User manual

163
Audio effects
About this chapter
Cubase comes with a number of effect plug-ins included.
This chapter contains general details about how to assign,
use and organize effect plug-ins. The effects and their pa-
rameters are described in the separate manual “Plug-in
Reference”.
Overview
There are three ways to use audio effects in Cubase:
• As insert effects.
An insert effect is inserted into the signal chain of an audio channel, which
means that the whole channel signal passes through the effect. This makes
inserts suitable for effects for which you don’t need to mix dry and wet
sound, e.g. distortion, filters or other effects that change the tonal or dy-
namic characteristics of the sound. You can have up to eight different in-
sert effects per channel (and the same is true for input and output busses
– for recording with effects and “master effects”, respectively).
• As send effects.
Each audio channel has eight effect sends, each of which can be freely
routed to an effect (or to a chain of effects). Send effects are practical for
two reasons: you can control the balance between the dry (direct) and
wet (processed) sound individually for each channel using the sends,
and several different audio channels can use the same send effect. In
Cubase, send effects are handled by means of FX channel tracks.
• By using offline processing (Cubase only).
You can apply effects directly to individual audio events – this is de-
scribed in the chapter “Audio processing and functions” on page 216.
About VST 3
The new VST 3 plug-in standard offers many improve-
ments over the previous VST 2 standard, yet retains full
backwards compatibility, i.e. you will still be able to use
your previous VST effects and presets.
Cubase is able to run plug-ins originally developed for dif-
ferent platforms: you can use a 32-bit plug-in under Win-
dows Vista 64 bit, and you can use plug-ins developed for
Mac PPC on MacIntel systems.
As the use of 32-bit plug-ins on 64-bit computers affects
the computer performance, these will be marked by an
icon in the plug-in menus.
Ö Please note that this functionality is provided to allow
you to load older projects including their original plug-ins
on current computers. However, the plug-ins will require
higher CPU performance when compared to their native
platform. Therefore, it is recommended to use 64 bit ver-
sions or Intel Mac (Universal Binary) versions of such
plug-ins or instruments once available.
In the program, effects compatible with previous VST ver-
sions will be easily recognized:
VST Preset management
From a user perspective, the main difference between
VST 2 and VST 3 is in the effect preset management. The
“.fxp/.fxb” files used in VST 2 have been replaced by
VST 3 Presets (extension “.vstpreset”). Using the preset
management features, you can assign various attributes to
your effect presets to help you quickly find the right patch.
You can also preview effect presets before you load them.
A large number of presets for effects are included with the
program. If you have any previous VST plug-ins installed
on your computer, you can still use them, and you can also
convert their programs to VST 3 presets. See “Effect pre-
sets” on page 176 for details.
Smart plug-in processing
Another feature of the VST3 standard is “smart” plug-in
processing. Previously, any loaded plug-in was processing
continuously, regardless of whether a signal was present or
not. In VST3, processing by a plug-in can be disengaged if
there is no signal present. This can greatly reduce the CPU
load, thus allowing for more effects to be used.
This is achieved by activating the option “Deactivate VST3
Plug-in when silence is detected” in the Preferences dia-
log (VST – Plug-ins page).
When this is activated, VST 3 plug-ins will not consume
CPU power on silent passages, i.e. when no audio data
runs through them.
!
This chapter describes audio effects, i.e. effects that
are used to process audio, group, VST Instrument
and ReWire channels.
An effect compatible with
a previous VST version.
A VST 3
effect.