User manual

434
Synchronization
ASIO Audio Device
In this mode, Cubase is the slave and the synchronization
signal can be received from another device connected to
a digital interface of the audio hardware.
About the ASIO Positioning Protocol (APP)
The ASIO Positioning Protocol is a technology that ex-
pands on the type of sync described above and makes
sample-accurate positioning possible.
When transferring audio digitally between devices, it is im-
portant that synchronization using word clock and timecode
is completely correlated. If not, the audio will not be re-
corded at the exact intended (sample-accurate) position,
which can cause various types of problems, such as inac-
curately positioned audio material, clicks and pops, etc.
A typical situation is when transferring material from a dig-
ital multi-track tape recorder to Cubase (for editing) and
then back again. If you do not have sample-accurate syn-
chronization set up, you cannot be sure that the material
will appear in its exact original position, when transferred
back to the tape recorder.
In order to take advantage of the ASIO Positioning Proto-
col, your audio hardware must be suitably equipped and
the functionality must be included in the ASIO driver for
the hardware.
An example of a system for doing sample-accurate trans-
fers would be transferring audio tracks from an Alesis ADAT
to Cubase. Here the ADAT will be the sync master (though
it does not necessarily have to be). It provides both the dig-
ital audio (with an inherent word clock) and position infor-
mation (timecode) via its ADAT sync protocol. The master
clock is generated by the ADAT itself.
Hardware and software requirements for APP
• Your computer audio hardware (in the example above, this
would be an ADAT card in your computer) must support all
the functionality required for the ASIO Positioning Protocol.
That is, it must be able to read the digital audio and the corre-
sponding position information from the external device.
• There must be an ASIO 2.0 driver for the audio hardware.
• For resolving to external timecode, the audio hardware must
have an integrated timecode reader/generator.
• For information about which audio hardware models currently
support APP, see the Steinberg web site (www.steinberg.net).
Setting up the audio card for external synchronization
1. Open the Device Setup dialog from the Devices menu
and, on the VST Audio System page, select the name of
your audio interface.
2. Click the Control Panel button to open the card’s pro-
prietary setup dialog.
If this card is accessed via a special ASIO driver (as opposed to DirectX
or the Generic Low Latency ASIO Driver), this dialog is provided by the
card, not by Cubase. Hence the settings vary with the card brand and
model.
3. Adjust the settings as recommended by the card man-
ufacturer, then close the dialog.
The dialog may also contain various diagnostic tools that allow you to
verify for example whether word clock is arriving correctly.
4. From the Clock Source pop-up, select the input to
which you routed the word clock signal.
This pop-up menu may not be used if you selected an input in the Con-
trol Panel dialog instead.
!
This option is only available if your hardware is com-
patible with the ASIO Positioning Protocol.
!
The ASIO Positioning Protocol requires audio hard-
ware with specific ASIO drivers.
!
The ASIO Positioning Protocol exploits the specific
advantage of having an audio card that has an inte-
grated timecode reader. With such a card and the
ASIO Positioning Protocol, you can achieve constant
sample-accurate synchronization between the audio
source and Cubase.