Quick Start

18
Setting up your system
About monitoring
In Cubase, monitoring means listening to the input signal
while preparing to record or while recording. There are
three ways to monitor:
External monitoring
External monitoring (listening to the input signal before it
goes into Cubase) requires an external mixer for mixing the
audio playback with the input signal. This can be a classic
mixing desk 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 Cubase
In this case, the audio passes from the input into Cubase,
possibly through Cubase effects and EQ and then back to
the output. You control monitoring via settings in Cubase.
This allows you to control the monitoring level from Cu-
base and add effects to the monitored signal only.
ASIO Direct Monitoring
If your audio hardware is ASIO 2.0 compatible, it may sup-
port ASIO Direct Monitoring (this feature may also be avail-
able 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. However, moni-
toring is controlled from Cubase. This means that the audio
hardware’s direct monitoring feature can be turned on or off
automatically by Cubase.
Monitoring is described in detail in the chapter “Record-
ing” in the Operation 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 ac-
tivated in the card’s mixer application.
Ö If you are using RME Audio Hammerfall DSP audio
hardware, make sure that the pan law is set to -3dB in the
card’s preferences.
Setting up MIDI
This section describes how to connect and set up MIDI
equipment. If you have no MIDI equipment, you can skip
this section. Note that this is only an example – you might
need or want to hook things up differently!
Connecting the MIDI equipment
In this example we assume that you have a MIDI keyboard
and an external MIDI sound module. The keyboard is used
both for feeding the computer with MIDI messages for re-
cording and for playing back MIDI tracks. The sound mod-
ule is used for playback only. Using Cubase’s MIDI Thru
feature (described later) you will be able to hear the cor-
rect sound from the sound module while playing the key-
board or recording.
A typical MIDI Setup.
!
Make sure that all equipment is turned off before
making any connections!