Steinberg Cubase Studio 4 Getting Started Studio Manual

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Tutorial 6: Mixing and effects
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.
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 
has to offer, but feel free to experiment and try out the dif-
ferent 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 the project called “Mixing 4” found in the “Tuto-
rial 6” folder.
“Deactivate all Mute”
“Deactivate all Solo”
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 6: 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.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.
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
“EQ Band Q” amount Moving the EQ up or down while hold-
ing down [Shift] changes the Q 
						

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Tutorial 6: Mixing and effects
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.
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 
“Compressor” from the Dynamics submenu.
5.Make changes to the compression. At the end of this 
section, you can load the next tutorial 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.
!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 6” folder.
!Load the project called “Mixing 6” found in the “Tuto-
rial 6” folder. 
						

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Tutorial 6: Mixing and effects
2.Choose “Stereo” for “Configuration”, select the “Ste-
reoDelay” effect and click OK.
3.We are going to put delay on the “Elec Guitar” track. 
Let’s set the delay so that the left side and right side have 
different delay settings and make sure the “Mix” is set to 
“100.0”.
Giving the stereo delay different left and right settings creates a more dy-
namic effect.
4.With the delay set, click the “Edit Channels Settings” 
button of the “Elec Guitar” track.
5.Select “FX 1-StereoDelay” 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 “StereoDelay”.7.Move the slider to the right to raise the level of the 
send to the “StereoDelay” 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 – StereoDelay” 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 to make changes over a period of time 
and those changes will be remembered and will occur 
again without our attention.
!Load the project called “Mixing 7” found in the “Tuto-
rial 6” folder. 
						

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Tutorial 6: Mixing and effects
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.
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 “Draw” tool to draw in automation so that it resembles 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 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 
how many bars to export. We accomplish this by setting 
the locators.
!Load the project “Mixing 8” found in the “Tutorial 6” 
folder. 
						

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Tutorial 6: Mixing and effects
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…”.
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.You can choose whether you want the main stereo 
outputs “Stereo Out (Stereo)” to be exported. This means 
the exported file will be generated through the main stereo 
outputs that we see in the Mixer. You can also choose the 
individual outs of each audio channel for flexibility in your 
export. Let’s choose “Stereo Out (Stereo)”.
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 after you 
export it and automatically create an audio track. The “Ex-
port Audio Mixdown” window will also close after export.
10.Before we finish, there is one very important feature that 
we must select. This is “Real-Time Export”. Since we have 
an external MIDI instrument that is playing a physical key-
board and its audio is coming back into Cubase, we need 
the audio mixdown to happen in real-time. This ensures that 
the MIDI data is properly sent to the external MIDI instru-
ment and recorded back in. Don’t forget this step!
!Important Feature – “Real-Time Export”! 
						

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Tutorial 6: Mixing and effects
11.When you are done making all the settings, click the 
Export button.
12.You will now see the exported stereo mix on a new 
stereo track.
13.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 6” folder to see the results of this export. 
						

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Tutorial 7: Surround production
(Cubase only) 
						

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Tutorial 7: Surround production (Cubase only)
Surround busses
Using surround sound in Cubase is effortless. Surround 
becomes an extension of what we’ve already learned - just 
with a few more channels added. Let’s set up our inputs 
and outputs so that we are surround-ready.
To fully use surround sound on your computer, you will 
need an audio card that has 6 or more inputs and outputs. 
If your audio card only has between 2-5 inputs or outputs, 
there may be sections of this tutorial that will not apply to 
your configuration.
To learn more about surround beyond this tutorial, consult 
the chapter “Surround Sound” in the Operation Manual.
Setting up surround outputs
1.Go to the Devices menu and choose “VST Connec-
tions”.
The default key command for this is [F4].
2.Let’s choose the “Output” tab first. We want to start 
from scratch and remove anything that is currently there, 
just in case it’s set up incorrectly. If you see anything in the 
“Bus Name” column, right-click with the mouse and 
choose “Remove Bus”.
3.Click the “Add Bus” button. Choose “5.1” for configu-
ration and “1” for count and click “OK”.
This will add a new surround sound 5.1 bus (Left, Right, Center, LFE, 
Left Surround and Right Surround) allowing us to have audio in Cubase 
route to our audio hardware.
4.Click in the Device Port column for the channels in the 
bus and select the desired outputs (those connected to 
your speakers) from the context menu.
Since 5.1 surround requires 6 speakers (or 6 individual outputs), make 
sure you select 6 separate outputs in the Device Port column.
Setting up surround inputs
Now let’s open the “Input” tab and set up the inputs we are 
going to use for recording surround sound into Cubase.
1.Do the same as mentioned above for the outputs. 
Right-click and select “Remove Bus”.
2.Now click the “Add Bus” button. Choose “5.1” for 
configuration and “1” for count and click “OK”.
This has now added a new surround sound 5.1 bus (Left, Right, Center, 
LFE, Left Surround and Right Surround), allowing us to record audio into 
Cubase in 5.1 surround.
3.Click in the Device Port column for the channels in the 
bus and select the desired inputs on your audio card from 
the context menu.
Since 5.1 surround requires 6 individual inputs, make sure you select 6 
separate inputs in the Device Port column.
!Load the project called “Surround 1” found in the 
“Tutorial 7” folder. 
						

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Tutorial 7: Surround production (Cubase only)
Recording with a 5.1 input bus
Having a 5.1 bus allows you to record surround as one 
multi-channel audio file on one audio track. This is very con-
venient and keeps the files aligned so they don’t go out of 
phase. Below is an example of recording with a 5.1 bus.
Recording with 6 mono input busses
You can however create separate mono busses for your 
5.1 inputs. This allows for greater flexibility in terms of 
routing, EQ, effects, etc. Below is an example of recording 
with 6 separate mono busses.
Let’s show you how to record in surround sound using 
separate mono busses.
1.Right-click on our “5.1 In” bus and select “Remove 
Bus”.2.Click the “Add Bus” button. Choose “Mono” for con-
figuration and “6” for count and click “OK”.
This will add 6 separate mono busses that we will configure as a sur-
round input setup.
3.Click in the Device Port column for the busses and se-
lect the desired inputs on your audio card from the context 
menu.
Since 5.1 surround requires 6 individual inputs, make sure you select 6 
separate inputs in the Device Port column.
4.Rename the inputs “Left”, “Right”, “Center”, “LFE”, 
“Left Surround” and “Right Surround”.
That’s it for the “VST Connections” window. You are now 
ready to set up your tracks.