Tuesday, November 11, 2025
Monday, November 10, 2025
Cubase 11 Sound Design
StepFilter might not be the most powerful filter plug‑in ever created, but its step‑based pattern sequencer opens up some very interesting creative possibilities.
Want to create your own signature sounds? Cubase makes sound design easy.
There’s something very satisfying about making music with sounds you’ve designed yourself, and Cubase provides plenty of options to explore on this front. It’s a big topic, and I’ll consider two different angles in successive workshops: this time, I’ll transform a live audio input source into something more ‘synthetic’; and next month I’ll look at ways you can create playable instruments from a simple, single sample. In both cases, I’ll provide audio examples to illustrate the text, and you’ll find this month’s below or at https://sosm.ag/cubase-1221 with full captions.
Before we start, check your audio buffer size (in the Studio menu, select the Studio Setup panel and, via the Audio System section, open your audio interface’s Control Panel). This needs to be set low enough that real‑time monitoring through a plug‑in chain feels responsive, but not so low as to cause clicks and pops. Second, engage the Monitor button for the audio track you’ll use for your audio input. You may need to disable direct monitoring on your audio interface too, so that you are monitoring only the audio being processed in Cubase.
Sustain
You can process any live audio input through a Cubase plug‑in chain, but let’s start with something simple: transforming some sustained DI electric guitar chords into something that sounds more like a rhythmic synth. Sonically, an unprocessed guitar DI signal can sound pretty uninspiring. One problem may be a lack of sustain, in which case a useful first processing stage might be compression. In my example, I used (or rather abused!) Cubase’s Tube Compressor. With a fast attack, slow release and high ratio, the compressor quickly reduces the initial transients in the audio input while the slow release makes the sustained portion of the sound appear louder. As our aim is something synth‑like, we can think of this compressed DI guitar as our synth’s ‘oscillator’.
StepFilter & MidiGate Rhythm
Some filtering might be a good next step and StepFilter is a good starting point. This plug‑in offers the usual cutoff and resonance options but the main attraction is its step‑based pattern control of these parameters — this makes it super‑easy to add filter movement in real‑time. As shown in the screenshot, I programmed a cutoff pattern that includes some steps with zero values, essentially closing the filter. This chops the sustained guitar chords to create a rhythmic feel and adjusting the Glide control determines the strength of that rhythmic effect.
Many synth filters and filter plug‑ins include a drive control to spice things up a bit, and while StepFilter doesn’t you can insert one of Cubase’s distortion plug‑ins somewhere in your chain. I plumped for Distortion, and inserted it before StepFilter. With suitably high Boost and intermediate Feedback settings, this can generate a nice ‘growl’, without sounding too much like a distorted guitar amp. For Pro and Artist users, Distroyer could provide similar results while offering more options.
MidiGate lets you superimpose complex rhythmic patterns upon your live audio signal.A more adventurous option for creating a rhythmic feel is to use MidiGate. Essentially, this is a noise gate that’s keyed by MIDI notes, rather than by the audio signal exceeding a threshold and it thus requires some configuration — but it’s well worth it! First, set StepFilter’s Cutoff and Resonance patterns to provide a continuous sweep (rather than rhythmic pattern) for the filter. Then insert MidiGate just before StepFilter. To trigger the gate you must create a MIDI track and route it’s MIDI note data to MidiGate’s MIDI input. You can then use the MIDI notes on this track to open and close the gate rhythmically. The notes can be from MIDI loops, recorded parts or a live input, but if you already have a MIDI drum track or bass track in your production, elements copied from these (try the hi‑hat or kick/snare) will often work particularly well, instantly locking the rhythm of your designed sound to other elements in the production.
The screenshot shows my MidiGate settings, which force the gate to open and close quickly. Note that because the three lower controls are all set to zero, the pitch of the MIDI note has no influence on the gate’s attack/release time and the note velocity doesn’t influence the volume of the sound passing through. But these controls are definitely worth experimenting with at some point.
Retrologue 2 Side-chain
Although StepFilter can be very effective, Pro and Artist users have a more powerful option still: Retrologue 2’s filter. Retrologue 2’s side‑chain input can receive audio from another track, and this could be a ‘live’ audio input if you wish. This audio is passed through Retrologue’s filter and effects sections and if you disable all of its oscillators, you’ll hear only this Retrologue‑processed audio.
