User manual

181
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 SurroundPanner function in the mixer allows you to
graphically position channels in the surround field. This plug-
ins is described in detail in the section “Using the Surround-
Panner” on page 184.
• 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). Due to their multi-channel support, plug-ins con-
forming to the VST 3 standard will work well in a surround
configuration, even if the are note specifically designed for sur-
round. The plug-ins that are included with Cubase are de-
scribed in the separate pdf document “Plug-in Reference”.
• 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.
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.
The VST Connections window
In this window you can add input and output busses.
There is a complete selection of common surround con-
figurations available, as well as standard mono or stereo
busses.
The Bus Name column contains the currently configured
busses as they will appear in the Input and Output Rou-
ting pop-ups in the mixer.
VST Connections showing the Outputs page. The “5.1 Out” bus is un-
folded, displaying the individual speaker channels, with their physical
output ports displayed in the Device Port column to the right.
Click here to add a bus.
The currently configured busses
The outputs selected for the
channels of the bus