Steinberg Cubase SX/SL 3 Getting Started Manual

							CUBASE SX/SLTutorial 4: Creating a surround mix (Cubase SX only) 12 – 151
2.Make sure the “Empty” item in the list is selected and click OK.
A file dialog appears, allowing you to specify a location for the project folder. This will 
contain all files related to the project. 
3.Navigate to the desired location for the project folder, and select it by 
clicking OK, or click “Create” to create and name a new folder.
The project folder is created on disk, and an empty Project window appears. 
4.Pull down the Project menu and select Project Setup.
The Project Setup dialog appears. This is where you make basic settings for the project.
5.Set the Sample Rate to 48.000 kHz and the Record Format to 24 bit.
This is to match the audio files we will use.
6.Click OK to close the Project Setup dialog.
The project is empty right now so we need to add some audio tracks:
7.Select “Add Track” from the Project menu and “Audio” from the sub-
menu that appears.
8.Make sure Stereo is selected in the dialog that appears and click OK.
A stereo audio track is created. Once you have created a track you can add more 
tracks of the same track type by double clicking:  
						

							CUBASE SX/SL12 – 152 Tutorial 4: Creating a surround mix (Cubase SX only)
9.Double click in the empty part of the track list.
Again, select Stereo in the dialog that appears.
10.Create two mono tracks as well.
Use the same method, just select Mono in the dialog that appears.
Now we have two stereo tracks and two mono tracks, which is what 
we need.
11.Pull down the File menu and select “Open Library”.
12.Navigate to the “Tutorial Projects” folder on your hard disk and open 
the file “Tutorial 4.npl”.
This is a library – a stand-alone Pool with references to media files (in this case, the 
library contains four audio clips). Typically, you create libraries with audio clips and/or 
video clips that you want to use in several projects – sound effects libraries, etc.
13.Position the windows so that you can see the Project window and the 
Library window at the same time.   
						

							CUBASE SX/SLTutorial 4: Creating a surround mix (Cubase SX only) 12 – 153
14.Turn on Snap in the Project window and make sure the Grid option is 
selected to the right.
This makes it easier to line up the events at the same start position.
15.Drag the clip “Ambience 1” from the library to the first stereo track 
and drop it at the start of the project.
You will be asked whether to copy the file to the work directory, etc. – this is not neces-
sary.
16.Proceed in the same way with the clips “Ambience 2” (on the second 
stereo track), “Speech” and “Car” (each on one mono track). Position 
the clips roughly like in the following picture:
17.Now, change the track names accordingly: in the Track list, double-
click the name field and enter the respective name (“Ambience 1”, 
“Ambience 2”, etc.).
If you were to play back the project at this point, all four tracks would 
simply play back through the default stereo output bus. It’s time to set 
up a surround bus.   
						

							CUBASE SX/SL12 – 154 Tutorial 4: Creating a surround mix (Cubase SX only)
Creating a surround bus
1.Select “VST Connections” from the Devices menu.
2.In the VST Connections window, make sure the Outputs tab is selected 
and click the Add Bus button.
3.In the dialog that appears, select the 5.1 option and click OK.
The pop-up menu in the dialog lists the most common formats – to see all surround 
formats supported by Cubase SX, check the “More...” submenu.
The new bus appears.
4.Click in the Device Port column for each channel in the bus and select 
outputs on your audio hardware.
If you followed the recommendations on page 45, your output ports will already be 
named according to the channels in your surround setup – this way you just have to 
select the “Left” output for the left channel, the “Right” output for the right channel and 
so on.   
						

							CUBASE SX/SLTutorial 4: Creating a surround mix (Cubase SX only) 12 – 155
Now we have a 5.1 output bus. As you will see, you can either route a 
mono track directly to one channel in the surround bus or route a track 
(mono or stereo) to the whole surround bus and use the Surround 
panner to position it as desired. But what if you have some stereo ma-
terial that you simply want to send to a stereo channel pair in the bus 
(Left and Right or Left Surround and Right Surround)? For this you 
need to create a child bus:
5.Select the new 5.1 bus in the list and right-click (Win) or [Ctrl]-click 
(Mac) on it.
A pop-up menu appears.
6.Select “Add Child Bus” and from the submenu that appears the “Ste-
reo (Ls Rs)” option.
This creates a stereo child bus within the 5.1 bus, directed to the left and right surround 
speakers. In a normal “project” you would be more likely to require a child bus directed 
to the left and right front speakers, but in this tutorial we need “Stereo (Ls Rs)”.
7.Close the VST Connections window.  
						

