Thursday, June 11, 2026
Wednesday, June 10, 2026
Cubase 11: The Multiband Squasher
Example 1: Squasher, used in two‑band mode to even out a recording of a bass guitar performed with too much dynamic variation.
We explore four ways to make the most of Cubase 11’s new multiband Squasher plug‑in.
The new Squasher plug‑in Cubase 11 (Elements, Artist and Pro) has obvious appeal as a ‘make it loud’ tool for EDM but, with downward and upward compression, multiband operation and band‑specific side‑chains, it’s capable of much more. To help you get started, here’s my choice of four things to try with Squasher. You’ll find audio examples for each tip on the SOS website (https://sosm.ag/cubase-0321).
Ups & Downs
In most contemporary mixing contexts, mix‑critical elements such as bass and lead vocals need to maintain a broadly consistent level throughout. Conventional (downward) compression has its place, but detailed volume automation and plug‑ins such as Waves’ MV2, Vocal Rider and Bass Rider offer additional possibilities. As well as bringing down the peaks, they can also raise quieter notes/sounds. Squasher can do this too.
Example 1 screenshot (and audio example) shows how I treated an electric bass guitar part. My aim was to achieve a more consistent signal level without resorting to heavy (and more noticeable) downward compression of the signal peaks. Squasher is set to two‑band mode, with the split around 200Hz, and each band applying upward compression to make quiet notes louder and downward compression to make louder notes quieter.
The Up and Down ratios can be adjusted to taste; alongside the Up and Down thresholds, these allow you to dial in as much/little upward and downward compression as you require. I also used the global Mix control to blend the original and processed signals to taste: essentially, this is parallel compression, and the end result is a part that’s much more even and easier to sit in the mix. As a bonus, the Gain for the two bands lets you adjust the tonality of the bass while mixing and, if you want to dig even deeper, you can also open the Parameter panel and adjust the compressor attack/release times for each band.
Detail Enhancer
As it relies on upward compression, my second example — making low‑level detail in a performance more prominent — isn’t a million miles from the first, but the musical target is different. Two common applications are: (a) making ghost notes in a snare track more audible; and (b) enhancing the level of percussive elements in an acoustic guitar recording. In both cases, these lower‑level elements can be important to the character of the performance, but might require adjustment to be satisfactorily balanced alongside other elements in the mix.
Example 2: Squasher’s ability to apply upwards compression is great if you need to make low‑level details in a performance more prominent; it’s used here to raise ghost notes in a snare track.
Example 2 screenshot shows a Squasher instance applied to the close snare mic in a multitrack drum recording. It also features two‑band operation but this time the split is around 100Hz. The low band has a high gate setting and no upward compression applied, so as to reduce bleed from the kick drum into the snare mic, and prevent upwards compression making any bleed louder. The bulk of the snare sound occurs at 100Hz and upwards. For this band, I’ve applied both downward and upward compression.
As demonstrated in the audio examples, the latter catches any ghost (softly played) snare strokes, and the degree of upward compression can control just how loud these get relative to the main snare hits. It’s a simple means by which these sorts of low‑level playing details can be drawn out and placed within the overall mix without impacting upon the louder parts of the same performance.
Drumtastic
Squasher can be used to inject some intensity into drum loops. Example 3 screenshot (with accompanying audio example) shows some settings I used to add an edge to a fairly ‘vanilla’ electronic drum loop. I’ve used all three Squasher bands and set the frequency splits so that the low band is focussed on the main energy of the kick, the mid‑band on the snare and the high‑band on the hi‑hats. If required, the Gain settings for each band can be used to adjust the balance between these three elements (here, I’ve boosted the lows and highs). Experimenting with the upward and downward compression settings for each band allows you alter the amplitude envelope for each ‘hit’ in some interesting ways.
Example 3: If your drum loop feels a little tame and uninspiring, full‑on Squasher might add just the edge required.
I’ve deliberately gone for something big and splashy: in each band, a fairly conventional amount of downward compression is combined with completely over‑the‑top upward compression (a combination of high Up ratio and threshold settings). Combined with a fast release, this brings out the tails of each drum hit, and in the audio file it’s particularly noticeable in the hi‑hats. Slower attack times allow transients to pop through, to retain a sense of impact. I’ve also applied some Drive to each band, for a little extra grunge. The ability to solo and disable individual bands can be very useful when you’re tweaking the various compression settings.
