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Audio effects
About this chapter
Cubase AI comes with a number of effect plug-ins in-
cluded. This chapter contains general details about how to
assign, use and organize effect plug-ins. The effects and
their parameters are described in the separate manual
“Plug-in Reference”.
Overview
There are two ways to use audio effects in Cubase AI:
• 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 output busses – for
recording with “master effects”).
• 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 AI, send effects are handled by means of FX channel tracks.
About VST 3
The new VST 3 plug-in standard offers many improve-
ments over the previous VST 2 standard, yet retains full
backwards compatibility, i.e. you will still be able to use
your previous VST effects and presets.
In the program, effects compatible with previous VST ver-
sions will be easily recognized:
VST Preset management
From a user perspective, the main difference between
VST 2 and VST 3 is in the effect preset management. The
“.fxp/.fxb” files used in VST 2 have been replaced by
VST 3 Presets (extension “.vstpreset”). Using the preset
management features, you can assign various attributes to
your effect presets to help you quickly find the right patch.
You can also preview effect presets before you load them.
A large number of presets for effects are included with the
program. If you have any previous VST plug-ins installed
on your computer, you can still use them, and you can also
convert their programs to VST 3 presets, see “Effect pre-
sets” on page 94.
Smart plug-in processing
Another feature of the VST3 standard is “smart” plug-in
processing. Previously, any loaded plug-in was processing
continuously, regardless of whether a signal was present or
not. In VST3, 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 option “Suspend VST3
plug-in processing when no audio signals are received” 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.
Be aware, however, 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 re-
quired 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.
!
This chapter describes audio effects, i.e. effects that
are used to process audio, group, and VST Instrument
channels.
An effect compatible
with a previous VST
version
A VST 3 effect