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Audio effects
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 AI provides full plug-in delay compensation
throughout the entire audio path. All plug-in delays are
compensated 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 manual “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 106.
About tempo sync
Plug-ins can receive timing and tempo information from the
host application (in this case, Cubase AI). 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 manual “Plug-in Reference”
for details about the included effects.
Insert effects
Background
As the name implies, insert effects are inserted into the
audio signal path – this means that the audio channel data
will be routed through the effect. You can add up to eight
different insert effects independently for each audio-re-
lated channel (audio track, group channel track, FX chan-
nel track or VST Instrument channel) or output bus. The
signal passes through the effects in series from the top
downwards, with the signal path shown below:
As you can see, the last two insert slots (for any channel)
are post-EQ and post-fader. Post-fader slots are best
suited for insert effects where you do not want the level to
be changed after the effect, such as dithering (see “Dithe-
ring” on page 89) and maximizers – both typically used as
insert effects for output busses.
Ö Applying several effects on several channels may be
too much for your CPU to handle!
If you want to use the same effect with the same settings on several
channels, it may be more efficient to set up a group channel and to apply
your effect only once, as a single insert for this group. You can use the
VST Performance window to keep an eye on the CPU load.
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