User manual

188
Audio effects
About this chapter
Cubase comes with a number of effect plug-ins included.
This chapter contains general details about how to assign,
use and organize effect plug-ins. The effects and their pa-
rameters are described in the separate PDF document
“Plug-in Reference”.
Overview
Audio effects can be used in Cubase as follows:
• As insert effects.
An insert effect is inserted into the signal chain of an audio channel, which
means that the whole channel signal passes through the effect. This makes
inserts suitable for effects for which you do not need to mix dry and wet
sound, e.
g. distortion, filters or other effects that change the tonal or dy-
namic characteristics of the sound. You can have up to eight different in-
sert effects per channel (and the same is true for input and output busses
– for recording with effects and “master effects”, respectively).
• As send effects.
Each audio channel has eight sends, each of which can be freely routed
to an effect (or to a chain of effects). Send effects are practical for two
reasons: you can control the balance between the dry (direct) and wet
(processed) sound individually for each channel using the sends, and
several different audio channels can use the same send effect. In Cu
-
base, send effects are handled by means of FX channel tracks.
• By using offline processing (Cubase only).
You can apply effects directly to individual audio events – this is de-
scribed in the chapter “Audio processing and functions” on page 244.
About VST 3
The VST 3 plug-in standard offers many improvements
over the previous VST 2 standard and yet retains full
backwards compatibility.
In the program, effects compatible with previous VST ver-
sions will be easily recognized:
Cubase is able to run plug-ins originally developed for dif-
ferent platforms: you can use a 32-bit plug-in with the 64-
bit version of Cubase under Windows 7 64 bit and Mac
OS X 10.6.
As the use of 32-bit plug-ins on 64-bit computers affects
the computer performance, these will be marked by an
icon in the plug-in menus.
Ö This functionality is provided to allow you to load older
projects including their original plug-ins on current com
-
puters. However, the plug-ins will require higher CPU per-
formance when compared to their native platform.
Therefore, it is recommended to use 64-bit versions of
such plug-ins or instruments once available.
Smart plug-in processing
The VST3 standard features “smart” plug-in processing,
i.
e., processing by a plug-in can be disengaged if there is
no signal present. This can greatly reduce the CPU load,
thus allowing for more effects to be used.
This is achieved by activating the “Suspend VST3 plug-in
processing when no audio signals are received” option in
the Preferences dialog (VST–Plug-ins page).
When this is activated, VST 3 plug-ins will not consume
CPU power on silent passages, i. e. when no audio data
runs through them.
!
This chapter describes audio effects, i. e. effects that
are used to process audio, group, VST instrument,
and ReWire channels.
An effect compatible
with a previous VST
version
A VST 3 effect