There are a couple of ways to route audio from your ‘live input’ audio track to Retrologue’s side‑chain. In this case, having enabled Retrologue’s side‑chain, an Input level control appeared in Retrologue’s Oscillator Mix panel. I then routed my audio track’s output directly to Retrologue’s side‑chain using the MixConsole’s Routing panel. This means my live audio input is first processed by the audio track’s plug‑ins (for example, my instance of Tube Compressor) before being sent to Retrologue.
My audio input track has been routed (top left of the screen) directly to Retrologue’s side‑chain input, so that I can apply the synth’s filter and effects processing to the sound.
Retrologue’s filter has plenty to offer: there are over 20 filter shapes, a filter envelope and a choice of distortion types. However, as with MidiGate, for Retrologue’s audio engine to be ‘active’ it must be triggered by incoming MIDI notes — even if all the synth’s oscillators are disabled. Your Retrologue track therefore needs a MIDI clip containing some MIDI note data. The upside of this requirement is that the MIDI note data can serve several functions...
First, the timing and lengths of the notes can be used to impose a rhythmic feel upon your live audio input; a single long note will allow you to hear your audio exactly as you play it, while a series of shorter notes will impart their timing on the performance. Second, some fun can be had with the pitch and velocity of your MIDI notes, which can influence both the filter’s Key Follow control and the velocity sensitivity of the filter and amp envelopes. The audio examples include a number of different MIDI note configurations that illustrate just some of the possibilities, from letting your audio dictate the dynamics (using long MIDI notes), through syncopated staccato patterns (short MIDI notes) and to pseudo‑reversed notes (using a slow attack time in the Amplifier ADSR), but you can get very creative with this.
If enabled, Retrologue’s Arpeggiator features provide yet more rhythmic and modulation options. In the final screenshot, the Vel(ocity) lane is being used to create a rhythmic pattern and control the volume of each step, while I’ve set the first two Controller lanes to change the filter’s Cutoff and Resonance values. The tempo of the pattern (and, therefore, the speed at which your audio is modulated) is locked to your host tempo but can be adjusted with the Tempo Scale setting.
Once your audio has been routed into Retrologue 2, you can exploit the Arp page options to inject some rhythm and movement into your sound.
More Processing
As with the sound engines built into most virtual synths, the processing options don’t stop at the filter; you can deploy a whole array of ambience, modulation and other effects to further enhance your sound. Cubase’s Stereo Delay, available in Elements, is a good starting point but the less conventional Multitap Delay (Pro and Artist) and ModMachine delay (Pro only) both offer something a little less conventional and they’re well worth experimenting with. When using Retrologue 2’s filter, the full suite of Retrologue’s effects panel is available including the suitably experimental Resonator section. I’ve included a number of examples of what’s possible in terms of ‘post‑filter’ processing in the audio examples.
Having built a processing signal‑chain for transforming your live audio input, make sure you save the configuration using either the Track or Insert rack preset systems (whichever works best for your particular configuration); when you want to try it with your didgeridoo as opposed to that DI’ed electric guitar, you’ll be ready to go in a flash.
Of course, you might also like to build a fully playable instrument or two from just a sample of that didgeridoo, and if you check back next month I’ll offer you some more ideas.
Saturday, November 8, 2025
Friday, November 7, 2025
Creative Sound Design In Cubase: Part 2
Any sample can be dragged and dropped into the Sampler Control panel to create a new Sampler Track.
From plucks to pads, Cubase’s Sampler Track makes it easy to design your own sounds.
In SOS December 2021’s workshop, we considered how you can combine some of Cubase’s stock plug‑ins to apply some creative sound design to a ‘live’ audio source. In this second instalment focused on designing your own sounds, we will take a different approach: building new ‘playable’ sounds from a single sample. To give our discussion a focus, I’ll take a couple of sound‑design classics — a short (non‑sustained) lead sound and a sustained pad‑style sound — and use the Sampler Track, which is available to all Pro, Artist and Elements users, to create them. You can audition the sounds in progress, courtesy of the audio examples available on the SOS website (or download the ZIP file below).
cubase_workshop_0122_audio.zip
While the Sampler Track may not be as powerful or sophisticated as, say, HALion or Kontakt, it certainly has enough options to make DIY sound design interesting. Importantly, it’s also very easy to use, because fundamental to the Sampler Track’s approach is that you work with a single sample. You can put almost any sample to good use for sound design but, for this demonstration, I recorded a single sustained note from an electric guitar into my project, and used this as the starting point. Having selected a sample such as this, a quick drag and drop into the Sampler Control panel (in the Project window’s Lower Zone) will add a Sampler Track to your project. Then you’re ready to get tweaking.
