Saturday, September 5, 2026
Friday, September 4, 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.
Thursday, September 3, 2026
Wednesday, September 2, 2026
Cubase 13: Creating Lo-Fi Effects
The full signal chain I used for my lo‑fi processing experiment including Grungelizer, BitCrusher and FX Modulator.
Want to get the lo‑fi vibe using Cubase’s stock plug‑ins? Here’s how.
Whether it’s within the abundant supply of relaxation‑meets‑study music, embedded firmly in some types of hip‑hop, or just blended subtly into a whole range of other popular genres, lo‑fi is very much back in fashion. If you want to take your pristine recordings and add a touch of sonic degradation to create a warm, nostalgic sound there are some very popular third‑party effects plug‑ins tailor‑made for the job. But if you have Cubase, it’s also a style you can achieve using just the stock plug‑ins — with no need for additional expenditure required. So let’s see how Cubase can help you embrace all those perfect imperfections!
Tools Of The Lo‑Fi Trade
Typically, signal‑chains for lo‑fi feature a number of elements. For example, electrical noise or vinyl crackles might be applied. Tape (whether real or emulated) can be used to simulate the pitch modulation caused by varying tape speed or wow, flutter and dropouts. Distortion can be added via real or virtual analogue circuity or tube distortion. Sample degradation through bit‑depth or sample‑rate reduction can be used to ‘downgrade’ the sound. Pitch modulation or resonator components are often added to reverb or delay effects. And, finally, the bandwidth of the sound can be restricted using filters.
As with any effects chain, changing the order of the effects in the chain can lead you to different results, and you can use as few or as many of these options simultaneously as you wish, and adjust the wet/dry balance of individual effects or the whole chain to taste.
Stock Options
Given the typical processing options described above, the first screenshot shows some obvious candidates from Cubase’s bundled plug‑in collection that might fulfil each role. To give you a better idea of the kinds of effect this example signal chain can deliver, I’ve created some audio examples that you can find on the SOS website (https://sosm.ag/cubase-1124). These are based around two particularly common targets for lo‑fi processing: a piano part and a drum loop.
So, what have I got in my example effects chain and why? For ‘turntable noise’, Grungelizer is definitely the plug‑in for the task. It lets you add noise, crackle (with a turntable speed switch) and distortion effects as well as an element of mains hum. For this workshop’s experiments, I started with the suitably named LoFi 1 preset and dialled in to taste from there. Really, the only thing to note is that the noise elements added by Grungelizer are ‘always on’, whether or not the instrument it’s applied to is playing. Now you might want the sound all through your track, but often you won’t, particularly if you’re processing multiple parts in this way, where the effect will ‘stack’ unhelpfully. Here, I’ve added an (optional) instance of the standard gate plug‑in immediately after Grungelizer and set its threshold so that it mutes the noise from Grungelizer when there’s no instrument signal playing.
For a tape‑style detuning effect (caused when the tape’s playback speed varies, resulting in variations in pitch), I’ve used the FX Modulator plug‑in. This includes a preset called Old Tape Record, and I used this as my starting point. I then focused on just the Pitch module (I removed the Reverb, Chorus and Filter modules). The result is a long, slow, gentle modulation curve that’s applied to the pitch of the incoming audio. I tweaked the default curve to make the effect a little more obvious in the audio examples, but you can push things much harder and fully customise the modulation curve to suit your needs. Cubase Elements users could replace FX Modulator with one or more of the modulation‑style plug‑ins such as Chorus or Flanger: add a little parameter automation and you can recreate much the same sorts of gradual pitch‑drift.
I used a single band of Quadrafuzz to add some tube distortion to my lo‑fi processing, but there are other distortion options within the Cubase plug‑in collection that could serve a similar role.
For distortion duties, there are lots of options but I chose Quadrafuzz. I added a single band of tube‑based distortion in the 1‑5 kHz frequency range and boosted the output gain a few dB to make it more obvious. On its own, this gave a somewhat crunchy, crisp, and bandwidth‑limited flavour, but you can then use Quadrafuzz’s built‑in mix control to dial in the effect to taste. Elements users could easily substitute in DaTube, or either the Tape or Tube Saturation modules of the MixConsole’s Channel Strip to achieve an effect that’s in the same ballpark.