Squasher, then, can be a very useful source of ‘attitude’ if your drum loop needs a push. It’s worth noting that, while I might have sacrificed good taste for an in‑your‑face result here, the global and per‑band Mix controls allow you to dial things back a little.
Rise & Fall
As with Cubase’s other multiband processors, each band in Squasher can be set to respond to a different side‑chain source. This can have a number of applications but the screenshot for this example (Example 4) shows an instance of Squasher inserted on a rhythm guitar bus. The guitars in question provide a chunky, slightly overdriven sound, occupying a broad frequency range. The high‑frequency band (above 2kHz) is used, as before, to provide fairly gentle upward and downward compression. However, two different side‑chain input sources (the side‑chain input sources can be configured via the side‑chain settings drop‑down dialogue in the plug‑in’s top menu bar) are used to control the compression applied to the guitars in the low (below 200Hz) and mid bands.
Example 4: The ability to use different side‑chain input sources within each of Squasher’s bands makes it a great tool for ducking a target such as rhythm guitars or synth pads out of the way of things like bass or vocals.
For the low band, the bass guitar provides the side‑chain input — so when the bass plays the low‑end of the guitars is ducked, allowing the bass to be heard more clearly. In between the bass notes, I’ve also applied a modest amount of upwards compression, so that these frequencies in the guitars are raised by a dB or two to gently fill in the low‑end space.
The same combination of side‑chain triggered downwards and upwards compression of the guitars is applied to the mid band. This time, I’ve used a vocal track as the side‑chain signal. During vocal phrases, this ensures that the voice isn’t masked by the guitars’ mid‑range. But when the vocal is absent, the guitars’ mid‑range is boosted slightly, to make them more prominent.
You can configure multiband side‑chain‑driven compression in other ways in Cubase 11, but Squasher provides a neat one‑stop‑shop for this kind of task. It’s worth noting, though, that unless you want obvious pumping, you should use fairly slow attack and release times, and low ratio settings for the upward compression.
Freshly Squeezed
As with any compression task, you must tailor the settings to the source, but hopefully these examples will inspire you to explore Squasher further. There are plenty of other applications for it, including hyping your latest EDM mix — indeed, Squasher is impressive in that role, but as with most master‑bus processing do take care and pay attention: it’s just as easy to ruin a good mix as it is to enhance it!
Tuesday, June 9, 2026
Monday, June 8, 2026
Mastering In Cubase 11
By John Walden
Some freeware plug‑ins that can enhance your DIY mastering experience in Cubase Elements.
Want to try a spot of DIY mastering? You can do so in any version of Cubase 11, including Elements.
Realistically, we can’t all get every track we write mastered professionally. But we still want our material to sound ‘finished’ so it’s natural that many of us look to dabble in a little DIY mastering. Our recent six‑part video series on the subject by mastering engineer Ian Shepherd (https://sosm.ag/MasteringTechniques1) is a great introduction to the topic, and I’d encourage you to watch it. One of the key things Ian explains is that, for the basics of mastering, his processing chain is always simple: it consists only of gain adjustment, EQ, compression and limiting, although he also makes use of various meters. That got me wondering how someone might attempt DIY mastering for the first time if using a relatively basic DAW such as Cubase Elements 11, perhaps with the help of a few freebie plug‑ins.
Seeing Is Believing
Ian discussed how useful he finds it to be able to visualise both the spectral balance and loudness of the audio. Cubase Pro 11 has comprehensive loudness metering, courtesy of its SuperVision plug‑in, but users of Elements or Artist don’t have that and nor does it provide us with one of Ian’s favourite tools: a virtual VU meter. Happily, you can add one of those for free (eg. TBProaudio’s mvMeter and PreSonus’ VU Meter). Elements and Artist users might also want to investigate Youlean’s Loudness Meter 2 Free (there’s also a paid version with more features but the free one should do just fine).
Loudness targets can be a matter of personal taste, musical genre and where you intend the final master to be played (vinyl, CD or a streaming service, for example) but in the audio examples that accompany this article (on the SOS website at https://sosm.ag/cubase-0421) I’ll not veer too far away from Ian’s suggestions of ‑11dB on my VU meter (by calibrating the zero point on the meter to ‑11dB) and ‑10 LUFS for short‑term loudness of the loudest part of my mix. For visualisation that can help you achieve a ‘balanced EQ’ (rather than EQ matching), I’m not sure Cubase (or any other DAW) really has anything to match something like iZotope’s excellent Tonal Balance 2 plug‑in, but there are nonetheless some simple, pragmatic workarounds that I’ll touch on below.
