Steinberg Cubase SX/SL 3 Getting Started Manual

CUBASE SX/SLSetting up your system 4 – 41
Selecting a driver and making audio settings in Cubase SX/SL
The first thing you need to do is select the correct driver in Cubase 
SX/SL to make sure that the program can communicate with the au-
dio hardware:
1.Launch Cubase SX/SL, select Device Setup from the Devices menu 
and click on VST Audiobay in the list.
The VST Audiobay panel in the Device Setup dialog.
2.Select your audio hardware driver from the Master ASIO Driver menu.
There may be several options...

CUBASE SX/SL4 – 42 Setting up your system
4.Bring up the control panel for the audio hardware and adjust the set-
tings as recommended by the audio hardware manufacturer.
•Under Windows, you can open the control panel by clicking the Con-
trol Panel button.
The control panel that appears when you click this button is provided by the audio 
hardware manufacturer and not Cubase SX/SL (unless you use DirectX or MME, see 
below). Hence it will be different for each audio card brand and model.
The Control...

CUBASE SX/SLSetting up your system 4 – 43
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.
Cubase SX/SL comes with a driver called ASIO DirectX Full Duplex, 
available for selection on the Master ASIO Driver pop-up menu (VST 
Audiobay page).
• To be able to take full advantage of DirectX Full Duplex, the audio hard-
ware must support WDM (Windows Driver Model) in combination...

CUBASE SX/SL4 – 44 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...

CUBASE SX/SLSetting up your system 4 – 45
2.To hide an output port, click in the “Visible” column for the port (so 
that it says “No”).
Ports that aren’t visible cannot be selected in the VST Connections window where you 
set up your input and output busses – see page 107. 
If you attempt to hide a port that is already used by a bus you will be 
asked whether this is really what you want – note that this will disable 
the output port!
3.To rename a port, click on its name in the list and type in a new...

CUBASE SX/SL4 – 46 Setting up your system
About monitoring
In Cubase SX/SL, monitoring means listening to the input signal 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 SX/SL) requires an external mixer for mixing the audio play-
back with the input signal. This mixer could be a stand-alone physical 
mixer or a mixer application for your audio hardware, if this...

CUBASE SX/SLSetting up your system 4 – 47
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...

CUBASE SX/SL4 – 48 Setting up your system
You might want to use even more instruments for playback. If you do, 
simply connect MIDI Thru on the sound module to MIDI In on the next 
instrument, and so on. In this hook-up, you will always play the first 
keyboard when recording. But you can still use all your devices for 
providing sounds on playback.
If you plan to use more than three sound sources we recommend that 
you either use an interface with more than one output, or a separate 
MIDI Thru box...

CUBASE SX/SLSetting up your system 4 – 49
• If you use a separate MIDI keyboard – one that does not produce any sounds 
itself – MIDI Thru in Cubase SX/SL should also be activated, but you don’t 
need to look for any Local On/Off setting in your instruments.
• The only case where MIDI Thru should be deactivated is if you use Cubase SX/
SL with only one keyboard instrument and that instrument cannot be set to Lo-
cal Off mode.
• Note that MIDI Thru will only be active for MIDI tracks that are record...

CUBASE SX/SL4 – 50 Setting up your system
Setting up MIDI ports in Cubase SX/SL
The Device Setup dialog lets you set up your MIDI system in the fol-
lowing ways:
• Note: After changing a setting in the Device Setup dialog, you should 
click Apply and then click OK to close the dialog.
Showing or hiding MIDI Ports
Under Windows, the MIDI ports are listed in the Device Setup dialog 
on the DirectMusic page and/or the Windows MIDI page (depending 
on your system). By clicking in the “Show” column for a MIDI...