Thursday, March 12, 2026
Wednesday, March 11, 2026
Cubase 13: HALion Sonic’s Spectral Synth
X‑Stream’s spectral engine may offer an unconventional control set but it is very easy to experiment with. The settings shown here reflect the finished DIY example discussed within the main text.
Create a complete musical cue from just a single sample with HALion Sonic’s spectral synth engine.
Steinberg recently improved the spectral synth engine in their HALion 7 soft sampler, and all Cubase users can get a taste of it through X‑Stream, a new, free‑to‑download (using Steinberg’s Download Assistant) HALion Sonic instrument. While X‑Stream is monophonic only, it is bound to appeal to those with a liking for ambient soundscapes and textures. It offers plenty of DIY sound‑design possibilities, including the ability to drop your own samples into the engine. To explore just what this makes possible, I decided to don my experimental media composer hat, and see how close X‑Stream could get me to composing a complete musical cue using just a single sample.
Blank & Drop
Once you’ve managed to stop playing with X‑Stream’s excellent collection of presets (it might take a while), it’s a good idea to wipe the slate clean by loading in the Init X‑Stream Layer, which is easy to find if you pick Layers as the Preset Type in HS’s MediaBay panel. This includes a default sample but, usefully, it resets the synth engine parameters to a generic starting point. With the engine thus ‘blanked’, you can drag and drop (from the Project window or your file browser) your sample of choice directly into X‑Stream’s spectral display panel. Almost any sample can be a contender, but I deliberately started with something very simple: a single note played on a synth. I’ll come back to some more colourful sample choices later. By the way, you can hear some audio examples on the SOS website, at https://sosm.ag/cubase-1024.
Need For Speed
It’s worth noting that if you click on the Spectral panel header, you toggle between compact and expanded control displays. The latter provides access to the full control set, including the full pitch, spectral filter, standard filter and amplitude envelope controls. Other panels can also be expanded into focus in the same way. I couldn’t hope to cover all of X‑Stream’s many controls here, though, so I’ll focus on some highlights that will provide a solid base for experimentation.
In its expanded view, the Spectral panel offers five sub‑pages accessed via the top‑left buttons. These include the amp envelope shown here, with suitably long attack and decay times.
The Speed control sets the speed at which the spectral engine scans across the underlying sample to create sound (100 percent is the same playback speed as the original). Changing the speed doesn’t change the pitch, but X‑Stream’s underlying time‑ and pitch‑stretching algorithms are very impressive, and it’s remarkable just how extreme you can get with the Speed control (0‑800 range) while still hearing totally usable sounds. I’m attempting to create a textural sound here, and a slower Speed setting (50 percent) seems a suitable choice when seeking longer notes.
For sustained sounds, you can define a loop region within the spectral display (just drag the left/right markers), and here I’ve set the Loop Mode to Alternate. This means the playback head moves forwards until it reaches the right loop marker and then reverses direction back to the left marker. This loop cycle is repeated as long as the note is held. As my sample contains a naturally fading sound, the slow cycling back and forth through a portion of it creates a smooth rise and fall in level that works pretty well for a sustained textural soundscape.
The Spread option, once activated, shifts the playback position between the left/right channels of your sample (it works well with mono or multi‑channel samples too), and you see two playhead cursors offset from one another when you play a note. This delivers a nice spatial enhancement even when relatively low values are used.
A Blur Of Sound
Blur Time and Blur Depth create something similar to a modulation‑based effect, such as chorus. Increasing the Blur Time gradually adds a richer quality to the sound that is very much dependent on the nature of the original sample. Blur Depth can exaggerate this, with low values remaining fairly musical and higher values moving you towards something a little more unsettling.
