Steinberg Nuendo 3 Getting Started Manual

							NUENDOSetting up your system 4 – 41
Selecting a driver and making audio settings in Nuendo
The first thing you need to do is select the correct driver in Nuendo to 
make sure that the program can communicate with the audio hardware:
1.Launch Nuendo, 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 here that all refer to the same audio hardware. When you 
have selected a driver, it is added to the Devices list.
Under Windows, we strongly recommend that you access your hardware 
via an ASIO driver written specifically for the hardware, if available. If no 
ASIO driver is installed we recommend that you check with your audio 
hardware manufacturer if they have an ASIO driver available, for exam-
ple for download via the Internet.
3.Select the driver in the Devices list to open the Driver settings for your 
audio hardware.  
						

							NUENDO4 – 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 Nuendo (unless you use DirectX or MME, see below). 
Hence it will be different for each audio card brand and model.
The Control panels for the ASIO Multimedia and ASIO DirectX drivers are an excep-
tion, as they are provided by Steinberg. They are described in the HTML Help, opened 
by clicking the Help button in the respective dialog. See also the notes below.
•Under Mac OS X, you will find the control panel for your audio hard-
ware in the System Preferences (“Other” section), opened from the 
Apple menu or from the Dock.
If you are using the built-in audio hardware of the Macintosh, you use the “Sound” con-
trol panel in the System Preferences to set levels, balance, etc.
If you are using ASIO audio hardware, you can click the Control Panel button to bring 
up its panel.
5.If you plan to use several audio applications simultaneously, you may 
want to activate the option “Release ASIO Driver in Background” on 
the VST Audiobay page. This will allow another application to play 
back via your audio hardware even though Nuendo is running.
The application that is currently active (i.e. the “top window” on the desktop), will get 
access to the audio hardware. Make sure that any other audio application accessing 
the audio hardware is also set to release the ASIO (or Mac OS X) driver so Nuendo 
can use it when it becomes the active application again.
6.If your audio hardware and its driver support ASIO Direct Monitoring, 
you may want to activate the Direct Monitoring checkbox.
Read more about monitoring later in this chapter and in the Recording chapter in the 
Operation Manual.
7.Click Apply and then OK to close the dialog. 
						

							NUENDOSetting 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.
Nuendo 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 with 
DirectX version 8.1 or higher. 
In all other cases, the audio inputs will be emulated by DirectX (see the HTML Help for 
the ASIO DirectX Full Duplex Setup dialog for details about how this is reported). 
Since using emulated inputs will result in higher latency, you may want to use the ASIO 
Multimedia driver instead, as this gives you more possibilities to fine-tune the settings.
•During the installation of Nuendo, the latest DirectX will be installed on 
your computer. 
When the ASIO DirectX Full Duplex driver is selected in the Device 
Setup dialog, you can open the ASIO Control Panel and adjust the 
following settings (for more details, click the Help button in the control 
panel):
•Direct Sound Output and Input Ports
In the list to the left in the window, all available Direct Sound Output and Input Ports 
are listed. In many cases, there will only be one Port in each list. To activate or deacti-
vate a Port in the list, click the checkbox in the left column. If the checkbox is ticked, 
the port is activated.
•You can edit the Buffer Size settings in this list if necessary, by double clicking 
on the value and typing in a new value. 
In most cases the default settings will work fine. Audio buffers are used when audio 
data is transferred between Nuendo and the audio card. While larger buffers ensure 
that playback will occur without glitches, the latency (the time between the moment 
Nuendo sends out the data and when it actually reaches the output) will be higher.
•Offset
If a constant offset is audible during playback of Audio and MIDI recordings, you can 
adjust the output or input latency time using this value. 
						

							NUENDO4 – 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 reasons need to make adjustments to your ASIO Multimedia 
configuration, click the Control Panel button to open the ASIO Multi-
media Setup control panel included with Nuendo. This control panel 
comes with an HTML Help describing the features and procedures.
Setting up the input and output ports
Once you have selected the driver and made the settings as described 
above, you need to specify which inputs and outputs should be used 
and name these:
1.In the Device Setup dialog, select VST Outputs in the list to the left.
All output ports on the audio hardware are listed.  
						

							NUENDOSetting 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 99. 
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 name.
•It is a good idea to give your ports generic names that are related to the 
channel configuration (rather than to the actual hardware model)! 
For example, if you are using a 5.1 surround audio setup, you could name the six ports 
Left, Right, Center, Lfe, Left Surround and Right Surround. This makes it easier to 
transfer your projects between different computers, e.g. in different studios – if the 
same port names are used on both computers, Nuendo will automatically handle the 
bus connections properly when you open the project on the other computer.
4.Select VST Inputs in the list to the left and set up the input ports in the 
same way.
5.Click OK to close the Device Setup dialog and apply your changes. 
						

