User manual

196
Surround sound (Cubase only)
Background
What is Surround sound?
Surround is a common name for various techniques for po-
sitioning audio in reference to the listener. Whereas regular
stereo is limited to left/right positioning, within a relatively
narrow field, surround sound opens possibilities of posi-
tioning an audio source anywhere around the listener.
Surround sound comes in many flavors, from the ill-fated
Quadraphonic format for vinyl discs launched in the 70’s,
to today’s more successful incarnations.
The differences between the formats are in two areas:
• The number and configuration of speakers.
This varies from two speakers up to 6.
• The intended final coding format.
This depends on the media the audio will be “stored” on: film, broadcast
video or DVD, for example.
Surround sound is a large topic, there are entire books
and regular publications devoted to the subject. This
chapter will not provide an in-depth introduction to sur-
round sound as such. Instead it will concentrate on the
specific implementation in Cubase.
Surround sound in Cubase
Cubase has integrated surround sound features with sup-
port for several formats. This support goes all the way
through the audio path – all audio channels and busses
can handle multiple speaker channel configurations (up to
6 channels). A channel in the mixer can either carry com-
plete surround mixes, or an individual speaker channel
which is part of a surround setup.
• Audio channels can be routed freely to surround channels.
• The Surround Panner function in the mixer allows you to
graphically position channels in the surround field.
• Cubase is ready for surround specific plug-ins, that is plug-ins
with multi-channel support specifically designed for surround
sound mixing tasks (the included “Mix6to2” plug-in is an exam-
ple of this). There are also surround aware plug-ins, which are
not designed specifically for Surround but which due to their
multi-channel support work well in a Surround configuration.
• You configure Cubase for surround by defining input and out-
put busses in the desired surround format, and specifying
which audio inputs and outputs should be used for the differ-
ent channels in the busses. This is done in the VST Connec-
tions window.
Requirements for using Surround
The following additional equipment is required for taking
advantage of the surround sound implementation in Cu-
base:
• An audio card with more than two outputs.
The card must have as many outputs as the surround format you plan to
select.
• A matching amplifier/speaker configuration.
Encoding
The result of a surround mix in Cubase is either the multi-
channel audio sent from the surround output bus to your
surround speaker setup, or (if you use the Export audio
feature) audio file(s) on your hard disk. Exported surround
mixes can either be split (one mono file per speaker chan-
nel) or interleaved (a single file containing all the surround
channels).
Getting from this step to the final product (surround sound
on DVD, etc.) requires special software and possibly
hardware. This equipment will encode the signal into the
desired format, possibly compress the audio and store it
on the final media.
Exactly what type of software and/or hardware you need
depends on what kind of format you are mixing for and is
not dependent on Cubase in any way.
• Steinberg provides Dolby Digital and DTS encoders for
purchase, tailored for use with Cubase.
For details, please go to www.steinberg.net.
About surround plug-ins
Included with the program are some specific surround-
plug-ins. These are:
• Mix6to2
The Mix6to2 effect allows you to control the levels of up to six surround
channels, and to mix these down to a stereo output. This is described in
the separate pdf document “Plug-in Reference”.