							CUBASE SX/SL12 – 156 Tutorial 4: Creating a surround mix (Cubase SX only)
Setting up a surround mix
If you have auditioned the audio clips already, you have found that we 
have a stereo clip with background noise from a petrol station (Ambi-
ence 1), a similar stereo clip (Ambience 2), some speech in mono and 
the sound of a car starting and driving away, also in mono. 
•These audio files are (except for the speech clip) based on excerpts 
from Steinberg’s “Urban Atmospheres” sound environment recordings 
in 5.1 surround format.
Please check out www.steinberg.net for more information on the Urban Atmospheres 
collection!
Our goal here is to set things up like this:
• The speech track goes to the Center channel only.
• The Ambience 1 track goes to the Left and Right channels.
• The Ambience 2 track goes to the surround speakers only.
• The sound of the car will be panned across the surround speakers, and we 
will send a bit of it to the LFE channel as well.
Proceed as follows:
1.Open the mixer.
The mixer contains channel strips for the four audio tracks as well as channel strips 
for the input and output buses – including the 5.1 output bus you created.  
						

							CUBASE SX/SLTutorial 4: Creating a surround mix (Cubase SX only) 12 – 157
2.Make sure the Input and Output Settings panel is visible at the top of 
the channel strips.
If not, click in the upper part of the symbol in the lower left corner of the mixer.
Surround panning in stereo
Let’s start with the Ambience 1 track (the first stereo track). We want 
this routed to the front stereo speakers only. To get a feeling for how 
things work we will do this by using the surround panner:
1.Locate the channel for the Ambience 1 track and solo it by clicking the 
“S” button.
This lets you listen to only this track.
2.Open the Output Routing pop-up menu for the track.   
						

							CUBASE SX/SL12 – 158 Tutorial 4: Creating a surround mix (Cubase SX only)
3.Select the 5.1 bus (“5.1 Out”).
This routes the track to the whole 5.1 bus, for surround panning. As you can see, the 
regular pan control on the channel strip is replaced by a square grid with a dot.
4.Double click on the grid to bring up the surround panner panel.
The grey ball in the middle of the display indicates the position of the signal in the 
surround sound image.
5.Click on the “Mo./St.” pop-up menu and select “Y-Mirror”.
In this mode, the left and right channels in the stereo material will be “mirrored” along 
the Y axis. That is, the same amount of signal will be sent to the surround channels for 
both channels.   
						

							CUBASE SX/SLTutorial 4: Creating a surround mix (Cubase SX only) 12 – 159
6.Click and drag the ball to the top right corner of the display.
As you can see, you are dragging the “R” ball – the right channel. The left channel is 
automatically mirrored and is therefore positioned in the top left corner.
7.Start playback from the beginning of the project.
8.Click the “R” ball and drag it slowly downwards – towards the surround 
(back) speakers.
You will hear the sound gradually move back to the surround speakers.
9.Position the balls in the upper corners again, as in the picture above.
This is what we want in this case – the left and right channels routed to the left and 
right speakers, respectively.
10.Go back to the mixer.
You can close the surround panner if you like.  
						

							CUBASE SX/SL12 – 160 Tutorial 4: Creating a surround mix (Cubase SX only)
Routing to a stereo child bus
Next up is the Ambience 2 stereo track, which should be routed to the 
surround speakers. We could use the surround panner again, but since 
we created a child bus for the left and right surround speakers, this is a 
much quicker way:
1.Unmute the Ambience 2 channel.
2.Pull down the Output Routing pop-up menu for the channel.
3.Select the “Stereo (Ls Rs) out” child bus.
This routes the track directly to the surround stereo speakers.
4.Play back the project again.
You should hear a recording of the ambient noises on a petrol station, with the rear 
speakers providing life-like depth and surround sense.