According to X‑Stream’s PDF manual, the Purity and Inharmonicity parameters adjust the ‘spectral purity’ of the sound. No, I’m not sure I know what that actually means either! But a quick sweep of the knobs soon gives you a sense of what’s possible. Purity seems to change the tonal character of the sound, with negative values seeming brighter and more harmonically complex, while strongly positive values seem both darker and less complex. Inharmonicity also changes the harmonic complexity, and extreme positive or negative values induce something similar to a detuning effect.
Well Stacked
While X‑Stream is monophonic, the Stack feature (on the right of the Spectral panel) provides a way to add a chord‑like element to your sound. Once activated, you can create a total of five layers from your core sound, with control over the relative level and pitch of each layer. Layer pitch can be specified in semitone steps within a ±36 range. You can, therefore, build a chord by specifying the required note intervals in different layers and then triggering that chord from a single note on your MIDI keyboard. And by automating either the pitch or the level of your layers you can change the voicing of the created chord.
X‑Stream offers a great selection of modulation options including the excellent step modulator, which I used to create a pulsing effect within the example sound design.I’ve done that in my examples — see the main screenshot, in which the key settings for my final patch are shown — using layers 4 and 5. Relative to the root note (pitch = 0), these layers have pitches set to +16 (a major third, one octave above the root) and +15 (a minor third, one octave above the root). By automating the level values for these two layers, you can move (or, interestingly, morph) between a more major sounding harmony to a more minor one — I did this in my example by assigning them both to the mod wheel, mapped in opposite directions, so that as one increases, the other decreases.
Mojo Filters & Mod Magic
I’ve focused on some of the more unconventional parameter options offered by X‑Stream’s spectral synth engine, but it does, of course, offer a suite of more conventional sound‑shaping tools. These include a well‑specified filter (indeed, two filters, as there’s also a spectral filter with its own envelope and presets), a multiband EQ module, and both reverb and delay modules. All can be put to good use in your DIY sound design. There’s also an amp module, and if it’s sustained soundscape/ambient sounds you are after then this is most certainly worth a visit, even if only to add some suitably slow attack and decay elements to the amplitude envelope.
As noted above, X‑Stream’s parameters can all be automated in your DAW and/or assigned for hands‑on control using a connected hardware control surface. The engine also includes two standard LFOs, an X/Y LFO and a step modulator — these can all be used to automate parameters. Right‑clicking on any X‑Stream parameter pops open a suitable dialogue box to make these assignments.
Alternatively, you can open the Matrix panel to make and/or adjust the automation settings. This provides up to 24 slots, with a huge selection of source and destination options. I used both LFOs to provide long tempo‑based sweeps on the resonance and cutoff of the main filter. The step modulator was also used to modulate the drive control within the filter. The step modulation pattern I used creates a pulse‑like effect within the sound, and I assigned a Quick Control to adjust the level of the step modulator, allowing me to blend the pulse effect in and out as required.
X‑Stream’s modulation matrix provides plenty of options for both modulation sources and destinations.
Finally for this example, as well as the stack layer automation that I mentioned earlier, I assigned the level controls of layers 2 and 3 to Cubase’s Quick Controls, allowing me to adjust the ‑24 (two octaves below) and +19 (an octave plus a fifth above) layers’ levels, to blend in these layers to change the tonal character of the overall sound in real time.
Do check out the audio examples, which illustrate just how I developed this sound from the original sample into a fully formed X‑Stream preset. I found it an interesting enough result that it prompted me to try writing a full soundscape cue (albeit a short one) using just this one sound — a totally arbitrary target, but you can hear the result in one of the examples!
One More Drop
The whole sound‑design process used here took me rather longer to explain in words than it did to actually perform. X‑Stream’s unconventional control set is, in practice, very easy to experiment with, not least because you can drag and drop your own sample into the engine. To encourage your own explorations, the last audio example includes some randomly selected samples dropped into X‑Stream and quickly tweaked based on a similar basic approach as described above. The results can be somewhat weird and unpredictable, but if you just keep dropping samples in then eventually something magical will happen... and off you’ll go exploring a new musical idea.
