How to Set Up Cubase Music Recording Software

Series Summary

Steinberg's music recording software Cubase is a digital audio workstation consisting of music recording and editing applications. Cubase allows users to create projects in which they can edit and mix audio tracks and other formats into .wav files to be burned to CD. The program also features a musical sequencer and MIDI capabilities.

In this free online Cubase tutorial, you'll learn how to record you own music using the basic features of this digital recording program. Expert Matt Nichols demonstrates how to set up the software, create a new project, add tracks, use the various editing and looping tools, and mix down your multi-track recording to burn on CD.

Video Transcript

"Hey everybody my name is Matt and I'm speaking to you on behalf of Expert Village. If you installed it properly and if you open up cubase you would see a window that looks similar to this, yours may look a little bit different depending on what version your using. I'm using cubase sx version 3. Before you get started using cubase you are going to have to set up some inputs and outputs. If you go up to devices, go down to device set up you get the window that looks like this. I'm going to go over these rather quickly because there is a lot of different settings and yours may differ depending on your set up but if you click on midi. Below here you would see some options if you click on all midi input to the right I don't have any midi input set up right now but it should show all the midi inputs that you have available you can enable or disable them here. If you click on default midi ports to the right you can click and select what midi input and output is set up automatically. When you create a track cubase which we will get into in a little bit and if you click on direct music you can enable of disable certain midi ports so that if you have a lot of them it is not a huge list that you have to choose from each time you have to change it in your track. If you come down to vista audio below this is where you set up all of your audio in your sound card you can click over here and it will show you a list of drivers you have in your sound card. You want to make sure that the total latency and output are as small as possible. If you have anything above 5 milliseconds you are probably going to get a delay in your audio when you are recording. If you click below on the name of your audio card you can click the control panel and there is a whole bunch of other different options that you can configure there. If you click on vst inputs and outputs this is similar to the audio input and outputs that I was tell you about but with your audio card you can enable and disable all certain inputs and outputs and like I said a lot of this is going to be depending on your set up and sound cards and midi inputs and outputs. But let's go ahead and get started using cubase."