User manual

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Surround sound (Cubase only)
Additional parameters (Standard mode)
• Center Level.
This determines how center source signals should be reproduced by the
front speakers. With a value of 100%, the center speaker will provide the
center source. With a value of 0%, the center source will be provided by
the ghost image created by the left and right speakers. Other values will
produce a mix between these two methods.
• Divergence Controls.
The three divergence controls determine the attenuation curves used
when positioning sound sources, for X-axis front, X-axis back and Y-axis
(front/rear), respectively. If all three Divergence values are 0% (default),
positioning a sound source on a speaker will set all other speakers to
zero level (-×) (except for the center speaker which depends on the cen-
ter level). With higher values, the other speakers will receive a percent-
age of the sound source.
Additional parameters (Position and Angle mode)
• Attenuate.
Attenuate can be used to amplify or weaken the source. Exactly what effect
this has on the level in each speaker can be determined by the level read-
outs, the concentric circle (Position mode) and the arc (Angle mode).
• Normalize.
Normalize is a function for controlling the overall loudness from all speak-
ers. When this is set to 1.0 (full normalization), the level from all speakers
together is always exactly 0dB. The individual levels will then be boosted
or attenuated accordingly.
Automation
All parameters in the SurroundPan plug-in can be auto-
mated, just as with any other plug-in. See “Using Write/
Read automation” on page 209.
Exporting a Surround mix
When you have set up a surround mix you can choose to
export it with the Export Audio Mixdown function. This
function exports a single selected output bus – this means
that all channels that you want to be part of the mix must
be routed to the surround output bus.
You have the following export options when doing sur-
round work:
• Export to “split” format, resulting in one mono audio file
for each surround channel.
• Export to interleaved format, resulting in a single multi-
channel audio file (e.g. a 5.1 file, containing all six sur-
round channels).
• Under Windows you can also export a 5.1 surround mix
to a file in Windows Media Audio Pro format.
This is an encoding format tailored for 5.1 surround – see “Windows
Media Audio Pro files (Windows only)” on page 418.
• You can also export a surround mix to a Dolby Digital
AC3 file or a DTS file, if you have the Steinberg Dolby Dig-
ital Encoder or the Steinberg DTS Encoder (both optional,
separate plug-ins) installed in your system.
Please go to www.steinberg.net for details.
For more about exporting to files, see the chapter “Export
Audio Mixdown” on page 413.
Using effects in surround configurations
Cubase introduces a special surround format for VST
plug-ins, that is plug-ins that can process more than two
channels. Mix6to2 is an example of such a plug-in.
Applying a Surround-aware plug-in
This is not different from applying a regular plug-in. The
only difference is that the plug-in panel may have controls
for more than two channels.
Using a stereo plug-in in a surround configuration
Normally, when you apply a stereo insert effect to a sur-
round configuration, the first two speaker channels (often
L and R) are routed through the plug-in and other chan-
nels are left unprocessed.
However, you may want to use the plug-in on other speaker
channels. This is described in the chapter “Audio effects”
on page 162.
!
Please note that this is not a dynamic feature, like
compression or limiting. It is instead just a tool for
scaling the nominal output levels from the surround
channels.