New to Cubase

Hi All. I just made the jump from hardware to software based recording. I’m feeding Cubase 6 from a RME Fireface UFX, on Windows 7 Pro 64 bit. Just got everything setup this weekend, so I’m still experimenting and trying to wrap my head around everything. Two questions:

  1. Latency…Since I’m new at this, any recommendations on buffer size? I’m set at 256 samples now, but I’m not really pushing anything as of yet. My PC’s an i7, with 16 gigs of RAM. I’m sure I’ll have to adjust that as I go, but I figured if anyone had a recommendation for a starting point, I’d take it.

  2. Firewire or USB? The Fireface UFX has both. I would’ve thought that FW would be my best bet, but RME says they’ve had some instances where USB has outperformed FW? For the moment, I’m running FW.

Of course, any other Cubase tips, tricks or tweaks you think might be helpful for a newbie would be appreciated. Particularly with the Cubase set up, screens, workflow, etc.

Thanks!

Gary

RME do seem to have worked some magic with the USB interface on their newer machines - but my gut tells me that Firewire is more reliable. Porbably depends a bit on what else is connected to the USB or FW bus.

What sample rate are you running? If 44.1/48k, 256 will give you plenty of cpu headroom - you could probably run it a lot lower than that with your i7 but there’s no point unless you are wanting to play VSTi’s in real time, or monitor audio through Cubase (no point in that either if you have Totalmix FX).

Should be a good solid setup.

My plan is to run 88.2. My old hardware based setup topped out at 48, so I ran 44.1. To me, the minimal gains going in at 48 weren’t worth what you lost in the conversion back down. Now that I have the option of a sample rate high enough to actually make a significant difference, I’m thinking 88.2, since it’s a simple “divide by two” conversion to get back to 44.1.

You’re right on Totalmix. I’m extremely impressed with the Fireface UFX all the way around, but Totalmix in particular.

You will get larger filesizes so you may need to change your “Use default location” at the bottom of the Project Assistant (the one that opens on starting Cubase or a “New Project” from the file menu) as all the backups will tend to be stored on your C drive. This is only valid if you partition or use several drives and the C drive is relatively small and if that is the case then you might need to check your C drive over the months to see space being used by these files.

How about visuals and GUI setup? Out of the box, Cubase seems to be a bit hard on my eyes. I’ve been playing with the different visual schemes, but I’d be curious to see other setups. How about things like the mixer? How do you have that setup visualy…From both an aesthetic and workflow standpoint?