User manual

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VST instruments and instrument tracks
About latency
About earlier VST instrument presets
You can use any VST 2.x instrument plug-ins in Cubase. Installing VST instrument
plug-ins works the same way as for audio effects – see
“Installing VST 2 plug-ins on
Windows systems” on page 249 and “Installing VST 2.x plug-ins on Mac OS X
systems” on page 248.
When you install a VST 2 instrument, any previously stored presets for it will be of the
old FX program/bank (.fxp/.fxb) standard. You can import such files, but the preset
handling will be slightly different. You will not be able to use the new features like the
Preview function or the Attribute Inspector until you have converted the old “.FXP/.FXB”
presets to VST
3 presets. If you save new presets for a VST 2 plug-in these will
automatically be saved in the new .vstpreset format in the default location.
Importing and converting FXB/FXP files
To import FXP/FXB files, proceed as follows:
1. Load any VST 2 instrument you may have installed, and click the VST Sound
button to open the Preset Management pop-up menu.
2. Select the “Import FXB/FXP” option.
This menu item is only available for VST 2 instrument plug-ins.
3. In the file dialog that opens, locate the FXP file and click “Open”.
If you load a bank (.fxb), it will replace the current set of all effect programs. If you
load a single program, it will replace the currently selected effect program only.
Note that such files exist only if you created your own .fxp/fxb presets with a
previous program version (or any other VST
2 application).
• After importing, you can convert the current program list to VST presets by
selecting “Convert Program List to VST Presets” from the Preset Management
pop-up menu.
When the presets are converted, they are available in the Presets browser, and
you can use the Attribute Inspector to add attributes and audition the presets. The
presets will be stored in the VST3 Preset folder.
About latency
Depending on your audio hardware and its ASIO driver, the latency (the time it takes
for the instrument to produce a sound when you press a key on your MIDI controller)
may simply be too high to allow comfortable realtime VST instrument playback from a
keyboard.
If this is the case, a workaround is to play and record your parts with another MIDI
sound source selected, and then switch to the VST instrument for playback.
• You can check the latency for your audio hardware in the Device Setup dialog
(VST Audio System page).
The input and output latency values are shown below the ASIO Driver pop-up
menu. For live VST instrument playing, these values should ideally be a few
milliseconds (although the limit for “comfortable” live playing is a matter of
personal taste).