VST System Link in Cubase

today we talk about

VST System Link in Cubase

hello everybody Andrew Blake from thedigital audiom manual.com today we'regoing to start talking about the VSTsystem link option in cuase but beforewe start I want to remind you thatthere's a link below to the contentnavigation guide which is an easy tonavigate web page with links to all thecontent on this channel and besides thatin the near future I'm going to beginadding tips and other bits ofinformation that will only be availablethere if you're working with programslike wavelab or qbas plugins or thecable gu shaper box and many many otherprojects that are in the works then Iknow you're going to find just like Ihave that this is an invaluable studyAid and the other thing I want to makesure you understand is that this is nota simple PDF this is a constantlyupdated page that has any informationthat is new or anytime videos arechanged really anything updated and onceyou have it you will always have thelatest information constantly updated soif you haven't gotten it already go tothe link below click on it and save itto your favorites it's my gift to youokay so let's get started what is theVST system link basic concept is beingable to put a couple of computers ormore together and let them all sharedifferent tasks in terms of what theirstrengths are maybe one computer is morebuilt for handling the heavy audio workand another computer may be better forjust listening on but either way the VSTsystem link allows you to connect thesecomputers and make them work togetherwith Cubase now what are therequirements to get into this prettymuch you're going to have to have thesame system on both computers going tohave to have an audio interface on bothcomputers that is compatible and thenone other thing that's recommended is tohave a KVM switch boox the concept hereis then you have your keyboard yourmouse and the video all linked up likeyou're looking at one computer butallows you to connect all these multiplecomputers through that same switch boxjust for a quick look to get you startedon that area open up any browser andtype in KVM switch and you'll be quicklytaken to various options where you cansee these switch boxes for sale some ofthem are very modestly priced and someof them are a little bit more expensiveso it would depend on what kind offeatures you want basically everythingplugs into this device your keyboardyour mouse your video equipment and thenultimately into the computer and thenwhen you're switching back and forthbetween these two computers or threecomputers or whatever you have you onlyneed one keyboard and mouse to begin ourjourney into the VST system link we wantto go up to our studio menu come down towhere it says Studio setup and alongwith all the other options we have hereat the very bottom of the list we havethe VST system link and this has manyoptions and this is where we begin oursetup all right so let's go back andstart from the beginning we go up to thestudio down to our studio setup comedown to the VST system link option ifyou're going to use it the first thingyou're going to do is activate it so youclick on this active button you have theoption to decide which computers aregoing to be online with it pick whichinput you're going to use pick whichoutput you're going to use then if youwant the VST system link to basicallytake over those inputs and outputs youwould check this option so becausehooking this up requires digital digitalinputs and outputs you're going to haveto have a sound card setup that hasdigital inputs and outputs on yourinterface which truthfully probablyeliminates most of us from even usingthis option but just for the explanationof it all I went to the Steinberg siteand I brought up their ur816caudio interface this is kind of a rackmounted piece of gear but if we look atthe back picture we can see that it hasan optical in and out as well as what'scalled a word clock option these are thekind of connections that you're going toneed on your sound card to actually useVST system link and each computer alsohas to have its own connection like thisin an example where you're connectingtwo computers you would send the out ofone of these optical devices to the endof the next device or if you hadmultiple computers hooked up you wouldbasically start from the beginning goingfrom the in to the out of each computerthen when you reach the last computerthe out from that computer would thencome back to the original computer justyour standard In-N-Out line inputs ormicrophone inputs that you have on yoursound card these are not sufficient toto hook up one card to the other on theVST system link so if you go a littlefurther on the Steinberg connection herethis Ur 816c it also has on the back ofit what's called a word clock Connectionin this case it uses BNC cablestypically would be the best way toconnect everything in other words theout from your master computer go intothe end of your next computer and downthe line the word clock is designed tosent synchronized signals so everythingcan stay in sync in terms of things notbeing jittery the way the operation goesassuming you're using a connection likethis if we go back into qbase and go toStudio down to our studio setup and welook over on the left where it saysaudio system and here we would selectour card because my card doesn't haveany of these options when it says clockSource here it's gray out there's no wayfor me to change anything but if my cardwas like the one we just looked at I'dhave the