Steinberg Cubase SX/SL 3 Getting Started Manual

							CUBASE SX/SLTutorial 4: Creating a surround mix (Cubase SX only) 12 – 161
Routing to a separate channel in the bus
The speech track should be routed to the center channel only in this 
tutorial. This is easily done:
1.Unmute the speech channel and open its Output Routing pop-up 
menu.
2.Select the “Center” channel for the 5.1 Out.
3.Play back the project and check that the speech is heard from the 
center speaker.
LFE and dynamic surround panning
For the final track, the car sound, we want a sense of movement 
across the surround sound image. We do this by automating the 
surround panner.
1.Unmute the car channel and pull down its Output Routing pop-up 
menu.
2.Select the 5.1 Out option.
This routes the track to the whole 5.1 bus, for surround panning.
3.Double click on the grid to bring up the surround panner panel.
This time we’re working with a mono track, so we can keep the “Mo./St.” parameter set 
to “Mono Mix”. This means there will be a single ball, indicating the position of the sound 
source.  
						

							CUBASE SX/SL12 – 162 Tutorial 4: Creating a surround mix (Cubase SX only)
Before we set the surround panning, let’s try sending some sound to 
the LFE (low frequency effects) channel:
4.Click the LFE knob in the surround panner panel and turn it up to a 
moderate level.
This knob controls the amount of signal sent from the car channel to the LFE channel. 
If you like, play back the project and adjust the LFE amount.
Now on to the surround panning:
5.Position the ball at “where you want the car to start”.
6.Start playback.
7.While the car sound plays back, try dragging the ball to get a natural 
sense of movement.
You may for example start at one side and drag the ball in a semi-circular movement 
across the lower part of the display.
Practice this a few times to find the best panning sweep.
8.In the mixer, click the “W” button for the car channel to enable auto-
mation writing.
9.Play back the project and perform the panning sweep in the surround 
panner.
10.When you are finished, click Stop, turn off the “W” button and activate 
the “R” button.
11.Play back the project again.
Now you should hear the complete surround mix, including your automated panning 
sweep.
12.If you like what you hear, save the project.  
						

							CUBASE SX/SLTutorial 4: Creating a surround mix (Cubase SX only) 12 – 163
Exporting to a surround audio file
Cubase SX can export (mix down) audio tracks to a file on the hard disk 
in a number of formats. Most often you will probably export to stereo or 
mono files, but it’s also possible to create an interleaved multi-channel 
file, containing all the surround channels in a single file:
First you need to set up the left and right locators to encompass all 
audio files in the project. Here’s one way to do this:
1.Click in the upper half of the ruler at the very start of the project and 
drag to the right with the mouse button pressed.
2.Release the mouse button at the end of the last event.
Check that all events are contained within the area between the locators (indicated 
with a blue highlight in the ruler).
• You can also do this by first selecting all events (e.g. by pressing [Ctrl]/
[Command]-[A]) and then using the “Locators to Selection” function on 
the Transport menu (default key command [P]).  
						

							CUBASE SX/SL12 – 164 Tutorial 4: Creating a surround mix (Cubase SX only)
3.Pull down the File menu, select “Export” and then “Audio Mixdown” on 
the submenu that appears.
The Export Audio Mixdown dialog appears.
4.Enter a name for the mixdown file in the File name field.
5.Make sure an uncompressed file type is selected.
You can only create multi-channel interleaved files in uncompressed formats. These in-
clude Wave, Wave 64 and Broadcast Wave (PCM coding) as well as AIFF.
6.Select 48kHz in the Sample Rate field – the same as in the project.
This is only necessary because we will import the resulting file back into the project 
again. The Resolution setting isn’t as important, but to maintain the high audio quality 
you should set this to 24 Bit.
7.Select “N. Chan. Interleaved” from the Channels pop-up menu.
This option is for creating a multi-channel interleaved file. Note that it’s also possible to 
export in Split format, in which case each channel in the surround bus will become a 
separate mono file.  
						

