Sometimes google or the large pdf manual don’t help me; here I will post my own miscellaneous questions regarding Cubase (6). Everyone else can use this topic as well.
Right now I’d like to know how to assign audio insert effects to single midi tracks. I can only assign them to entire VSTI outputs at the moment, which is quite unfortunate. This forces me to create individual instances of polyphonic VSTI exclusively for single instruments, thereby defeating the purpose of polyphonic VSTI. Specifically, I’m attempting to assign Guitar Rig 5 to a single midi track for the Scarbee MM Bass instrument. I’m looking forward to responses. Thank you very much.
For starters you can’t assign an audio plugin to a MIDI track. Get that out of your head. It’s total nonsense. MIDI triggers sounds/controls somewhere else. That’s all. No sound. Just triggers and stuff like SYSEX data. Repeat … no audio.
So, the next thing we need to figure out is if you are using instrument tracks or are you using the a VSTi loaded in the VSTi Rack (F11). Your capabilities for assigning FX to the output of various VSTi will be determined by which of these two methods you are talking about. Instrument tracks are totally restrictive, they simplify the process of creating tracks that control VSTi, at the cost of both people actually understanding what is happening and restriction of some features.
Finally, I am going to assume what you really mean is that you are using an instrument track and a VSTi like Kontakt that lets you load more than one sound, but you can’t figure out how to have a single MIDI track trigger different instruments loaded in Kontakt and/or you can’t figure out how to send the mutliple instruments to multiple audio outputs, so that you can put the effect on just a single patch.
MIDI … you can set the MIDI channel for each note individually in pretty much every MIDI editor. You can even have 2 C3s one on top of the other, with one going to MIDI channel 1 and one going to MIDI channel 2, both going to a single VSTi.
Audio. When you hit F11 and load a VSTi, there is a clickable little box next to the name of the VSTi, just to the right of the ‘e’. Clicking this will provide you a drop down that allows you to enable extra outputs if the VSTi supports them. Then it is a matter of setting up the routing inside the VSTi so that the individual sounds go to the outputs you enabled. THEN you can put your effect on a single output of the multi-VSTi that is controlled from a single MIDI track.
I am not in front of my machine right now, but you can assign audion inserts to MIDI channels - well sort of and it works.
Firstly, there are two type of VST mono and mutlitimbral. Multitimbral means that you can have more than one (usually sixteen) MIDI outputs. IN order to reduce clutter, Cubase defaults to sending all the sounds from a multi to a single stereo pair, but this can be changed. Go to the instrument rack and you will find a small triangular button for each column, in here you activate those channels you need. You also need to get the multi instrument to send to this channel inside the VST itself.
After having set things up right, then go to the VST folder in the Project window, find out what channel the sound in question is outputing to and allocate the audio fx there. Its in this folder that you see the audiio not in the MIDI track.
Thank you for your responses. Yes, Guitar Rig can naturally be used as an audio insert in VSTi. Unfortunately,
I can not decipher your instructions- could you please post a couple screen shots? I honestly tried, but I just got confused.
It explains how to setup a multiout synth using Halion SE that can later be mixed using audio FX, but the same principle applies to any VSTi synth. Notice he has MIDI Channels hiden in the Mixer (the MIDI icon on the far left of the Mixer is bright orange), but they are being shown in the Project View. The visible Instrument channels in the mixer is where you would insert the audio FX for processing (i.e. Guitar Rig).
Setting up a multiout synth can be confusing at first, but it is not complicated once you understand the routing that’s involved. Dissolving a MIDI part is just a process he used for the application at hand, which was to separate each MIDI note to it’s own track in order to have each drum on individual tracks (instead of them being all in one MIDI part and thus preventing him from applying FX to each drum separately). Doing this works great for drum parts but this obviously doesn’t apply to your case because you DON’T want to separate the notes found in your MIDI Bass track. You want to keep these all in one MIDI track, so ignore that process.
Instead, lets’ pretend that those MIDI drum parts are different instruments coming out of Halion, one of them being the Bass guitar track. Follow the video from 2:18 and on, and that should get you to where you want to be. Remember what I said earlier about the hidden MIDI tracks in the console view. These are NOT the ones where you will be able to apply audio FX. The ones where you do this are the VST Instrument tracks (under the VST Instrument folder found in the Project View), which are the ones you’ll notice are being created in his Mixer.
Unfortunately it doesn’t No matter what I do, the entire vst gets fx applied to it. I set up the multiple outputs in the vst rack, but they don’t seem to do anything. I wish there was something I could do.
I’m trying to do it from scratch so I can learn. I’m trying to apply a guitar rig 5 effect to my scarbee MM bass in Kontakt. Kontakt also has a pop drum set that I wish to exempt from FX. I simply don’t know how to connect everything so it works. Either no sound comes out, or both instruments have the FX applied. Would it be possible to give me a step by step set of instructions?
EDIT: Okay, apparently only the HALion VST work- Kontakt only has mono outputs while Grrove Agent One works and can successfully separate tracks. I must be doing something wrong though; it doens’t make sense to only have built-in plug-ins work this way.
It seems like you’re not assigning the different outputs to the different instruments loaded in Kontakt. Here’s the same procedure but now more specific to Kontakt:
Again, this is the same exact thing that he did with Halion SE, but now applied to Kontakt 3 in Cubase 4. This should work the same for K5 and C6 though. Let me know if this helped.
It still doesn’t quite work. For some reason Kontakt doesn’t display any extra stereo channels. It’s weird. I must go though, so I will try one more time tomorrow, and then I will share the results. Thanks for the help so far everyone!
Okay, I’m sorry but I can’t figure this out. Kontakt doesn’t have any outputs other than the first, and I can’t even get this to work with Groove Agent One. The only way I could understand is if someone made a dedicated video. I’m absolutely confused.
For some reason Kontakt and Cubase only show a bunch of mono outputs and aux outputs- no stereo outs. The same goes for inside Kontakt. If I have to post a screen shot I will… hold on…
As you can see, for some reason neither Cubase nor Kontakt show any available stereo outputs despite the fact that I’ve added another stereo in Kontakt. I only get several Mono and Auxiliary outputs, none of which are useful. I’ll look at the video, but I’m skeptical.
EDIT: The video shows Kontakt 3, and it doesn’t look like it does in the video for me.
What happens when you open an output preset (for instance “VST Plugin (16 out)”) and re-open Kontakt?
Because it looks like the “Master Output Configuration” of Kontakt isn’t properly setup.
