How to implement Live/Realtime effects?

Hi all,

I’m experimenting a little with the features of my audio harware in between projects and got interested in using VST effects in realtime, like I would for example use a software compressor instead of a hardware unit during a live show.
My question now is: How do I route this in Cubase?
I think I figured out already that the effect has to go into an insert slot of an input channel in the mixer (and it looks like the effect is applied!), but when I want to edit the output, there’s no way to set an appropriate output channel, and I can’t hear anything…
I’m pretty sure there’s a simple procedure for this, but I can’t wrap my head around it right now… :blush:
Any input (sic!) appreciated!

Cheers,
Benji

You have to route an input channel to an audio channel to be able to monitor it live so you might as well put the effects on the audio channel. (Unless you wanted to record that track with effects included)

Make sure direct monitoring is disabled in Devices\VST Audio System\Your soundcard - And click on the channel monitoring button (little speaker icon)

Of course you will be hearing the processed signal with any latency from your system so set your buffers as low as possible and avoid any plugins that introduce high latency (You can see how many samples of latency a plugin adds in the plugin information window

Dude,
thanks!
I’ll give this a try and report back…
FYI: The reason I want to try this is that I got myself an extra AD/DA ADAT converter which adds 8 digital channels to my ZED! Which, in turn just happens to have 4 Stereo inputs that were not connected to the Firewire. They are now! And since I mix in analog on the board, I want to try to have my post-fade Auxes go through Cubase and back out.
In essence I’d just use the realtime loop for effects processing (Reverb, Delay, …), so the latency shouldn’t matter too much and is pretty low anyway…
In this setup the wet signal goes through AD/DA twice, but I just love the idea of pushing up an analog fader on the board and have the ITB effects go along with it!!

Thx again,
Benji