							CUBASE SX/SLTutorial 4: Creating a surround mix (Cubase SX only) 12 – 165
8.Pull down the Outputs pop-up menu and select your 5.1 Output bus.
This is where you select which output bus to export. As you can see, it’s also possible 
to export separate audio tracks here (as well as VST Instrument channels, effect return 
tracks etc.).
9.Turn off the Real-Time Export and Update Display options.
10.Make sure both “Import to” checkboxes are activated.
This means the resulting mixdown file will be imported back into the project, on a new 
audio track.
11.Click Save.
Now Cubase SX renders the output bus to a file, which may take a 
few moments. Then the file will be imported into the project. 
•A dialog will ask you whether to copy the file into your work directory, 
etc. but this is not required now – deactivate all checkboxes and click 
OK.
If you look at the Project window now, you will find that a new track 
has been added. While the other tracks are in stereo or mono format, 
this one is a 5.1 track, containing six channels. The track contains an 
audio event with the exported surround file.
12.Open the mixer and make sure the new 5.1 track is routed to the 5.1 
Out bus.
13.Solo the 5.1 channel and play back the project.
You will hear your surround mix again, although now it’s contained in one multi-channel 
audio file.
That concludes this tutorial! In the Operation Manual you can read 
more about the extensive Surround features in Cubase SX.  
						

							CUBASE SX/SL12 – 166 Tutorial 4: Creating a surround mix (Cubase SX only) 
						

							13
Tutorial 5: Editing in the Project
window 
						

							CUBASE SX/SL13 – 168 Tutorial 5: Editing in the Project window
About this tutorial
This tutorial describes some of the procedures for editing in the Project 
window. Typically, this is where you do the “large-scale” editing and re-
arranging of events. Again, please note that this tutorial only describes 
some of the many functions in the Project window – for details and full 
descriptions, see the Operation Manual.
Preparations
This tutorial is based on an existing file, included on the Cubase SX/SL 
DVD. 
• Below, we assume that you have followed the previous tutorial and cop-
ied the “Tutorial Projects” folder to your hard drive.
If not, please see page 132.
1.Close any open projects, by making their Project windows active and 
selecting “Close” from the File menu.
This is just to make things clear and avoid confusion – you can of course have several 
projects open in Cubase SX/SL if needed.
2.Pull down the File menu and select Open.
3.In the file dialog that appears, navigate to the Tutorial folder on your 
hard drive, select the file “Tutorial 5.cpr” and click Open.
Now the “Tutorial 5” project opens in Cubase SX/SL. 
						

							CUBASE SX/SLTutorial 5: Editing in the Project window 13 – 169
Overview
As you can see, this project contains four audio tracks (drums, bass, 
guitar and strings) with a few events. Try playing back the project from 
the beginning!
Well, it’s obvious that things are pretty disorganized here; the audio 
events do not fit together very well. The goal of this tutorial is to make 
some sense out of this, by editing in the Project window.
While this tutorial describes the editing of audio events, most of these 
procedures can also be used for editing MIDI parts in the Project window. 
See the Operation Manual for details.  
						

							CUBASE SX/SL13 – 170 Tutorial 5: Editing in the Project window
Moving and copying events
Let’s start by making the events start at the same time:
1.Select the Arrow tool by clicking its icon in the toolbar.
2.Make sure the Snap button is activated and the Grid option is selected 
on the Snap pop-up menu.
The Snap function helps you find the correct positions when moving 
and editing, by making objects “magnetic” to certain positions (or to 
other objects). When the Grid option is selected and the Grid pop-up 
menu to the right is set to “Bar” as in the figure above, you can only 
move objects to the start of bars.
3.Click on the first Bass Synth event, and drag it all the way to the left.
Now it will start at the same time as the “Slow Disco” drum event.
4.Drag the next Bass Synth event so that it starts where the first one 
ends.
5.In the same way, drag the Guitar event and the Strings event so that 
they start at the beginning too.
6.Move the project cursor to the start of the project and start playback.
The Snap button