Tuesday, March 10, 2026
Monday, March 9, 2026
Cubase 13: The VST Plug‑in Manager
The VST Plug‑in Manager, with its multi‑panel layout, lets you create custom collections of both VST Effects and VST Instruments to streamline your workflow within Cubase.
Organise your plug‑in folder with VST Plug‑in Manager.
With so many bundles, demos and tempting offers around, many of us probably have more plug‑ins than is really manageable when we go to choose one in the middle of a busy mixing session; it’s all too easy to get lost among the possibilities. Thankfully, though, Cubase makes it easy to get your plug‑in folder under control, thanks to its VST Plug‑in Manager. It offers plenty of options to customise which plug‑ins are visible and how they’re arranged when you open a plug‑in selection panel, and a little time spent here can repay itself many times over when your projects are in full swing.
Call The Manager
When you first launch it, Cubase scans your computer and creates two default plug‑in lists (Steinberg call these lists ‘collections’): one for VST Effects and another for VST Instruments. It also does a quick scan every time it is subsequently launched, so it can detect any new plug‑ins you’ve installed. By default, these collections are what’s shown to you whenever you go to select a plug‑in effect or instrument.
The Studio menu (or a key command) access the VST Plug‑in Manager, in which you can view the contents of these two default collections. In its left window, you can view three different categories of plug‑in that, between them, should include all of the plug‑ins that are installed. These are: VST Effects, VST Instruments and the Blocklist. The latter, which may well be empty, is simply a list of plug‑ins that Cubase has scanned, but thinks might have compatibility issues — if you can’t find one you’ve installed it’s worth checking here; you can force a plug‑in off the Blocklist if you are feeling brave, but I’d probably test that in a fresh project just in case! If you select an individual plug‑in in any of these three panels, the bottom‑left panel shows further useful information about it, including where on your machine it is installed.
The panel on the right shows the plug‑ins in the current ‘collection’, depending upon which tab (VST Effects or VST Instruments) is selected in the left‑side panel. These will, at first, be the Default collections (this name appears in the tab at the top of the panel). But you can move, remove, or add plug‑ins to the current collection within this panel, including reordering (almost) any folder structure. For the default collections, via the top‑right drop‑down menu, you can choose to show the plug‑ins organised by Category (eg. EQ, Dynamics etc.) or Vendor; this choice is reflected in how the plug‑ins are shown when you’re making selections in your Cubase project.
List Of Lists
The VST Plug‑in Manger also lets you create your own custom collections, and there are a number of reasons why these might prove advantageous compared with the catch‑all ‘default’ list. For example, you can compile a ‘favourites’ list — a compact selection of your current go‑to plug‑ins that make it easy to find the right effect or instrument — or to hide expired demos, duplicate versions of plug‑ins or any plug‑ins installed within a bundle to which you don’t actually have a licence.
The drop‑down menu located top right lets you create new plug‑in collections and instantly switch between any of the existing collections.
Alternatively, it could be useful to create collections with only the plug‑ins available to any collaborators you work with — a collection containing only Cubase Elements’ stock plug‑ins, for example, the more comprehensive Cubase Pro options, or a specific third‑party developer’s bundle. Another possibility is more streamlined collections designed for specific tasks, such as composing, tracking, mixing or mastering. In each case, you can customise what’s visible so that you don’t get bogged down with certain plug‑ins or plug‑in formats that you don’t currently use or need to see (for example, mono versions, VST2 versions or older trial plug‑ins).
Two points are worth emphasising. First, adding or removing a plug‑in from a particular collection doesn’t change its actual installation status on your computer, just its visibility in Cubase’s various plug‑in selection panels. Second, whether in the default collections or new custom collections, your VST Effects and VST Instruments form separate lists.
