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Table Of Contents
Audio Effects
Overview
241
VST 3 Standard
The VST 3 plug-in standard offers many improvements over the previous VST 2
standard and yet retains full backwards compatibility.
Smart Plug-In Processing
The VST 3 standard features smart plug-in processing, i. e., 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 “Suspend VST3 plug-in processing when no
audio signals are received” option 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.
However, be aware that this can lead to a situation where you added more plug-ins
on “transport stop” than the system 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.
NOTE
Activating this option can increase your system performance 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.
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 process the audio fed into it – as a result, the output
audio will be slightly delayed. This especially applies to dynamics processors
featuring look-ahead functionality.
Cubase 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, VST 3 dynamics
plug-ins with look-ahead functionality 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 document “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.
RELATED LINKS
Constrain Delay Compensation on page 378