Making Cubase Work For You
Like any modern DAW, Cubase offers an array of functions and features – and its own specialities and quirks. We all find our own way of doing things – but this doesn’t mean an occasional procedural refresh is a bad idea. Cubase is particularly powerful when it comes to customising workflow, and it’s worth spending some time streamlining things here to maximise your creativity.
A good place to start is the Profile Manager (File menu). This allows you to save all your program settings and preferences – a wise move before you start tweaking, but this also facilitates multiple user environments (profiles) for different studio scenarios. You can also export and import profile files to allow them to be moved between machines (great if you have both fixed and mobile set-ups to consider).
Another great time-saver, and a useful partner to Profiles, is the ability to store and recall complete projects as Templates. There are a number of pre-configured templates that come with Cubase (designed for a range of common production scenarios) but their usefulness really comes into its own when you create your own. One good way to use them is by loading your favourite track, deleting all the audio and MIDI events, removing all clips from the Pool, and saving what remains as a Template. This saved Template will then be available as one of the default options when creating a new project. One area where this particularly shines is for recalling a commonly used instrument, effects buss and insert settings. So you can get on with the job of writing or recording without having to repeat the various routing and sound selecting tasks that may be common to some, or all, of your projects.
Plug-In Manager is a relatively new addition to Cubase, and one that has been requested for many years. Previously the only way to manage large numbers of plug-ins was to manually move their folder location – a long-winded task that was far from satisfactory. Now it is possible to set up multiple Plug-in Collections for both VST effects and instruments, each with its own folder hierarchy. Usefully, plug-ins can be freely moved between folders or removed entirely. Then different collections can be accessed from the drop-down menu in any of the plug-in selector windows. If you suffer from plug-in overload, or just want to remember where your favourites are stored, this is for you.
Sticking with the plug-in theme, it’s easy to overlook the usefulness of Effect Presets. If you’ve spent hours tweaking a reverb, or have a favourite delay setting, then it makes sense to save them for future use. Until Cubase is able to automatically recall these settings from within existing projects, the next best thing is creating an Effect Preset. If you have time on your hands you can also tag them in the Attribute Inspector for more refined searches in future. Don’t forget that each plug-in also allows you to overwrite its default settings with something more appropriate if you choose.
The use of presets in Cubase also extends to tracks of most type (Audio, MIDI or VST Instrument, Group, FX, Input and Output). For example, an Instrument Track Preset stores settings related to insert effects, EQ, volume, pan, input gain and phase, MIDI inserts and track parameters, colour and more, alongside the settings of the VST instrument itself. Flexibility is increased when you consider that multiple tracks can be simultaneously stored to one preset.
We’ll be looking at a load more tips from the functional to cosmetic, but the common aim is to make Cubase work faster and better.
If you suffer from plug-in overload, or can’t find your favourites, Plug-In Manager is for you