option to decide if it's goingto be the master or the slave and You'want to set that kind of stuff updepending on what computer you're usingsometimes it may be in this controlpanel area just depends on what kind ofhardware you're using the bottom line iswhen you do this you want to have onecomputer pretty much running everythingand that would be considered the mastercomputer and any other computer orcomputers them receive their signalsfrom that Master computer and thosewould all be the slaves and you wouldset those individually on their soundcards the other thing you have toconsider is your audio buffer size if wego back to control panel if I look atthis option that says buffer size canhit the drop down and I can choose thesevarious sample rates on my system thelower the sample rate I go down here thequicker that things are going to respondbut many times you can start introducingclicks and pops when you're using thisVST system link latency starts to becomeaccommodation of all the differentcomputers combined so you kind of haveto work with this a little bit find theideal spot it's recommended to haveabout 12 milliseconds so if I look at my512 samples I'm around 15 milliseconds Ican just hold my mouse over these samplerates and spin it the different optionsand as I do I can see what themillisecond change is so I would findone that's close to 12 milliseconds inthis case 3 384 samples and I would lockmy card in at that point and I would dothat to every card on your sound card ifyou have anything set up on your digitaloutputs that affect timing all thatstuff needs to be turned off you have tolook at your specific sound card forthose kind of options but you don't wantanything else affecting timing thanwhat's set up right here and thatapplies to any tracks that are part ofyour digital connections you want tomake sure all those levels are set tozero panning is off basically everythinghas to be flat in terms of any otherHardware that you have leaving thatscreen go over to the project menu downto project setup if I look down thebottom here it says sample rate rightnow I'm at 48k all your sample rates onevery computer have to be the same sothe next thing you need to set up isyour audio buses you go up to yourstudio come down to your audioconnections you have tabs that sayinputs and outputs and again the conceptyou want to understand is if you'reusing these multiple computers andyou're trying to link them all up youwant them to have identical setups termsof their bus setup and anything elsethey need when they're communicating youlook at this input tab of course I havethings already set up for my particularsound card if I was setting up with thisnew sound card or I needed particularinputs or outputs I go to add bus I goto my list of all the different optionsI can pick here I can even change thecount number over here let's change thisfrom one to two and then if I say addbus along with my original configurationand now I have these two stereo inputbuses go over to the port side lookingat my sound card and pick the digitalinputs that I need and then I would goto the output Tab and do exactly thesame thing I'd say add a bus pick myconfigur ation and say add the bus comeover to the device Port take the outputsthat I want once I've created any ofthese things I can come up and create apreset for them in case it was anelaborate setup I could create thispreset once I do this on this computer Iwould go to computer 1 Two Three orwhatever else I have and do exactly thesame thing so then the next step is youwant to verify that one computer istalking to the next so you wouldbasically begin to just mix your tracksas usual then you would open up yourmixer go to whatever tracks that youwant to route to another computer forthat to do the work go to your mixerrouting options here this was computerone I would go to the outputs pick thedigital output that I've set up in thebus setup and then I would go tocomputer 2 and check the inputs and findthat same input and at that point oncomputer 2 I should see this activityhappening even though the information isbeing played on computer one so movingalong you have some other tests you haveto put together here you're going towant to go up to the transport menuclick on that and come down to where itsays project synchronization setup clickon that right now mine says time codeSource internal every computer you'regoing to want to switch this over to theVST system link then hit okay and thenback to your studio menu down to yourstudio setup make sure every computerVST system link option says active andat that point you can hit this self testand it will go through and check thatevery connection to every computer isworking right you'll get a number foreach computer and a name for eachcomputer and if everything shows upyou're good to go if it doesn't you haveto go back and double check yourconnections make sure you set upeverything right and then run this selftest and until you get everythingshowing that it's running correctlyafter that you're going to want to makesure the tempo on every computer andevery project is set to the same tempoyou're going to want to go back toStudio again Studio setup and make surethat the online option is activated atthat point when you hit the transportcontrol all of your computers shouldstart running together although you wantto think of a master computer as doingmost of your work you actually can startthe transport from any one of thecomputers the vstd system link actuallyworks in what they call