New From Old
Creating a new collection is easy. Select the VST Effects or VST Instruments tab in the VST Plug‑in Manager window, then simply choose one of the New Collection options from the drop‑down menu located top‑right. Any of the three options (Empty, Add All Plug‑ins or Copy Current Collection) can be used, but if you’re currently using the Default collection, the last one is probably the most sensible choice, as it may take less time to move or remove plug‑ins from an existing collection than to start from scratch. Collections can be named, edited or deleted, and allow you to create custom folder structures that can be populated with your chosen plug‑ins.
Let’s imagine we’re creating a ‘favourites’ VST effects collection. First, create a New Collection from the menu using the Copy Current Collection option. This will prompt us to give our collection a suitable title (you can change it later). Once done, the new collection will become the active collection; its name will appear at the top of the VST Plug‑in Manager’s right‑hand panel and the plug‑ins within it will be what we see if, for example, we try to add a plug‑in by clicking on a channel’s insert slot.
With its custom folder structure and just a few ‘go‑to’ plug‑ins within each category, a ‘favourites’ VST Effects plug‑in collection lets you quickly pick what you need and get on with your mix.By default, our new ‘favourites’ VST Effects collection will contain folders based on Vendor. I prefer to organise my go‑to plug‑in options by type, though, so a useful second step is simply to create a new folder (just click on the New Folder button located top right), name this folder ‘Vendors’, and drag and drop all the individual Vendor folders into this one. This folder will serve as a useful catch‑all category in any collection; while it hides them in a subfolder, if your current ‘favourite’ selections don’t offer you quite what you need for a specific task then you can still easily seek something out here.
At the top level of this folder structure, alongside the Vendors folder, you can now use the New Folder button as many times as required to create your own custom list of categories. For example, in my own VST Effects ‘favourites’ collection for mixing duties, I’ve got folders such as EQ, compression, limiting, saturation, amp modelling, pitch‑correction, creative, vocals, drums, bass, reverb, delay and tools.
Finally, you can find those favourite plug‑in choices and then drag and drop them into their appropriate place in the new custom folder structure. This drag and drop can be done in two ways. First, you can drag them from the catch‑all folder you created (the Vendors folder in our example) or, second, if you want a particular plug‑in to appear in multiple folders (for example, a channel strip plug‑in might appear in a dedicated channel strip folder and also within an EQ folder), then you can simply find it within the main left‑side panel and drag and drop it from there as many times as needed.
In my case, my selection of VST Effects favourites might only consist of three or four go‑to plug‑ins in each category. When subsequently adding plug‑ins to my project, this makes finding those go‑to choices in the plug‑in selection panels much faster. Creating a favourites collection for VST Instruments can be done in exactly the same fashion. And, of course, you can easily edit/update any collection as your tastes change or new plug‑ins replace older favourites.
Switch & Find
Custom plug‑in collections exist globally on your host system so, once created, they can be accessed in any Cubase project. A further neat element of these custom plug‑in collections is that you can quickly switch between them: just visit the VST Plug‑in Manager, select either the VST Effects or VST Instruments tab, drop down the menu from the top left and you can then choose the required collection. The change is applied instantly so, next time you go to select a new plug‑in instance within your current project, you will see your plug‑in choices as organised in the currently selected collection.
Finally, note that changing the collection doesn’t influence any plug‑ins already inserted into your project — a plug‑in that isn’t included in the current collection won’t suddenly disappear from your project; you simply won’t be able to ‘see’ it in the plug‑in selector panel to insert a new instance.
Pick & Mix
As soon as your plug‑in collection starts to expand beyond the stock Cubase offerings, the workflow advantages of creating custom collections via the VST Plug‑in Manager is an absolute no‑brainer. So don’t let your plug‑in addiction slow you down!
Saturday, March 7, 2026
Friday, March 6, 2026
Cubase 14: Clean Guitar Tones With VST Amp Rack
By John Walden
VST Amp Rack can get you a nice clean(ish) Fender sound but, unfortunately, matching SRV’s playing style is entirely up to you!
Some software amp sims can struggle with clean guitar tones — is Cubase’s stock VST Amp Rack up to the challenge?
