User manual

18
Setting up your system
• Under Windows, you open the control panel by clicking
the Control Panel button.
The control panel that opens when you click this button is provided
by
the audio hardware manufacturer – not Cubase (unless you use
DirectX, see below). Hence it will be different for each audio card brand
and model.
The control panels for the ASIO DirectX driver and the Generic Low La-
tency ASIO Driver (Windows only) are exceptions, in that they are pro-
vided by Steinberg and described in the dialog help, opened by clicking
the Help button in the dialog. See also the notes on DirectX below.
• Under Mac OS X, the control panel for your audio hard-
ware is opened by clicking the “Open Config App” button
on the settings page for your audio device in the Device
Setup dialog.
Note that this button is available only for some hardware products. If
“Open Config App” is not available in your setup, refer to the documen
-
tation that came with your audio hardware for information on where to
make hardware settings.
6. If you plan to use several audio applications simultane-
ously, you may want to activate the “Release Driver when
Application is in Background” option on the VST Audio
System page. This will allow another application to play
back via your audio hardware even though Cubase is run
-
ning.
The application that is currently active (i. e. the “top window” on the desk-
top) gets access to the audio hardware. Make sure that any other audio
application accessing the audio hardware is also set to release the ASIO
(or Mac OS X) driver so Cubase can use it when it becomes the active
application again.
7. If your audio hardware receives clock signals from an
external sample clock source, you may want to activate
the “Externally Clocked” option on the page for the driver.
This is described in detail in the section “If your hardware setup is based
on an external clock source” on page 18.
8. If your audio hardware and its driver support ASIO
Direct Monitoring, you may want to activate the Direct
Monitoring checkbox on the page for the driver.
Read more about monitoring later in this chapter and in the chapter “Re-
cording” on page 89.
9. Click Apply and then OK to close the dialog.
If your hardware setup is based on an external clock
source
For proper audio playback and recording, it is essential
that you set the project’s sample rate to the sample rate of
the incoming clock signals. If you load a project with a
sample rate that is different from your clock source, the
program will try to change the settings of the clock
source, which may not be what you want.
By activating the “Externally Clocked” option, you “tell”
Cubase that it receives external clock signals and there
-
fore derives its speed from that source. The program will
not try to change the hardware sample rate any longer.
The sample rate mismatch is accepted and playback will
therefore be faster or slower. For more information about
the Sample Rate setting, see
“The Project Setup dialog”
on page 54.
Ö When a sample rate mismatch occurs, the Record
Format field on the status line is highlighted in a different
color.
If you are using audio hardware with a DirectX driver
(Windows only)
Cubase comes with a driver called ASIO DirectX Full Du-
plex, available for selection on the ASIO Driver pop-up
menu (VST Audio System page).
Ö To take full advantage of DirectX Full Duplex, the audio
hardware must support WDM (Windows Driver Model) in
combination with DirectX version 8.1 or higher. In all other
cases, the audio inputs will be emulated by DirectX (see
the dialog help for the ASIO DirectX Full Duplex Setup di
-
alog for details about how this is reported).
Ö During the installation of Cubase, the latest DirectX
version will be installed on your computer.
!
A DirectX driver is the next best option to a specific
ASIO driver and the Generic Low Latency ASIO
driver.