peer-to-peer soevery computer can actually start orstop the project anytime you have aproject in qbase and you have some kindof VST instrument Andor midi tracksyou're able to go to that VST instrumentand/ or midi track set the input oroutput routing how you want the miditrack to go to the VST when you're usingthe VST system link if you go back up tothe studio studio setup you have anoption here that says midi inputs andoutputs you can set this anywhere fromzero all the way up to 16 for example ifI was to set this at three the inputsand then three for the outputs when Icome back to my project if I had a miditrack I could then send that out on avstd system link midi port and onanother computer I could set a VSTinstrument up to receive on that midiPort then in essence I could have themidi track from one computer running theVST instrument on another computer sosome examples of the vssc system link inaction let's say you have two computersand you're going to use computer one asa mixing computer and you're going tohand off some of the work on computer 2to handle effects and extra V Stinstruments this was computer 2 I wantedto send this to the computer one takethis track I go up to the output areaand I would find VST system link optionsdown here that we've set up from theprevious steps then I would come over tocomputer one for everything that Iwanted to bring over I'd create an audiotrack and then on that audio track I cango up to the input area and I would seethe bus that I'm sending over from thecomputer too and when I enact that whenI start the whole thing going with thevssd system link I would actually see alevel from the audio coming in on thistrack but it would actually be comingfrom the computer too the advantage tosomething like this you know when you'reusing your one computer the more tracksyou have with the more effects or VSTInstruments the more load that you puton your computer in real time when it'srunning but if computer 2 is handlingthe VST Instruments in the effects andyour computer one is only being used tochange the levels in the mixingsituation broken up the workload betweenthe two computers things to keep in mindif you're experiencing some kind of lagwhen you're trying to do this go up toyour sound card and if you have theoption for direct monitoring go aheadand check that the other thing is on theVST system link option this offsetsample area allows you to just changedifferent samples for the buffer sizeyou can experiment with putting indifferent numbers here and that couldadjust any kind of lag you mightexperience on your computer too youcould set up submixes say I make all ofthese tracks go to a submix in the groupand then I can do the same thing that Idid with the individual channels but Ican do them with a group by sending thegroup output the computer one to mixthem another option would be on yourcomputer one create a midi track thatyou recorded your information on butthen send that midi track to computer 2and maybe on computer 2 you have thishuge orchestral library is really taxingon your processor now your computer toois doing all the work processing thatorchestral library and computer onesimply playing back the midi tracksanother option is to set up all youreffects on your computer 2 carrying allthe processing load and then on yourcomputer one when you open up your trackyou'll be able to use one of the vstdsystems buses over in your send areawhich would allow you to turn on theeffect simply as a send and adjust youreffects but all the actual processing ofthe effect is done on computer 2 anotheroption if your computer 2 has a fasterhard drive you could set it up to recordyour tracks on your computer 2 but stillcontrolling them on computer one andthen one more option to think about ifyou have to do heavy work with video setup all your video work on the secondcomputer and do all your audio work oncomputer one again spreading out theprocessing and workload between the twocomputers so again for many users thevssd system link is probably a bit heavyfor any kind of day-to-day use but ifyou're in a studio environment or youhave to do heavy video processing maybeyou have large libraries and you'restruggling trying to keep everythingworking while you're composing andwriting and making your Productions thevsd system link could be the exactanswer you're looking for all right it'sgoing to wrap it up for today as alwaysif you haven't already be sure to grabyour copy of the digital audio manualcontent navigation guide from the linkbelow this video it's the fast F betterway to learn and review then you too canget started on your path to a better wayto learn all this stuff as we examinethe VST system link in cuvas we talkedabout its requirements the KVM switchbox we looked at activating the networksettings talked about audio clock andbuffer size talked about turning thesettings off on your original card howthe sample rates need to be the same howyou need to use digital audioconnections talked about routing thoseconnections talked about setting up thetransport sync activating the midi portsthen we just went through some basicexamples of how you can set up yourcomputer and why you would want to do itmaybe you have large sound librariestaxing effects or maybe you have a veryintensive use of video all of theseoptions could be addressed with a vssdsystem link and we will continue to movethrough all these different features andfunctions with qbase as always it'sgreat to have you guys here and I'll seeyou on the next[Music]video