User manual

175
Audio effects
6. Pull down the Output Routing pop-up menu and on
the Side-Chain submenu, select the PingPongDelay ef-
fect you set up for the vocal track.
This way, the signals from the second (duplicate) track are routed to the
effect (and do not end up in the mix).
Now every time the signals on the vocal track exceed the
threshold, the delay will be deactivated. Since the thres-
hold for the delay effect is fixed, you may have to adjust
the volume of track 2, in this example, to ensure that vocal
parts of low or middle volume will also silence the delay
effect.
Dynamics plug-ins
Compression, expansion or gating can be triggered by
side-chain signals exceeding a specified threshold.
You may run into a situation where you want to lower the
volume of one instrument every time another instrument is
played. You could e.g. want to lower the volume of the bass
guitar during the bass drum hits. This can be achieved by
applying compression to the bass guitar signal every time
the drum signals are present on the respective track.
Proceed as follows:
1. Select the bass guitar track.
2. Open the Inserts tab in the Inspector, click in an insert
slot to open the effect selection pop-up menu and, on the
Dynamics submenu, select “Compressor”.
The effect is loaded into the effect slot and the effect control panel opens.
3. Make the desired effect settings (you will most likely
have to adjust them later to get the right compression
level) and activate the Side-Chain button.
4. Select the bass drum track.
5. Open the Sends Inspector section, click in a send slot
and from the Side-Chain submenu, select the Compres-
sor effect you created for the bass guitar track. Adjust the
Send level.
This way, the bass drum signal triggers the compressor on the bass gui-
tar track.
When you now play back the project, the bass guitar will
be compressed whenever the signals on the bass drum
track exceed the threshold.
Modulation plug-ins
Side-chain signals bypass the built-in LFO modulation
and instead apply modulation according to the envelope
of the side-chain signal. Since each channel will be ana-
lyzed and modulated separately, this allows for creating
astonishing spatial stereo or surround modulation effects.
Feel free to experiment with the functions to see what they
have to offer!
About drag&drop and Side chain connections
When you drag effects from one insert slot to another (on
the same channel or between different channels), the fol-
lowing applies:
• When you move an effect within a channel (e.g. from slot 4 to
slot 6), the side chain connections will be kept.
• When you drag and drop an effect between two channels, the
side chain connections will not be kept.
• When copying an effect into another effect slot (for the same
or a different channel), the side chain connections will not be
copied, i. e. they will be lost.
Using external effects (Cubase only)
Although this program comes with a top selection of VST
effect plug-ins, and although there’s a huge range of addi-
tional plug-ins available on the market, you may still have
some hardware effect units that you want to use – valve
compressors, reverb units, vintage tape echo machines,
etc. By setting up external FX busses you can make your
outboard equipment part of the Cubase virtual studio!
An external FX bus is a combination of outputs (sends)
and inputs (returns) on your audio hardware, along with a
few additional settings. All external FX busses you have
created will appear on the effect pop-up menus and can
be selected like the internal effect plug-ins. The difference