Short & Sweet
Starting with all settings at their default values (assume I’ve left them that way if I don’t mention a specific setting below), the sensible first step is to start in the Sampler Control’s waveform display, and define the portion of the sample you wish to use. This provides Set Sample Start and Set Sample End locators (both with fade options if required) that you can drag into position. A good starting point is to leave the Start locator at the beginning of the sample and adjust the End locator to get something close to the length of the sound you’re trying to create. Usefully, if you then hover the mouse between the two locators, a grey bar will appear that connects them, and you can then slide both along the timeline, preserving the selected length while auditioning other sections of the sample. In this case, I ended up with a selection just under a second long but avoiding the very start (where there was some unwanted pick noise), with no fade‑in and a short fade‑out.
The next sensible step involves making decisions about two settings: Loop Mode and Playback Mode. As the aim was a short sound here, I used the Toolbar to select the ‘No Loop’ Loop Mode, in which the sample simply plays once whenever it is triggered. Second, in the Playback Mode (blue) sub‑panel, you must choose between Normal and AudioWarp modes; the other mode, Slice, is designed for working with drum loops. Normal mode is old‑school sampling, whereby playback of the sample at different pitches is achieved by speeding up/slowing down the playback speed. Steinberg have included some cool choices, so don’t dismiss this mode until you’ve tried it, but in this case I went with AudioWarp mode, in which the Sampler Track engine does some time‑stretching and formant preservation as well as pitch‑shifting when playing back the original sample across the MIDI note range.
Next, it’s a good idea to finesse the amplitude of the sample’s playback using the Amp panel. If you click on the Mod (modulation) switch in the green panel header, the waveform display changes to show a fully editable amplitude envelope. In this case, all I’ve done is create a smoother volume decay over a short time period and set the Sustain node to zero (so there is no sustain volume if a MIDI note is held). Top left of the Amp Mod panel, I’ve selected One Shot Mode (the amplitude curve will not cycle when a MIDI note is held longer than the defined amplitude curve) and Velocity to 100 percent, so that the amplitude modulation is very sensitive to incoming MIDI note velocity.
The filter modulation envelope was used to add a little tonal character to our lead sound.
As you can hear in the audio examples, with the addition of just a little reverb and delay this is already a perfectly playable lead/melody sound. However, our next stop is the Filter panel, with which we can modify the tonal character of the underlying sample. I’ve selected the Classic filter type and a 12dB low‑pass filter, with the Cutoff centred around 160Hz and a high Resonance value (70 percent). Via the Filter’s mod panel, I’ve then created an envelope to modulate the Cutoff value. The AMT slider (far left) can be used to control how strongly the modulation operates, while the Velocity setting (top left) is set to 75 percent and this allows you to also control the strength of the filter modulation via your MIDI performance.
The final sub‑panel, Pitch, offers similar modulation options for the note pitch. You can get ‘experimental’ here but for our playable lead sound I simply added a very small, rapid, pitch ‘wobble’ over the attack portion of the sound and, again, I added some MIDI velocity sensitivity to this modulation. The overall effect is modest, but it just adds a little extra character.
As is hopefully demonstrated in the audio examples, we now have a very playable DIY lead sound, created in just a few minutes from one of the most boring source samples you might imagine. And if you then start adding in some further effects — reverb, delay, distortion, modulation, etc — you can easily up the ear‑candy levels even further.
Extra Padding
If designing a pad sound from our source sample, we can follow almost exactly the same workflow. The key difference, and the trickiest bit, is creating a section within the sample for looping when a note is held for an extended time. In the main Toolbar, I’ve enabled the Snap To Zero Crossing button and selected the ‘Continuous’ Loop Mode. The latter adds left and right loop locators (in green) to the main waveform display, while the former ensures that when you position these, they snap to points least likely to result in audio glitching.
The trick is to define a loop range that cycles as smoothly as possible. Again, you can do the ‘hover and drag’ manoeuvre to move both locators simultaneously while auditioning. You can also add a fade‑in/fade‑out to help smooth things out and there are alternative Loop Modes to explore. There can be quite a bit of back‑and‑forth experimentation required here and getting a perfectly smooth result may simply not be possible with some source samples.
A composite image showing the loop region, amp envelope (with slow attack) and filter envelope (with LFO modulation) used for our pad‑style sound.In our example, I ended up with a loop range of just over a second, which starts just over a second into my sample. When sustaining a note longer than one second, you could hear the ‘looping’ kick in but, in this particular case, I thought it actually added to the sound by creating a gentle pulse effect.
