User manual

219
Surround sound (Cubase only)
Preparations
Output bus configuration
Before you can start working with surround sound, you
have to configure a surround output bus, through which all
the speaker channels of the selected surround format are
routed. How to add and set up busses in the VST Con
-
nections window is described in detail in the section “Set-
ting up busses” on page 26.
Child busses
A child bus is a bus within a (wider) bus. The most obvious
application of a child bus is to create stereo busses within
your surround bus – this allows you to route stereo tracks
directly to a stereo speaker pair within the surround bus.
You may also want to add child busses in other surround
formats (with fewer channels than the “parent bus”).
Once you have created a surround bus, you can add one or
several child busses to it by right-clicking the bus and se-
lecting “Add Child Bus”. This is described in detail in the
section
“Adding child busses (Cubase only)” on page 29.
Routing
In the Routing panel of the Mixer, you can use the Output
Routing pop-up menu to route audio-related tracks to
output busses or group channels with a surround configu
-
ration. For details on routing, see “Routing” on page 164.
Routing channels to individual surround channels
If you want to place an audio source in one separate
speaker channel, you can route it directly to that speaker
channel. This is useful for premixed material or multi-chan
-
nel recordings that do not require panning.
• To do this, simply select an individual speaker channel
in the Output Routing pop-up menu.
• If a stereo audio channel is routed directly to a speaker
channel, the left/right channels are mixed to mono.
The pan control for the audio channel governs the balance between the
left and right channel in the resulting mono mix. Center pan will produce
a mix of equal proportion.
Routing channels to child busses
If you have added a child bus within a surround bus (see
above), it appears as a subentry of the surround bus on the
Output Routing pop-up menu. Select this option to route a
stereo audio channel directly to that stereo speaker pair of
the surround bus (e.
g. to route a music track directly to the
left and right front speakers in a surround channel).
Input bus configuration
To work with surround sound in Cubase, it is often not nec-
essary to configure a surround format input bus. You can
record audio files via standard inputs, and easily route the
resulting audio channels to surround outputs at any stage.
You can also directly import multi-channel files of a specific
surround format onto audio tracks of the same format.
You should add a surround input bus in the following cir-
cumstances:
• You have existing audio material in a specific surround
format, and you wish to transfer this material into Cubase
as a single, multi-channel file.
• You wish to record a surround setup “live”.
• You have prepared surround premixes (e. g. stems) that
you want to record on a new audio track with a surround
configuration.