The plug‑in marketplace is awash with more guitar‑rig simulations than I care to count, but might you already have what you need in your DAW? Cubase’s stock VST Amp Rack (included in Cubase Pro, Artist and Elements) is not only easy to use, but also very capable. To demonstrate this, I thought it would be fun to try and create something inspired by a couple of classic clean (well, clean‑ish) guitar tones. So, with a few suitable audio examples to accompany us along the way (available on the SOS website: https://sosm.ag/cubase-0225), let’s get started.
Jimi Meets Stevie Meets John
Inspired by Jimi Hendrix (think ‘Little Wing’), and a source of inspiration for countless others not least John Mayer, it doesn’t get any more classic than the glassy cleans of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s ‘Lenny’. In a hardware world, the most obvious choice would be a Strat‑style guitar into a Fender amp — unless you have a superstar budget, in which case perhaps a Dumble amp. In practice, though, plenty of combinations can work, and the key element is finding the sweet spot for the amp’s input gain. This needs to be set just high enough that the dynamics of the playing can control: the sound is super‑clean when played softly, but becomes lightly overdriven when the playing is harder, as the valves start to generate more harmonics.
So, let’s assume you have a suitable guitar that’s equipped with single‑coil pickups. Can VST Amp Rack get us in the right ballpark? It certainly offers a number of Fender‑inspired amp models. The other obvious element of SRV’s ‘Lenny’ sound is a healthy dollop of a fairly expansive reverb (more ‘hall’ than ‘spring’?), and again the plug‑in ought to have us covered here.
The first screenshot (above) is a composite created from VST Amp Rack’s virtual amps, mics and post‑effects tabs, and shows the key settings I used to capture the essence of the overall sound. I picked the Tweed amp model and its associated cab, and to my ears it does the Fender clean sound very well, but it would also be well worth you experimenting with the Blackface or Deluxe models.
Note that your mileage may vary depending upon the output of the pickups on your guitar, just how hard you play, and your gain staging. At first, I found that I had to crank pretty much every control on the amp to get the Tweed model to start to overdrive when I played more forcefully! Of course, in the virtual world, you can easily fine‑tune the input gain of your DI signal: you can use your audio interface’s instrument preamp gain to drive the amp model harder, or to back things off a little. You could also look to the gain at different stages inside the plug‑in. For instance, you can put the Overdrive pedal into the Pre‑Effects section, set with a low gain, and then set the Level control so that it provides a ‘clean boost’ that drives the amp that little bit harder. However you achieve it, finding that ‘just about to go into overdrive’ tone is based on getting the right balance between the input signal level, the amp’s gain/volume controls, and how hard you play. So do be prepared to experiment.
The cabinet and microphone choices are perhaps secondary elements to the overall sound in this case. I simply went with a position nearer the speaker edge and backed away from the speaker slightly, as I felt this let the sound ‘breathe’ in a more natural way than when positioned right up against the cone centre.
Finally, to emulate the other key element of the tone, I added both delay and reverb effects in VST Amp Rack’s Post‑Effects section. The delay is not actually doing a great deal here: with a short delay time setting, low feedback and low mix settings, it’s just there to give the faintest of slapback‑style effects. In contrast, the reverb’s Type and Mix controls have been adjusted to add a very healthy dollop of ambience to the sound. The Type control lets you move between Studio, Plate, Room and Hall (which was my choice here), while the Mix control allows you blend in less/more of the reverb effect, as required. I constrained myself to creating the complete tone inside VST Amp Rack, but you could, of course, add the reverb as a send effect using one of Cubase’s various studio‑style reverb plug‑ins if you wanted further options.