In the Playback Mode (blue) panel, I opted for Normal mode, since when notes were sustained I felt AudioWarp produced some undesirable artefacts. Normal mode also meant that the ‘pulsing’ created by my loop region changed speed with the pitch of the triggering note, and I felt that this added nice some extra movement to the sound rather than being a problem.
As shown in the screenshot, I created extended Amp and Filter envelopes, providing both a gentle fade‑in and a gradual tonal change as a note was held (adding a sense of movement). I also made use of the Sampler Track’s other modulation option: the LFOs. The two independent LFOs can be used to modulate pitch, filter cutoff, volume and pan. You get a choice of LFO waveforms, the option to change the waveform shape, add Mod Wheel control, and sync the LFO speed to your project tempo. In this case, I simply used LFO1 to gently modulate the filter cutoff, adding a further tonal ‘pulse’ to each sustained note. Job done!
Lock/Replace
Once you’ve been through the Sampler Control workflow a few times, DIY sound design is an accessible process. I’ll leave a detailed discussion of all the controls and settings for another time but, as a final pointer, one is worth noting: the Toolbar’s Lock Parameter Settings button (padlock icon). As the name suggests, if you engage this, all the Sampler Control settings for the current Sampler Track get locked, helping avoid accidental changes to your carefully crafted sound.
A very useful exception to this is that you can still change the underlying sample. So if you’ve created settings for a lead sound (for example) and want to explore how they might work when applied to a different sample, simply drag and drop a new sample in and see what happens. I’ve included some audio examples of this process so you can hear how this might work. It’s a easy way to create new sounds and, once you find something that’s interesting, you can always unlock the settings and fine‑tune to taste.
Thursday, November 6, 2025
Wednesday, November 5, 2025
Cubase’s Input Transformer Explained
Cubase Pro’s Input Transformer; somewhat intimidating but capable of some very useful tricks.
The Input Transformer can do all sorts of useful things to incoming MIDI signals.
Most Cubase users will know of the Logical Editor, which is an amazingly powerful tool for transforming MIDI parts you’ve already recorded, but the Pro edition of Cubase also includes the Input Transformer. This is a more streamlined tool that operates in real time on incoming MIDI data and it’s capable of performing some very useful tricks. In this article, I’ll walk you through some simple examples that demonstrate the possibilities.
DIY Switch Builder
Many sample libraries have the ability to keyswitch between different sounds (for example, string section performance articulations). But for those that don’t, you can turn to the Input Transformer. The main screenshot shows an example which switches between different sounds in the first three channels of an instance of HALion Sonic SE (HSSE). By default, these sounds respond to MIDI channels 1, 2 and 3, respectively. I’ve constrained the MIDI note range to C1‑G8 for each sound, so as to free up the MIDI notes below C1 for use as DIY keyswitches. Also note the instance of the MIDI Monitor plug‑in that I’ve placed in the track’s MIDI Insert panel; this lets you see, as you experiment, exactly what MIDI data is reaching HSSE.
To access the Input Transformer click on the ‘squiggly arrow’ button in the top‑most Inspector panel, and you’ll see three options: Off, Global and Local. Global means the Input Transformer actions you create will apply to the incoming data on all the project’s MIDI and Instrument tracks. With Local, selected here, only the current track’s MIDI input will be affected. The Input Transformer window looks similar to the Logical Editor: in an upper Filter Conditions panel you specify which MIDI events you want to trigger an action; and, beneath, an Action List panel specifies what actions will be performed when those MIDI events are detected. The four Module tabs, each activated by a small ‘power’ button, allow you to configure up to four independent Input Transformer setups, all of which operate on the same input signal.
Assuming your external MIDI keyboard is set to transmit on MIDI channel 1, the instrument in the HSSE’s first slot will be the default sound. In the main screenshot, though, you can see how I’ve set up Module 1 so that when you press a keyswitch the incoming notes are assigned to MIDI channel 2 — so HSSE’s second instrument plays instead. In the upper Filter Conditions panel, the Input Transformer is instructed to look for the MIDI note D0 (the Last Event is Equal to note 26/D0) and to understand that the filter condition is still being satisfied while the ‘Note is playing’ (ie. until you release the note). The lower Action List panel is configured so that when the Filter Conditions are met (ie. you’re holding down note D0) the incoming data’s MIDI channel is changed to 2. Thus, any MIDI notes that arrive while D0 is being held down are assigned to MIDI channel 2. So in this example your keyboard’s D0 becomes a non‑latching keyswitch that accesses the Synth Pizzicatos (HSSE slots), but switches back to the default Ensemble Strings patch in the first slot upon release.