Simple Steps
Even though it’s technically possible to mix and master a single track in the same Cubase project, I recommend handling them as two separate processes — partly for the clarity of thought this forces upon you, and partly so that you can master multiple tracks together (eg. for a compilation such as an album or EP). Each track will still require different mastering treatments, of course, so place each finished mix on its own stereo audio track in a new Cubase project. You can still use the same insert plug‑in chain for each, but this way you can tailor the settings to suit each track. You can also import any reference tracks you want to audition, again putting them on their own stereo track.
The first screen (above) shows the plug‑ins I used in Cubase Elements 11 to recreate Ian’s basic signal chain, and these are the settings I used for the first audio example. My first step was to use freebie VU and loudness meters to adjust the Pre‑Gain in the Channel Settings dialogue. I aimed for something with average/peak levels 2‑3 dB below Ian’s suggested final targets, because I knew my EQ, compression and limiting would likely add some gain.
My second step was to compare the frequency spectrum displays of a reference track (using the Channel Settings dialogue for that track) with my track (using the StudioEQ plug‑in). This way, the two frequency displays can be seen on screen at the same time, so it’s relatively easy to see any broad ranges where the balance is noticeably different. In this case, that lead me to make a broad 2dB gain increase centred at 5kHz (to add some brightness) and a smaller 1dB boost at around 125Hz, for just a touch more low‑end umph. For the sorts of subtle, broad, EQ moves Ian recommends, StudioEQ’s four bands are generally sufficient but you could always use a second instance if more complex correction is required.
Third, with a gentle 2:1 ratio on Cubase’s Compressor plug‑in, I gradually lowered the Threshold until I could see at most around 3dB of gain reduction, which generally sounded ‘transparent’. The Compressor plug‑in includes a Dry Mix control, so you can blend the unprocessed and processed signals, and with modest compression like this, that can be a useful way to adjust the severity of the compression; I quite liked the blend set at 50:50 so left it there.
Finally, I used Cubase’s Limiter with the Output set to ‑1dB. In this case, I didn’t need to adjust the Input level to achieve my fairly conservative target of 3‑4 dB maximum gain reduction of the peaks. The screenshot also shows an instance of Brickwall Limiter inserted after Limiter; I’m not 100‑percent sure why anything above ‑1dB gets past the Limiter to reach the Brickwall Limiter (answers on a postcard please) but as it does, this additional limiting stage takes care of any stray ‘overs’.
For basic DIY mastering, a simple chain of StudioEQ, Compressor and Limiter is a good place to start. (The Brickwall Limiter simply acts as a final safety net to prevent clipping.)
How High?
Toggling on/off the Insert Rack in the track’s Mixer channel allows you compare your original mix with your master‑in‑progress. Note, though, that the difference you perceive will be influenced by any overall loudness changes (that you can also check via the VU and loudness meters). You can, if you wish, add a freeware gain plug‑in such as Blue Cat Audio’s Gain 3, at the end of the chain to attenuate your master, for more meaningful loudness‑matched comparison — but you must remember to bypass it when you bounce your master!
For the example, the settings in the main screenshot got me pretty much exactly where I wanted to be in terms of Ian’s suggested loudness ‘targets’. But being able to adjust the gain between StudioEQ and Compressor, or between Compressor and Limiter, can be useful: you can experiment with how hard you can drive either the Compressor or the Limiter before the mastering becomes overcooked. Again, a separate gain plug‑in can be useful here, as it allows you to toggle on/off the gain change without adjusting any parameters in the StudioEQ or Compressor plug‑ins. It’s an interesting experiment and one I’ve included in the audio examples that accompany this workshop.
Easy Squeezy
One obvious difference so far between my keep‑it‑simple Cubase Elements signal‑processing chain and Ian’s chain in Wavelab is that the latter included a three‑band compressor. All versions of Cubase 11 include the new Squasher plug‑in, though, so if you’re feeling adventurous you might use an instance of Squasher in place of Compressor. The final screenshot shows the settings I used to do this.
If you feel brave enough to use multiband compression, you can try putting Squasher in place of Compressor in your mastering chain.
