4.5

8
Working with the new features
VST Sound
With version 4.5, Steinberg introduced VST Sound, a new
version of the SoundFrame media management system that
is directly integrated into VST3. VST Sound allows direct
integration into the MediaBay to third party manufacturers
of plug-ins and instruments, and encompasses all formats
and file types previously supported by SoundFrame such as
audio, loops, VSTi presets, video, MIDI files and track pre-
sets. VST Sound has now replaced SoundFrame, which
was part of previous versions of Steinberg applications.
Plug and Play support for ASIO
devices
The Steinberg MR816 hardware series supports Plug and
Play in Cubase Essential. These devices can be plugged in
and switched on while the application is running. Cubase
Essential will automatically use the driver of the MR816 se-
ries and will re-map the VST connections accordingly.
• Please note that Steinberg cannot guarantee that this
will work with other hardware. If you are unsure of whether
your device supports plug and play, please consult its
documentation.
Automatically generated VST
Connection presets
In the VST Connections window (opened from the Devices
menu), on the Inputs and Outputs tabs, you will find a Pre-
sets menu. A number of standard bus configurations are
provided by default, and you can also save your own cus-
tomized setups as presets.
In this version of Cubase Essential, a new type of preset
has been added to complement the standard presets as
known from the previous program version: On each star-
tup, Cubase Essential will analyze the physical inputs and
outputs provided by your audio hardware, and will auto-
matically create presets tailored to your specific hardware
configuration.
These hardware-dependent presets can have the follow-
ing configurations:
• one stereo bus
• various combinations of stereo and mono busses
• a number of mono busses
The Presets menu on the Outputs tab of the VST Connections window,
with the standard presets (top) and the automatically generated presets
(bottom).
The automatically generated presets make it easy to install
and use an audio hardware device very quickly, as it is no
longer necessary to manually specify the bus-port assign-
ments for the current device in the VST Connections win-
dow every time before you can start working. This is very
handy, especially if you have a number of different devices
you want to use or if you are working in different studios.
Mac OS X improvements
Retrieving channel names
For some audio cards, it is now possible to automatically
retrieve the “ASIO” channel names for the ports of your
audio hardware:
1. Open the Device Setup dialog via the Devices menu.
2. On the VST Audio System page, select your audio
card on the “ASIO driver” pop up menu.
3. In the Devices list to the left, select your audio card.
The available settings are displayed.
4. In the settings section to the right, click the Control
Panel button.
This opens the control panel for your audio hardware.
!
If a device that does not support Plug and Play is
connected/disconnected when the computer is run-
ning, it might get damaged.