User manual

190
VST Instruments and Instrument tracks
Using presets for VSTi configuration
About track presets and VST presets
Track presets and VST presets allow you to quickly set up
tracks or instruments with all the settings required for the
sound you want. Cubase provides various types of pre-
sets for various purposes. Two of these are of relevance
for VST Instruments:
• Track presets for instrument tracks store the parameter
settings of a VST Instrument together with all track/chan-
nel settings (applied audio and MIDI insert effects, etc.).
Instrument track presets can only be applied to instrument tracks, not to
instrument channels activated in the VST Instruments window.
• VST presets store all panel settings for a plug-in (VST In-
struments and VST effects), but no track/channel settings.
Note that you can create instrument tracks from VST 3 presets, i.e. se-
lecting a VST 3 preset will create an instrument track with all settings
stored in the VST preset plus an “empty” track.
As described in the chapter “Audio effects” on page 162,
there are two types of VST presets that can be used: the
VST 2 standard “.fxb/.fxp” files and the VST 3 preset stan-
dard with the extension “.vstpreset”. Some of the included
VST Instruments use the VST 2 preset standard, and oth-
ers use the VST 3 standard.
All VST 2 instruments can import “.fxb/.fxp” files and also
convert them to the VST 3 standard. Once converted, you
can use all VST 3 features. See “About earlier VST Instru-
ment presets” on page 193.
Ö For further information on Track presets and VST pre-
sets, see the chapter “Track Presets” on page 300.
Browsing for sounds
One important and often time-consuming aspect of music
creation is the search for the right sounds. You might spend
a huge amount of time trying out the presets for a particular
instrument only to find out later that the preset for another
instrument contains the sound you were looking for.
This is why Cubase features extensive browsing possibili-
ties, allowing you to preview all available presets without
having to load them first!
In addition, you can filter your search by specifying cate-
gory, style etc.
For example, if you are looking for a bass sound, simply
select the Bass category and you can browse and preview
all bass sounds for all instruments. If you know you want a
synth bass sound, select Synth Bass as sub-category and
all synth bass sounds will be shown etc.
You can also browse and preview track presets for instru-
ment tracks, i.e. instrument sounds plus all track settings
and all channel insert effect settings for this track.
These features combined speed up the process of finding
the right sound immensely.
• When creating your own presets, it is always a good
idea to set up attributes for them, as it allows you to fully
use the browsing features for your files, too.
This is described in detail in the chapter “The MediaBay” on page 287.
There are two ways of browsing for sounds:
• Using the Presets browser.
This will apply preset settings to an existing track.
• Using the Browse Sounds dialog.
Use this dialog if you haven’t set up a track yet.
Using the Presets browser
1. Create an instrument track and select it in the track list.
You do not have to assign an instrument to the track, but make sure to
specify a MIDI input.
2. Make sure that the track settings are shown in the In-
spector.
3. Click in the Track Preset field in the Inspector (the text
field currently reads “No Track Preset”).
Click here…
…to open the Presets browser.