First, I set all Squasher’s upwards compression features so that they were essentially bypassed, and put all the Drive controls to zero too. I then followed Ian’s advice, configuring each band with identical settings and, where possible, I used similar settings to those I used with Compressor earlier. The obvious exceptions are the Down Ratio and Down Threshold, which are a little unconventional in Squasher. I simply used the mini‑graphs at the top of the display to set the Down Ratios to find a gentle(ish) compression slope (to match the relatively low ratio setting used in Compressor), and then adjusted the Thresholds until I could see just a few dB of gain reduction in each band. Note that I also set Squasher’s global Mix control to 50 percent, as I’d done in Compressor, just to back off the overall compression a little.
Once configured, I could again experiment with my freebie gain plug‑ins pre‑ and post‑Squasher, to control how hard the compression or limiting (or both) were driven. I’ve included a further set of audio examples so that you can hear the differences between the two alternative processing chains.
Final Thoughts
It’s well worth creating presets for each plug‑in that you use, as well as a preset for the full Insert signal chain (do this in the MixConsole’s Insert Rack), and even creating a basic project template for mastering. The fully configured processing chain(s) can then be quickly reloaded when you need them. You’ll always have to fine‑tune the settings for every mix you want to master, but the basic chain will still provide you with a solid starting point and save you time.
Hopefully, the above examples show that it’s possible to attempt some basic DIY mastering even with the modestly priced Elements version of Cubase 11 and just a few freeware plug‑ins. But if you have Cubase Pro, you’ll have more sophisticated tools at your disposal, which are capable of better results — or, if misused, worse ones — and we’ll investigate all that in a future workshop.
Saturday, June 6, 2026
Friday, June 5, 2026
Cubase 11 Scale Assistant
Having used Chord Pads to create an initial chord sequence, the Chord Editing panel allows you to easily add further interest via the Inversions and Drop Notes options without changing the actual chords.
In need of melodic inspiration? Cubase 11's Scale Assistant can help.
In the Pro, Artist and Elements versions of Cubase 11, the already impressive suite of compositional aids was joined by the new Scale Assistant. This is potentially very useful as a corrective tool — if the piano keyboard isn’t your primary instrument, for example, or your music theory is a bit rusty — but it can also be great when you need a little melodic inspiration.
For our example this month, I’ll construct the bare chordal and melodic bones of an eight‑bar musical ‘chunk’, highlighting some easy ways to play with repetition and variation, and then use Cubase’s Scale Assistant to lend a creative hand when developing a melody to sit within this chunk.
Strike The Right Chord Sequence
We’ll start with two instances of HALion Sonic SE, one with a simple electric piano (for the chord sequence) and the other a synth lead patch (for the melody). You can also add a basic drumbeat or loop to provide a rhythmic bed if you find that helps.
I generally like to start songwriting with a chord sequence and, as my own piano skills tend towards the ‘one hand, three fingers’ level, I’m a big fan of using Cubase’s Chord Pad and Chord Editing features to experiment. I discussed the Chord Pads back in SOS May 2015 and for this example I followed the same basic methodology, populating the pads with some basic chords in D major (D, G, A and Bmin), with two different voicings of each chord. Experimenting with different chord sequences, including the ability to add both rhythm and dynamics, then becomes easy, single‑finger work. I opted for a classic (indeed, cliché!) four‑bar sequence that repeats twice but with slightly different rhythm/dynamics in the final two bars the second time around.
While the Chord Pad system lets you add chord voicing variations on the fly, I’ll often use the Key Editor’s Chord Editing panel for this stage and the most useful options here are provided by the Inversions and Drop Notes sections. These allow you to select any chord(s) in your MIDI clip and adjust the voicing — so you get to keep the chord sequence while still developing a sense of musical movement in the performance. As shown in the screenshot, I’ve used these options to change the voicing of the last chord hit of each bar and then, in the final two bars to add a sense of upwards motion to the chords.
Melody, Call My Assistant
The Scale Assistant works within the Key Editor so, for our melody, the first step is to create an empty eight‑bar MIDI clip on our ‘melody’ track. With this clip open in the Key Editor, you can expand the Scale Assistant pane in the Inspector. Choosing ‘Use Editor Scale’ then lets us use the drop‑down options to select the key of D and the major scale to match our chord sequence. As we’re going to use the note‑drawing tools to create some melody ideas, Snap Pitch Editing is probably the most important of the other tickboxes. With this engaged, if we add or edit notes within the clip, they’ll automatically snap to notes within the scale.
