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Synchronization
Creating a virtual effect rack
The effect sends for an audio channel in Cubase can ei-
ther be routed to an FX channel track or to any activated
group or output bus. This allows you to use a separate
computer as a “virtual effect rack”, by setting the system
up as follows:
1. On computer 2 (the machine you will use as effect
rack), add a new stereo audio track.
You cannot use an FX channel track in this case, since the track must
have an audio input.
2. Add the desired effect as an insert effect for the track.
Let’s say you add a high-quality reverb plug-in.
3. In the Inspector, select one of the VST System Link
busses as input for the audio track.
You want to use a separate VST System Link bus, which will only be
used for this purpose.
4. Route the channel to the desired output bus.
If you are using computer 1 as your main mixing computer, this would be
one of the VST System Link output busses, connected to computer 1.
5. Activate monitoring for the track.
6. Go back to computer 1 and select a track to which
you want to add some reverb.
7. Bring up the effect sends for the track in the Inspector
or the Mixer.
8. Open the Send Routing pop-up menu for one of the
sends and select the VST System Link bus assigned to
the reverb in step 3.
9. Use the Send slider to adjust the amount of effect as
usual.
The signal will be sent to the track on computer 2 and pro-
cessed through its insert effect, without using any proces-
sor power on computer 1.
You can repeat the steps above to add more effects to the
“virtual effect rack”. The number of effects available this way
is only limited by the number of ports used in the VST Sys
-
tem Link connection (and of course by the performance of
computer 2, but given that it will not have to handle any re
-
cording or playback, you should be able to use quite a lot of
effects).
Getting extra audio tracks
All computers on a VST System Link network are locked
with sample-accuracy. Therefore, if you find that the hard
drive on one computer is not fast enough to run as many
audio tracks as you need, you can record new tracks on
one of the other computers instead. This would create a
“virtual RAID system”, with several disks all operating to
-
gether. All tracks will remain locked together just as tightly
as if they were all running on the same machine. This
means that you effectively have an unlimited track count!
Need another 100 tracks? Just add another computer.
Dedicated Video Playback
Playback of high-resolution video can be taxing on a sys-
tem’s CPU. By dedicating one computer for video play-
back via System Link, you can free up resources on your
main CPU for audio and MIDI processing. Since all trans-
port commands will respond on the VST System Link
computers, scrubbing video is possible even when it is
coming from another computer.