
enter this value here. This allows Cubase SX to compensate for 
that delay during playback. Note that you don’t have to take the la-
tency of the audio hardware into account – this is handled auto-
matically by the program.  
						

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7.When you are done, close the VST Connections window.
How to use the external instrument
Once you have set up the external instrument in the VST Connections 
window, you can use it as a VST Instrument. Open the VST Instruments 
window and click on an empty instrument slot. In the instrument pop-up 
menu, your external instrument is listed on the External Instruments 
submenu:
Return Gain Allows you to adjust the level of the signal coming in from the ex-
ternal instrument. 
Note however that excessive output levels from an external device 
may cause clipping in the audio hardware. The Return gain setting 
cannot be used to compensate for this – you have to lower the 
output level on the device instead.
MIDI Device When you click in this column, a pop-up menu opens where you 
can either disconnect the instrument from the associated MIDI de-
vice, select a MIDI device, create a new device or open the MIDI 
Device Manager in Cubase SX to edit the MIDI device. When Stu-
dio Manager 2 is installed, you may also select an OPT editor to 
access your external instrument.
Used Whenever you insert the external instrument into a VST Instrument 
slot, this column shows a chicanery (“x”) to indicate that the instru-
ment is being used. Setting Description  
						

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When you select the external instrument in the VST Instruments win-
dow, the following happens:
• A parameter window for the external device is opened automatically. This may 
either be the Device window, allowing you to create a generic device panel, 
an OPT editor window or a default editor. For information about the Device 
window, the MIDI Device Manager and User device panels, see the chapter 
“MIDI devices” in the pdf document “MIDI Devices and Features”.
• To send MIDI notes to the external instrument, open the output pop-up menu in 
the Inspector for the corresponding MIDI track and select the MIDI device to 
which the external instrument is connected. This ensures use of delay compen-
sation. The instrument will now play any MIDI notes it receives from this track 
and return them to Cubase SX through the return channel(s) you have set up. 
The external instrument will behave like any other VST Instrument in 
Cubase SX.
About the Favorites buttons
In the VST Connections window, both the External FX tab and the 
External Instrument tab feature a Favorites button.
The Favorites button on the External FX tab
Favorites are device configurations that you can recall at any time, like 
a library of external devices that are not constantly connected to your 
computer. They also allow you to save different configurations for the 
same device, e. g. a multi-effect board or an effect that provides both a 
mono and a stereo mode.
To save a device configuration as a favorite, proceed as follows:
•When you have added a new device in the VST Connections window, 
select it in the Bus Name column and click the Favorites button.
A context menu is displayed showing an option to add the selected effect or instrument 
to the Favorites.
•You can recall the stored configuration at any time by clicking the 
Favorites button and selecting the device name from the context menu.  
						

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 44 Working with the new features
About the “plug-in could not be found” message
When you open a project that uses an external effect/instrument, you 
may get a “plug-in could not be found” message. This will happen 
whenever you remove an external device from the VST Connections 
window although it is used in a saved project, or when transferring a 
project to another computer on which the external device is not de-
fined. You may also see this message when opening a project last 
saved with version 3.0 of Cubase SX.
In the VST Connections window, the broken connection to the exter-
nal device is indicated by an icon in the Bus Name column:
To reestablish the broken connection to the external device, simply 
right-click (Win) or [Ctrl]-click (Mac) the entry for the device in the 
Bus Name column and select “Connect External Effect”. The icon is 
removed, and you can use the external device within your project as 
before.
Note that busses set up for external effects or external instruments are 
saved not with the current project, but “globally”, i.e. for your particular 
computer setup.  
						

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Freezing external effects/instruments
Just as when working with regular VST instruments and effects, you 
can also choose to freeze external effects and instruments. The gen-
eral procedure is described in detail in the Operation Manual chapters 
“Audio effects” and “VST Instruments”.
When freezing external instruments or effects, you can adjust the re-
spective tail value in the Freeze Channel Options dialog:
• Use the arrow buttons next to the Maximum Tail value field to set the desired 
Tail length, i.e. the range after the part boundary that should also be included 
for the freeze. You can also click directly in the value field and enter the desired 
value manually (the maximum value being 60 s).
• When Maximum Tail is set to 0s (default), the freezing will only take into 
account the data within the Part boundaries.  
						

