User manual

198
Surround sound (Cubase only)
Operations
Setting up the surround configuration
Output bus configuration
Before you can start working with surround sound, you
have to configure a surround output bus, through which all
the speaker channels of the chosen surround format are
routed. How to add and set up busses is described in de-
tail in the section “Setting up busses” on page 14. Here is
a brief run through:
1. Open the VST Connections window from the Devices
menu.
2. Click the “Outputs” tab.
3. Click the “Add Bus” button and select one of the pre-
set formats from the Configuration pop-up (see below).
The new bus appears with the ports visible.
4. By clicking in the Device Port column you can now
route the speaker channels to the desired outputs of your
audio hardware.
5. If you like, rename the output bus by clicking its name
and typing in a new one.
This name will appear in the mixer and on routing pop-ups.
The following surround configurations are included:
Child busses
Essentially a child bus is a bus within a (bigger) bus. Typi-
cally you may want stereo child busses within your sur-
round bus – this allows you to route stereo tracks directly
to a stereo speaker pair within the surround bus. You may
also want to add child busses in other surround formats
(with fewer channels than the “parent bus”).
Once you have created a surround bus, you can add one or
several child busses to it by right-clicking the bus and se-
lecting “Add Child Bus”. This is described in detail in the
section “Adding a child bus (Cubase only)” on page 16.
Input bus configuration
To work with surround sound in Cubase, it is often not
necessary to configure a surround format input bus. You
can record audio files via standard inputs, and easily route
the resulting audio channels to surround outputs at any
stage. You can also directly import multi-channel files of
specific surround format onto audio tracks of the same
format.
You should add a surround input bus in the following cir-
cumstances:
• You have existing audio material in a specific surround
format, and you wish to transfer this material into Cubase
as a single, multi-channel file.
• You wish to record a surround setup “live”.
In both cases, you can add and configure an input bus of
the format you wish to use in the VST Connections dialog
so that each input on your audio hardware is routed to the
corresponding speaker channel.
To add an input bus, use the same general method as de-
scribed for output busses (see “Output bus configuration”
on page 198), but select the “Inputs” tab instead.
Format Description
LRCS LRCS refers to Left Right Center Surround, where the sur-
round speaker is center-rear positioned. This is the original
surround format that first appeared as Dolby Stereo in cin-
ema and later as the home cinema format Dolby ProLogic.
5.0 This is the same as 5.1 (see below) but without the LFE
channel. The LFE channel is optional in 5.1 and if you don’t
plan to use it, you might find this option more convenient.
5.1 This format is one of the most popular in cinema and DVD.
In its various cinema and DVD encoding implementations
(established by different manufacturers) it is referred to as
Dolby Digital, AC-3, DTS and MPEG 2 Multichannel. 5.1
has one center speaker (mainly used for speech) and four
surround speakers (for music and sound effects). Addition-
ally a sub-channel (LFE – Low Frequency Effects) with
lower bandwidth is used for special low frequency effects.
LRC Same as LRCS, but without the surround speaker channel.
LRS Left-Right-Surround, with the surround speaker positioned
at center-rear.
LRC+Lfe Same as LRC but with an Lfe sub-channel added.
LRS+Lfe Same as LRS but with an Lfe sub-channel added.
Quadro The original Quadraphonic format for music, with one
speaker in each corner. This format was intended for vinyl
record players.
LRCS+Lfe Same as LRCS but with an Lfe sub-channel added.
Quadro+Lfe Same as Quadro but with an Lfe sub-channel added.
6.0 Cine A Left-Right-Center front speaker arrangement with 3
(Left-Right-Center) surround channels.
6.0 Music This uses 2 (Left/Right) front channels with Left and Right
surround channels and Left and Right Side channels.
Format Description