The audio examples that accompany this workshop step through each of the stages involved in creating this tone, and explore how changing the input gain influences the clean/overdriven balance. Obviously, I’m no Steve Ray Vaughan, and the result is not identical to the iconic original, but it does capture the essential characteristics of the sound in a way that lets you explore that mood and playing style. Incidentally, for comparison, I also provided three more examples of the same tone that I recreated using well‑known third‑party virtual guitar rigs. They do all have their own character but, importantly, the version captured through VST Amp Rack is not shamed by the comparison. For a stock plug‑in, that’s really impressive.
On The Edge
For my second example, I chased a sound with the overall character of U2’s The Edge, as heard on their classic track ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’. This is also a clean(ish) tone that results from a Strat‑style guitar being plugged into a finely balanced (in terms of the input gain) tube amp. However, The Edge is all about sound design and, in this case, the ‘iconic’ element is delivered as much by his use of effects as it is the guitar/amp combination.
Getting close to The Edge with dual delays in the VST Amp Rack’s Post‑Effects section.
The second screenshot shows the settings I ended up with. At this time, The Edge was noted for his use of Vox amps, so I’ve picked the British Custom model (and matching speaker cabinet) in VST Amp Rack. Again, I’ve dialled in the gain and master volume controls so that the amp is pretty clean when the guitar is played more softly (for example, arpeggiated chords) but starts to break up when played more aggressively (strummed chords). There is perhaps more obvious contrast here between the ‘clean’ versus ‘overdriven’ elements of the sound, and maybe that’s a characteristic of the amp choice. Again, experimentation is required to find a sweet spot where the dynamics of the sound feel right with your guitar choice and playing style.
In the Pre‑Effects section, a Compressor has been added to provide a little additional ‘always on’ sustain to the sound, while an Overdrive pedal is available as an optional extra. The settings are designed just to add a little extra push to the overdriven element of the sound as and when required, rather than pushing things into full‑on distortion.
It’s in the Post‑Effects section that the magic happens, though. A Reverb has been included but this is set to add only a very modest amount of studio‑style reverb. The key element of the sound is achieved through the use of two delays, each with a different delay time. VST Amp Rack’s effects selection includes three different delay options, and in this case I combined the Tape Delay (which has a nice analogue‑style sound) and Delay (a bit more clinical) pedals in the Post‑Effects section.
In terms of the feedback and mix settings for both delays, I aimed for about three repeats before the signal fades away — the best way to set this by ear is simply to isolate each delay in turn as you tweak the controls. The fun part is then setting the delay times for each pedal using their respective Delay (time) controls. I used Beats mode (engage the red LED next to the Delay knob) so that the delay times sync to time divisions based on Cubase’s tempo. In this case, I set the Tape Delay to quarter‑note repeats and the Delay time to dotted eighth notes.
It’s a classic combination: whether you play an arpeggiated chord/note pattern, or a very simple rhythmic strummed part, the result sounds almost instantly Edge‑like. Incidentally, it would have been nice to have these delays panned left and right, but although VST Amp Rack does support dual amp signal chains (check out the Configuration page), the signal is summed again before reaching the Post‑Effects section! If that bothers you, you could always use delays outside of VST Amp Rack — Cubase has plenty to choose from. Finally, with plenty of ‘space’ added by these effects, I didn’t feel the need for additional ‘room’ from the microphone position, so I simply placed the virtual mic right against the cone edge.
I’ve provided a similar set of audio examples that step through the development of the VST Amp Rack configuration. It’s a super‑cool sound, but it’s also one that requires you to play ‘with’ the effects, by which I mean that if you overplay the part then the dual delays can soon get a bit messy. Again, I found that VST Amp Rack stood its ground very well when compared with some popular third‑party amp emulations.
No Pain, No Gain
As these examples hopefully demonstrate, Cubase’s humble VST Amp Rack is perfectly capable of generating some very usable clean(ish) guitar tones, and it can do so with the minimum of fuss too. So, that’s the box ticked for clean tones. What of the higher gain options, I hear you ask? Well, that’s a topic I might well return to another day. Until then, may all your cleans be sparkly, courtesy of VST Amp Rack!