							NUENDO4 – 46 Setting up your system
About monitoring
In Nuendo, monitoring means listening to the input signal while pre-
paring 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 
Nuendo) requires an external mixer for mixing the audio playback with 
the input signal. This mixer could be a stand-alone physical mixer or a 
mixer application for your audio hardware, if this has a mode in which 
the input audio is sent back out again (usually called “Thru”, “Direct 
Thru” or similar).
Via Nuendo
In this case, the audio passes from the input into Nuendo, possibly 
through Nuendo effects and EQ and then back to the output. You 
then control monitoring via settings in Nuendo.
This allows you to control the monitoring level from Nuendo and add 
effects to the monitored signal only. 
ASIO Direct Monitoring
If your audio hardware is ASIO 2.0 compatible, it may support ASIO 
Direct Monitoring (this feature may also be available for audio hardware 
with Mac OS X drivers). In this mode, the actual monitoring is done in 
the audio hardware, by sending the input signal back out again. How-
ever, monitoring is controlled from Nuendo. This means that the audio 
hardware’s direct monitoring feature can be turned on or off automati-
cally by Nuendo.
Monitoring is described in detail in the Recording chapter in the Oper-
ation Manual. However, when setting up, there’s one thing to note:
•If you want to use the external monitoring via your audio hardware, 
make sure the corresponding functions are activated in the card’s 
mixer application. 
						

							NUENDOSetting 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 for feeding the 
computer with MIDI messages for recording and for playing back MIDI 
tracks. The sound module is used for playback only. Using Nuendo’s 
MIDI Thru feature (described later) you will be able to hear the correct 
sound from the sound module while playing the keyboard or recording.
A typical MIDI Setup.
MIDI KeyboardMIDI Sound Module MIDI
Interface
MIDI MIDI
InMIDI In
OutOut In
Thru 
						

							NUENDO4 – 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 instead of the Thru jacks on each unit.
Setting MIDI Thru and Local On/Off
In the “MIDI” section in the Preferences dialog (located on the File menu 
under Windows and on the Nuendo menu under Mac OS X), you will 
find a setting called “MIDI Thru Active” which can be enabled or not. This 
is related to a setting in your instrument called “Local On/Off” or “Local 
Control On/Off”.
•If you use a MIDI keyboard instrument, as described earlier in this chapter, MIDI 
Thru should be activated and that instrument should be set to Local Off (some-
times called Local Control Off – see the instrument’s operation manual for de-
tails). This will let the MIDI signal from the keyboard get recorded into Nuendo 
and at the same time re-routed back to the instrument so that you hear what 
you are playing, without the keyboard “triggering” its own sounds. 
						

							NUENDOSetting up your system 4 – 49
•If you use a separate MIDI keyboard – one that does not produce any sounds 
itself – MIDI Thru in Nuendo 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 Nuendo 
with only one keyboard instrument and that instrument cannot be set to Local 
Off mode.
•Note that MIDI Thru will only be active for MIDI tracks that are record enabled 
and/or have the monitor button activated. See the Recording chapter in the 
Operation Manual for more information.
MIDI KeyboardMIDI Sound Module MIDI
Interface
MIDI MIDI
InMIDI In
OutOut In
Thru
“Synth” When “MIDI Thru” is active in Nuendo, 
MIDI data received is immediately “ech-
oed” back out.
When you press a key, it is sent 
out via MIDI to Nuendo.MIDI data coming in to the instrument 
is played by the “Synth” inside it.
When Local Control is turned on in the instru-
ment, the keys you press will be played by the 
“Synth” inside the Instrument.
When Local Control is turned off, this connection 
is cut off. 
						

							NUENDO4 – 50 Setting up your system
Setting up MIDI ports in Nuendo
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 input or 
output, you can specify whether or not it should be listed on the MIDI 
pop-up menus in the program.
Under Mac OS X, you can hide or show MIDI ports on the MIDI Sys-
tem page in the Device Setup dialog.
•Hiding a MIDI port from view does not turn it off if it is already selected 
for a track or a MIDI device.
Setting up the “All MIDI Inputs” option
When you record MIDI in Nuendo, you can specify which MIDI input 
each recording MIDI track should use. However, you can also select 
the “All MIDI Inputs” option, which causes any MIDI data from any 
MIDI input to be recorded.
The All MIDI Inputs page in the Device Setup dialog allows you to spec-
ify which inputs should be included when you select All MIDI Inputs for 
a MIDI track. This can be especially useful if your system provides sev-
eral instances of the same physical MIDI input – by deactivating the du-
plicates you make sure only the desired MIDI data is recorded.
•If you have a MIDI remote control unit connected you should also make 
sure to deactivate that MIDI input on the All MIDI Inputs page.
This is to avoid accidentally recording the data from the remote control when the “All 
MIDI Inputs” option is selected as input for a MIDI track.