User manual

189
Audio effects
However, be aware that this can lead to a situation where
you added more plug-ins on “transport stop” than the sys-
tem can handle on playback. Therefore, you should always
find the passage with the largest number of events playing
simultaneously to make sure that your system offers the
required performance.
Ö Activating this option can increase your system perfor-
mance a lot in certain projects, but it also makes it more
unpredictable whether the project can play back fine on
any timecode position of the project.
About side-chain inputs
Several VST3 effects feature side-chain inputs. This means
that the operation of the effect can be controlled via exter
-
nal signals routed to the side-chain input. The effect pro-
cessing is still applied to the main audio signal, see “Using
the side-chain input” on page 198.
About plug-in delay compensation
A plug-in effect may have some inherent delay or latency.
This means that it takes a brief time for the plug-in to pro
-
cess the audio fed into it – as a result, the output audio
will be slightly delayed. This especially applies to dynam-
ics processors featuring “look-ahead” functionality.
Cubase provides full plug-in delay compensation through-
out the entire audio path. All plug-in delays are compen-
sated for, maintaining the sync and timing of all audio
channels.
Normally, you do not have to make any settings for this.
However, VST3 dynamics plug-ins with look-ahead func-
tionality have a “Live” button, allowing you to disengage
the look-ahead to minimize latency, if they are to be used
during realtime recording (see the separate PDF docu
-
ment “Plug-in Reference”).
You can also constrain the delay compensation, which is
useful to avoid latency when recording audio or playing a
VST instrument in real time, see
“Constrain Delay Com-
pensation” on page 216.
About tempo sync
Plug-ins can receive timing and tempo information from
the host application (in this case, Cubase). Typically, this
is used to synchronize certain plug-in parameters (such as
modulation rates or delay times) to the project tempo.
• This information is automatically provided to any VST
plug-in (2.0 or later) that “requests it”.
You do not have to make any special settings for this.
• You set up tempo sync by specifying a base note value.
You can use straight, triplet or dotted note values (1/1 to 1/32).
Please refer to the separate PDF document “Plug-in Ref-
erence” for details about the included effects.
Insert effects
Background
As the name implies, insert effects are inserted into the au-
dio signal path – this means that the audio channel data will
be routed through the effect. You can add up to eight dif-
ferent insert effects independently for each audio-related
channel (audio track, group channel track, FX channel
track, VST instrument channel or ReWire channel) or out-
put bus. The signal passes through the effects in series
from the top downwards, with the signal path shown below:
Input gain
Insert effect 1
Insert effect 2
Insert effect 3
Insert effect 6
EQ
Volume (fader)
Insert effect 7
Insert effect 8
Insert effect 4
Insert effect 5