The Module 2 settings are identical, except that MIDI note E0 is the keyswitch, and it reassigns notes to channel 3. You could set up Modules 3 and 4 similarly so this approach offers you the ability to switch between up to five different instruments or articulations, including the default one.
Using MIDI velocity to control the MIDI channel provides an alternative approach to DIY sound switching.
Hard Choices
Some virtual instruments also offer velocity‑based sound switching, whereby different MIDI note velocities trigger different sounds, and your DIY keyswitch can achieve the same thing for instruments that lack this feature — you just need to make some small tweaks to the Input Transformer’s Filter Conditions section, and the second screen shows what’s required. As before, the default sound is on channel 1. The second screenshot shows what’s required and, again, a single condition is specified within the Filter Conditions panel. This time, it looks to see if the incoming MIDI note velocity is larger than 64 (you can set this to whatever velocity value you prefer). If this condition is met, then the Action List commands are executed. So, when a MIDI note arrives with a velocity greater than 64, the MIDI channel is switched to channel 2 before the data is passed on to the virtual instrument.
As seen in the image, Module 2 is also active. The entries in this module are identical to Module 1, but the threshold velocity is set to 100 and the MIDI channel set to channel 3. The combined result of both modules is a three‑way, velocity‑based, switching between MIDI channels 1 (velocity 0‑64), 2 (velocity 65‑100) and 3 (velocity 101‑127). It’s very simple, but it’s effective.
Generic Controller
Of course, the Input Transformer can be used with more than just MIDI notes, velocities, or channel numbers — it can also be used to convert any MIDI data into anything else. Another simple example that demonstrates this pretty well is identifying a specific MIDI CC number and changing it to a different CC number or, if you prefer, into a different sort of continuous MIDI data entirely.
One such transformation might be to turn the Mod Wheel data (MIDI CC1) into Aftertouch data (in this case, strictly speaking, it will be Channel Pressure; the same Aftertouch value will be sent to all notes). This could be useful if you’re trying to get the most from a virtual instrument sound that responds to Aftertouch, but don’t have a keyboard that offers Aftertouch, or if its Aftertouch capability is less than smooth (as, in my experience, is sometimes the case with compact MIDI keyboards of the sort you might use when travelling). Provided that the keyboard offers some sort of CC data control — a Mod Wheel is the most likely offering, even on small keyboards — then the Input Transformer can come to the rescue.
The Input Transformer can also be used to manipulate controller‑style MIDI data in various ways.
The final screenshot, above, shows the Input Transformer settings that are required to achieve this. Hopefully you can see that the Filter Conditions panel now contains two conditions, along with an ‘And’ entry in the final ‘bool’ column. The conditions are set so that incoming MIDI is identified for transformation if it is, first, a controller message and, second, its CC number is 1 (by default, the Mod Wheel transmits as MIDI CC1). Only if both of these conditions are met will the Action List transform the CC1 data into Aftertouch data before then transmitting the event to the virtual instrument. Obviously, with some slight tweaks to the Action List panel, you could target a different parameter (for example, another CC number) with your Mod Wheel CC1 data.
Input Transformer For Dummies?
A couple of points are worth making to bring this gentle introduction to the Input Transformer to a close. First, once you’ve designed an Input Transformer configuration, it’s worth saving it as a preset (to add to those already supplied by Steinberg), so you can recall it later.
Second, try not to be put off by the rather opaque nature of some of the Input Transformer’s settings. In particular, the meaning of Value 1, Value 2 and Value 3, seen in the column pop‑up menus, can leave you scratching your head. These refer to different parameters depending on whether you’re targeting MIDI notes, CC numbers or something else. For instance, in our final example, in the second line of the Filter Conditions panel, I had to select Value 1 in the first column’s pop‑up menu. There is no ‘MIDI Controller Number’ entry in that menu, but that’s what Value 1 represents when the ‘Type is’ is set to Controller in the first line.
This sort of thing can be difficult for some people to get their head around, and is perhaps the thing that new Input Transformer or Logical Editor users find most confusing. While the Cubase Pro Operational Manual PDF has some helpful information, I keep hoping that, one day, a Logical Editor guru at Steinberg will fully document the various options! This would undoubtedly enable more users to benefit from the vast potential of the Logical Editor and Input Transformer.