Wiring up my sound gear

[rfinch]

Hi,
New to this forum having just purchased a Virus TI the other day. I've been a Reason user for years but decided I wanted some hardware. I have to say the Virus sounds great compared to Reason but having the control and big keyboard in front is awesome!!

Anyhow so since I'm only used to Reason, I'm not familiar with wiring and now I need to wire everything up into Cubase. I was going to do the following and hoping somebody can let me know if this is right / wrong?

1. Connect Virus via midi through my MAudio sound card. This will allow it to receive midi signals through Cubase as I've noticed it cannot through usb.
2. Enable usb for the VST control and loading patches.
3. Connect outputs (not sure which ones yet) to my mixer.
4. Connect my pc output from MAudio to different channel on the mixer.
5. Mic to 3rd channel on mixer.
6. Amp and speakers into mixer.
7. I presume something from the mixer needs to go back into the sound card for recording i.e. mic?
8. Finally i'd like to plug my guitar into the Virus and use the onboard affects however guitar is a mono cable and Virus has 2 input jacks for this meaning the guitar only comes through one side. What do I need to sort this?

Thanks
Reno

[bishopkris40]

1 no use usb, there is midi control through virus ti, check your inputs it's there
2 will only work with usb
3 I'd connect out 1 LR to mixer for monitoring the sound of virus
4 connect maudio to mixer, but check the asio settings to ensure you have this as the main sound card or whatever else you are wanting to output
5 ok
6 ok
7 not knowing your mixer I'd look for a monitor line or another outut and send it back to maudio
8 use the L input I have a feeling this will work in mono, infact I think you can pick the input type when using the input patch

[rfinch]

Cheers dude.
I have one more question since now I have a Virus I have to start using either Cubase or Fruity. I'm quite keen to learn Cubase. What does one use to program drums in Cubase? Something similar to a drum pattern sequencer such as in Fruity or Reason?

Cubase comes with the LM7 but don't see how you can load your own samples with that. I need a vst or something that I can load my own samples into.

cheers
Reno

[flipside]

You have several options.. You have Native Instruments Battery 3 (http://www.native-instruments.com:80/index.php?id=battery3) and also FXpansion GURU (http://www.fxpansion.com/index.php?page=4&tab=21).

GURU is a bit different (but with cool features) from Battery, in that it has its own internal sequencer that synchronizes with the host sequencer. You have some cool controls over the "notes", easily doing retrigs, panning, fx, etc. Once you have a pattern set up you can drag drop it onto a midi track and get the midi notes all laid out for you. Or you can bounce it to an audio loop.

Battery also has some features like retrig and stuff, but here you just sequence in your host sequencer.

There are other choices as well, you have Machfive (http://www.motu.com/products/software/machfive) for example..

Best,
Alex

[rfinch]

Cheers. I like the look of Guru. The pattern sequencer looks familiar so think I will check that out.

Also I've been wondering how one adds different fx to each drum sample in Cubase when using a VST. I always expected you could only add an effect to the whole vst but I'm probably wrong.

Anyhow since this has it's own fx, I don't need to worry!!

thanks
Reno

[flipside]

Well one option is to set the drum sample in question to its own output in the plugin. Like if the rest of your kit is going to out 1+2 then you could set one (or more) to say 3+4, set up another channel that inputs from this, and your good to go.

It's probably a good idea to separate your kit into individual outputs anyway, cause you most likely want to process hihats different than you would the kick, and same with the snare, etc. Then you could just gather all these individual outputs back together at the end by outputting them to an aux/bus track, and do some light (or heavy) compression to bind them together.

You're welcome :)

Best,
Alex

[AlexHall74]

Guru is the tits! I love it! I just bought it a month ago and have only recently delved into it. It's workflow is so intuitive. I really wish they could drop some feature in like full support for Battery expansion libraries or the like. For the money, it's hard to beat.

:)

-AlexH.