If you wish, you can change the note lane display in the Key Editor. I prefer the Key Editor’s Pitch Visibility ‘Show Pitches from Scale Editor’ option over the Scale Assistant’s ‘Show Scale Note Guides’ option. The former simply removes note lanes for all out‑of‑scale notes from the display, whereas the latter changes the pattern of light‑grey/dark‑grey shading of the note lanes. I tend to find the latter confusing, given how ingrained it is to think of this shading as reflecting the pattern of white/black piano keys.
Finally, before we start to create melody ideas, engage Snap (to Grid) and select a suitable quantise resolution. The latter will define the initial spacing of any notes in our melody. I stuck with 1/8th notes throughout the worked example, but you can experiment with shorter/longer notes or different note lengths in different sections (sets of bars) of your melody.
My initial melody created using the Line tool but with Scale Assistant ensuring every note created is in the required key/scale.
Now for the fun part: ‘drawing’ our initial melody idea. We could just start adding individual notes with the Pencil tool, but there’s more fun to be had with the Line tool. The straight‑line option is the best; if you draw a straight line in the note area, this line is transformed into a sequence of notes that follow the slope of the line. But thanks to the Scale Assistant these notes are also snapped to the nearest note in the scale.
Simply by drawing a sequence of short (for example, one bar long) straight lines, each with a different direction/steepness of slope, you can create an initial ‘flow’ for your melody idea, with rises and falls in pitch — and all devoid of any out‑of‑key notes! The screenshot shows my worked example and I’ve annotated it to give an idea of the different line segments I drew across the eight bars to create this initial pattern of notes.
Write & Rewrite
Of course, this initial idea is unlikely to be the finished deal, so some editing will almost certainly now be required. After making a copy of the MIDI clip (in case you want to return to the original when it all goes horribly wrong), this editing can be done in three stages, although you can move back and forth between these stages as the melodic ideas take shape.
First, as you cycle playback of the chord/melody parts, use the mute tool to swap notes in/out of the melody. This stage might thin out the number of notes and, as a result, help define a rhythmic pattern for the melody. Second, feel free to move a note or two up/down if this makes the melody more interesting. Third, you don’t have to use every bar of the original melody created by the drawing process; as you refine things, look for single‑bar phrases that you like. Once you have two or three of these, discard the rest, and assemble these very best bits across the eight bars to create the required sense of melodic repetition.
The next screenshot shows what I ended up with after this editing process. Aside from there being fewer notes and some velocity variation added, the key thing to note is the result of the third editing stage discussed above. Having done stages one and two, I identified a few of my original bars (1, 4 and 7+8) and reconstructed my eight‑bar sequence based around only those.
After a few minutes editing work, the final eight‑bar melody tries to find the ideal balance between repetition and variation.
Within the screenshot, I’ve highlighted this in the Marker track at the top of the Key Editor display. The phrase from the first bar has actually been repeated five times; in bars 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6. However, in bars 2 and 6 it has been shifted down by two notes in the scale (it starts on B2 rather than D2). These alternative bars have the same rhythmic and melodic pattern (so there’s a sense of repetition), but the different starting pitch adds a sense of variety; it’s different but not ‘too different’.
Pitch‑shifting these notes is easy with Snap Pitch Editing engaged; you can simply select the required notes and drag them up/down; Scale Assistant makes sure everything stays in key (this makes it a great tool for creating harmony parts, but that’s a topic for another day!). Finally, Phrase 2 (in bar 4) adds a twist, in rhythm and pitch, so things don’t become too repetitive, while bars 7+8 add further variety and bring the overall eight‑bar sequence to a conclusion.
Are We There Yet?
Well, no. But our song is now started — and that’s often the hardest step. Hopefully, you can see the principles at play here and how the Scale Assistant makes this sort of melodic experimentation very easy, regardless of your piano playing or music theory skills. Of course, the same process can then be repeated to create the other song sections. You then add a little work on the overall song structure (more careful use of repetition will be required here) before finally flexing your production skills to transform your bare‑bones song idea into a fully fledged, ear‑candy‑laden, international hit. Just don’t forget a songwriting credit for Cubase!