User manual

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VST Instruments and Instrument tracks
About earlier VST Instrument presets
You can use any VST 2.x Instrument plug-ins in Cubase.
Installing VST Instrument plug-ins works the same way as
for audio effects – see “Installing additional VST plug-ins”
on page 179.
When you install a VST 2 instrument, any previously
stored presets for it will be of the old FX program/bank
(.fxp/.fxb) standard. You can import such files, but the pre-
set handling will be slightly different. You will not be able
to use the new features like the Preview function or the
Tag editor until you have converted the old “.fxp/.fxb” pre-
sets to VST 3 presets. If you save new presets for a VST 2
plug-in these will automatically be saved in the new “.vst-
preset” format in the default location.
Importing and converting FXB/FXP files
To import .fxp/.fxb files, proceed as follows:
1. Load any VST 2 instrument you may have installed, and
click on the VST Sound button to open the Preset Ma-
nagement pop-up menu.
2. Select “Import FXB/FXP” from the pop-up menu.
This menu item is only available for VST 2 instrument plug-ins.
3. In the file dialog that opens, locate the .fxp file and
click “Open”.
If you load a bank (.fxb), it will replace the current set of all effect pro-
grams. If you load a single program, it will replace the currently selected
effect program only. Note that such files exist only if you created your
own .fxp/fxb presets with a previous version of Cubase (or any other
VST 2 application).
• After importing, you can convert the current program list
to VST presets by selecting “Convert Program List to VST
Presets” from the Preset Management pop-up.
When the presets are converted, they will be available in the preset
browser, and you can use the Tag Editor to add attributes and audition
the presets. The presets will be stored in the VST3 Preset folder.
About latency
Depending on your audio hardware and its ASIO driver,
the latency (the time it takes for the instrument to produce
a sound when you press a key on your MIDI controller)
may simply be too high to allow comfortable real-time VST
Instrument playback from a keyboard.
If this is the case, a workaround is to play and record your
parts with another MIDI sound source selected, and then
switch to the VST Instrument for playback.
Ö You can check the latency for your audio hardware in
the Device Setup dialog (VST Audio System page).
The input and output latency values are shown below the ASIO Driver
pop-up menu. For live VST Instrument playing, these values should ide-
ally be a few milliseconds (although the limit for “comfortable” live playing
is a matter of personal taste).
Constrain Delay Compensation
Cubase features full delay compensation throughout the
entire audio path. This means that any delay inherent in the
VST plug-ins you use will automatically be compensated
for during playback, so that all channels are kept in perfect
sync (see “About plug-in delay compensation” on page
164).
However, when you play a VST Instrument in real time or
record live audio (with monitoring through Cubase acti-
vated), this delay compensation may sometimes result in
added latency. To avoid this, you can click the Constrain
Delay Compensation button on the Project window tool-
bar. This function tries to minimize the latency effects of
the delay compensation, while maintaining the sound of
the mix as far as possible.
• In the Preferences dialog (VST page) you will find a set-
ting called Delay Compensation Threshold. Only plug-ins
with a delay higher than this setting will be affected by the
Constrain Delay Compensation function.