BitCrusher is the obvious choice for downgrading your sounds. Again, there’s a preset called LoFi that provides a good starting point, but the plug‑in’s Depth control makes it easy to dial in whatever degree of bit reduction your ears are comfortable with. The Sample Divider and Mode buttons provide plenty more variation, while the Mix knob can again be used to blend the wet/dry balance to taste.
By this stage, you may well have all the options you need to downgrade your sounds to pleasingly lo‑fi status but, just for good measure, I finished off my example effects chain with instances of ModMachine and RoomWorks (choosing the Rhodes Beneath The Waves and FX LoFiverb presets, respectively). The former works well on my drum loop, adding a subtle movement, but you can raise the Mix value to increase the amount of ‘seasickness’ it induces. The latter works better with the piano part, injecting an additional element of lo‑fi to the ambience. Again, you could easily substitute alternative plug‑ins for either task or both, but these options are built into Cubase.
Insert Or Send?
The whole chain can be set up using the insert slots on the relevant instrument’s track, of course, but you may well want easier control over how much of this lo‑fi processing you hear versus the dry sound, and in that case it makes better sense to have the whole signal chain sitting on an FX Channel that’s fed by a send from the instrument track. That’s the approach I adopted here, and I chose to make the send pre‑fader. That way, you can set‑and‑forget the actual send level, and simply use the instrument’s track fader (unprocessed signal) and FX Channel fader (processed signal) to set the desired blend of clean and lo‑fi.
As shown in the screenshot, I also used the High‑Cut and Low‑Cut filters in the FX Channel’s Pre section to bandwidth‑limit the lo‑fi processed element between 250Hz and 5000Hz, for an even less hi‑fi sound. Again, I’ve provided audio examples to illustrate the possibilities.
On, Off, Wet, Dry, Up & Down!
With the initial plug‑in selection and settings sorted, it’s then a case of dialling in exactly what combination of these effects you wish to use in any particular case. The options are pretty much endless: turn individual plug‑ins on/off via their bypass buttons; finesse the unprocessed to processed balance further using the wet/dry mix controls found in many of these plug‑ins; or drag individual plug‑ins up or down in the FX Channel’s insert slots to change the order in which they process the sound. The choice is yours, but I’ve included another audio example to illustrate some of the possibilities with the same drum and piano examples.
Free Lo‑Fi Plug‑ins
Hopefully you can see, then, that Cubase’s bundled plug‑in collection can do a decent job of pushing your sounds into lo‑fi territory, but that’s not to say we couldn’t identify a couple of areas that aren’t quite so well catered for. And if you’re not ready to stump up for one of the dedicated third‑party lo‑fi effects processors such as XLN Audio’s RC‑20 Retro Color (probably the most well‑known), you can still usefully supplement Cubase’s plug‑ins with some rather good freebies.
For example, for those turntable‑style noises, iZotope’s free‑to‑download Vinyl plug‑in is an excellent alternative to Grungelizer. It includes emulated turntable noise based on different decades (with more sonic compromises the further you travel back in time) and speed settings, as well as a whole range of noise types that you can sprinkle across your audio to give it a more lo‑fi retro sound.
If you feel the need to expand your lo‑fi processing options, there are some excellent third‑party free‑to‑download options including iZotope’s Vinyl and Caelum Audio’s Tape Cassette 2.
Another personal favourite is Caelum Audio’s Tape Cassette 2, which is also a free download. As the name suggests, it emulates the distinctive sound of cassette tape (anyone under 25 might need to ask their parents about this), including tape saturation, noise, and the wow and flutter created by variations in the tape speed on playback. For a degraded tape sound, this perhaps does a more convincing job than just adding pitch modulation using FX Modulator, Chorus or Flanger, but a combination of both can also be very effective.
Again, I’ve included some audio examples to make a comparison between the stock plug‑in approach and what additional lo‑fi character these third‑party options can deliver. Oh, and while we are on the subject of ‘free’, don’t forget Steinberg’s own and rather excellent free‑to‑download Lo‑Fi Piano expansion for HALion/HALion Sonic. This is a cool piano library in its own right, but there are also a number of lo‑fi effects options within it.
Tuesday, September 1, 2026
Monday, August 31, 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!