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Mixer operations
Several changes have been made to the mixer, to facilitate editing, 
navigating, etc. A whole new Mixer category has been added in the 
Key Commands dialog for example, allowing you to create keyboard 
shortcuts for the mixer functions you often work with. Several new 
functions have been added to the mixer context menu, allowing you 
e.g. to specify which channels functions should be applied to. These 
new functions are described in the following sections.
The context menu functions
The context menu contains two new submenus:  
						

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The Window submenu
This submenu is handy for quickly switching to another open mixer 
window, showing/hiding the different mixer panes etc. It contains the 
following options:
•Show Routing View
Allows you to show/hide the topmost section of the mixer which contains the input/
output routing settings.
•Show Extended View (Cubase SX only)
Allows you to show/hide the middle section of the mixer, where you can display differ-
ent settings for the channels (EQs, Send effects, etc.).
•Next Mixer
This displays the next mixer window (if you have several mixer windows open).
The Command Target submenu
This submenu lets you specify which channels should be affected by 
the “commands” (basically all the functions that can be assigned key 
commands), e.g. what to display in the extended mixer pane (Cubase 
SX only), the width setting of the channel strips, etc. It contains the 
following options:
•All Channels
Select this if you want your commands to affect all channels.
•Selected Only
Select this option if you want your commands to affect the selected channels only.
•Exclude Inputs
Select this if you do not want your commands to affect the input channels.
•Exclude Outputs
Select this if you do not want your commands to affect the output channels. 
						

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Copying channel settings to/from several 
tracks in one go
In the previous program version, the channel settings could be copied 
for one channel and pasted into another channel. This behavior was a 
bit cumbersome if the same settings had to be applied to several chan-
nels, as they had to be applied to each channel separately. In version 
3.1 of the program, it is now possible to apply the settings of one chan-
nel on several other channels in the mixer, or even to select several 
channels, copy their settings and apply them to the same number of 
other channels in one go.
Mixer key commands
The Key Commands dialog now contains a dedicated Mixer category, 
allowing you to create keyboard shortcuts for the mixer functions. For 
a detailed description of setting up and working with key commands, 
see the Key Commands chapter in the Operation Manual.  
						

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Panning Bypass
In version 3.1 of the program, it is now possible to bypass the panning 
for all track types except MIDI tracks. To do this, keep [Shift] and [Alt]/
[Option] pressed and click on the pan setting for the respective chan-
nel in the mixer (on the fader panel or in the extended mixer view – 
Cubase SX only). The Panning Bypass state is reflected in all the dif-
ferent pan setting sections, e.g. if you bypass a channel in the mixer, 
this is automatically reflected in the Inspector for the respective track.
When panning is bypassed for a channel, the following happens:
• Mono channels will be panned center.
• Stereo channels will be panned left and right.
• Surround channels will be panned center.
• To deactivate Panning Bypass, simply [Shift]+[Alt]/[Option]-click again. 
						

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The Tempo Track (Cubase SX only)
A very handy new feature can be found in the Tempo Track window: 
the Process Bars dialog. This dialog uses the global “Insert Silence” 
and “Delete Time” functions from the Edit menu – Range submenu, 
but uses a musical “bars+beats-based” environment for calculating 
the necessary ranges (or parameters). It also ensures that the time 
signatures stay “in sync” after these operations. This allows for a 
much more intuitive approach when inserting, deleting or replacing 
“time” while working with a project set to the Bars+Beats time type.
The Process Bars dialog
The Process Bars dialog is opened by clicking on the respective but-
ton on the Tempo Track toolbar (next to the Process Tempo button).
The dialog contains the following elements:
Option Description
Bar Range The Bar Range display gives you a graphical overview of the 
position of the bar range within the project as well as its 
length. You can change the setting here by dragging the 
green rectangle, however this is accomplished much easier 
by using the Start and Length value fields (see below).
The small arrow pair in this section mark the length of the 
current project. The area to the right marks the bar range that 
can be added (500 bars max.).
… to open the Process Bars dialog.Click this button on the Tempo Track toolbar…