VST CONNECT - All you need to know (2020)

today we are going to talk about VST connect for I'm going to show you everything you need to know to be able to record and run a remote recording session in Cubase hey what's going on my friend the Chris here from mixdown online now I hope you are safe and well now I received in the past few weeks a bunch of requests on making a VST connect video so there it is I'm gonna show you in this video everything you need to know to be able to run a remote recording session in Cubase using VST connect now the VST connect comes in two versions there's the SD version which is the lite version that is included in Cubase Pro so if you're a Cubase Pro user you can start by using and trying out VST connect with the SE version and there's also the pro version that I'm using myself that is gonna give you access to more features and I'm gonna show all of that in this video so the first part of the video because there's gonna be a long one so the first part I'm gonna cover all the parameters of VST connect with in Cubase and also I'm gonna cover the VST connect performer which is the free software that the performer the person you're going to work with is gonna download and use during the session and then I'm gonna show you a quick test recording that I made using Vista Connect Pro with four of my friends all done remotely of course and this is also going to be part of this video so without further ado let's jump in alright so now let's connect our session here in Cubase with VST connector Pro so I'm gonna click on the VST cloud on top a select VST Connect Pro and I'm gonna create VST connect and this will create and give me access to this VST connect window now I'm gonna log in so if you don't have an account on the Steinberg website just go create yourself a free account enter your email and password click on that small icon here and you're gonna get connected directly online now I have here the main window in the middle this is where you're going to be able to find your collaborator the person you're going to work with so find user so if that person is connected on the VST connect you'll be able to search by looking for his username and then if you click on friends you will have the list of all the collaborators you worked with now I created myself a test account that I'm going to connect on that is installed on another computer so this is what we are going to get when connecting with someone with our collaborator the person who we're going to work with and then on top we have event monitor now this is synced I have my connection synced and also the performers connection also synced so everything is up and running now by creating an instance of a VST connect in my Cubase session that created also a track an audio track called performer wreck okay I'm gonna get to this later but first let's look at the integration with the control room in Cubase once you create a VST connect in your Cubase session Cubase will create a cue channel to manage VST connect as you can see at the bottom of my inserts in directly on the control room I have a VST connect monitor that has been created when I open when I created myself a Vista Connect Pro session so if I go on and click on audio connections f4 and click on the control room tab but you will see the second cue mix that is called VST connect now I don't need to connect that anywhere I'm going to leave that blank it has been created automatically and so I have a here on top my first cue mix and also my second cue mix which is VST Connect okay so this is something very important if that doesn't work and you have trouble managing that set up something you can do is to click on VST cloud on top VST connect pro or se depending on the one you are using and click on check and repair configuration okay and this is going to set that up for you now let's go back and open up a VST connect now you know what I did here I just create myself as a shortcut directly on my keyboard I'm a computer keyboard just to access a VST connect everything every time I need to something you can do directly into key commands you know under edit ok so check this out then ok what we have here on top we have the talkback we're first going to look at the talkback if you don't have a talkback setup what you need to do is to go back into your vista audio connections and again back to control room then you're gonna have to add channel and look for talkback now on my side I already have my talkback set up and it's set up to my first insert of my audio interface and there you go so now I have my talkback signal going into the control room ok so I'm just going to click on the main tab and as you can see I have my talkback going into the VST connect cue mix I'm gonna open VST connect one more time and look at the talkback and you can see at the signal coming into the talkback control side of VST connect now the talkback is active if Aida's activate the talkback off the control room it will do the same directly into VST connect so those two are connected together ok so I'm going to bring that back and then when I'm going to click on play okay that will dis activate also the talkback so by itself when you're gonna click on play whether you're recording or not the talkback is gonna stop working which makes sense but you know if you you want to try a few things with the collaborator that you are working with you can click on this button here the rehearse and that will keep the talkback active even if the your session is playing ok so this is something you need to keep in mind now the 2 performer knob right here is linked to the talkback level on directly on the the control room ok so if I bring up and down that level as you can see it will decrease or increase the amount of level of your talkback so if the person you are working with needs to hear you more you can just bring that one up you know and that is gonna do the trick and there's also the dim level that is also linked to the the one in the control room to talk dim in the control room and now you have the cue meter right here also the monitor performer is going to be your signal your monitoring signal that you get from the performer that you can increase or decrease so if you need to hear the playback of the performer a bit more you can increase that knob and that will do the trick now the event monitor this is going to show you the status of the internet connection now the media indicators will show media activity on either side the net and sync green light will indicate that the data is received sent on both side of the connection so basically it shows that the connection is in sync however it is normal for the sync indicators to light up red during transport operation like start/stop and locate so if that happens it's nothing to worry about so as far as the mixer goes we have the master fader and the studio 1a studio is basically what is coming out of the of the the control room and master is the master of everything altogether then we have under that the right side of the mixer we have vsti which is going to be the virtual instrument that the performer is going to send you if you're using one and also the microphone and instrument microphone input also or you know line input if you're recording an electric guitar or bass for example but those are routed directly on an input out of the performers sound interface okay now they are set up as a stereo but you can also set up as mono instead of stereo now on top we have a record this is the section to set up the levels and the pan also so the knob that we see is set to to adjust the level that will be recorded and on top that line in the middle will determine the pan where you want to pan your signal while you are recording which is very useful if you're using VST connect se which is the light version and you want to record an acoustic guitar with a voice you can actually use the pen to record the voice on the left side then the guitar on the right side and make sure they're both using mono inputs and then afterwards you'll be able to split that stereo that's there your track in Cubase into two mono tracks okay so that is the workaround if you want to if you want to record like you know two two mono channels at the same time using VST connect s II but if you're using the pro version of the VST connect you don't have to worry about that because right below this section we have the effects button then I'm gonna cover later on and also that red LED that is gonna allow us to record multi-tracks now by activating those red recording lights that will tell VST connect to record those channels separately so this will be able to record everything in your session on different tracks this is very very practical and this is one of the main feature of the pro version of VST connect and effects when effects is activated on a track that means that if the performer has some plugins as an insert on his channels that means that you'll be able to record those effects when you're gonna be recording his performance with that this activated you're only going to record a dry version of the signal but only him will will have and monitor those effects for monitoring purposes only but by activating those you'll be able to record the effects at the same time you know so that can be useful for example if you want to record an electric guitar through an amp a simulation plug-in you can activate the effects on that Channel and that is going to record that virtual amp effect with your the guitar performance then if we look here at the bottom right here at the middle of the channel we have the reverb and this is going to determine the send level of the reverb for monitoring purposes only so you have control over the reverb right here at the bottom which is quite nice and also that can be that can be customized by the performer himself but if you're working with someone who is not very familiar with those settings you can work those from your side and then just add the amount of reverb that that person wants or that can also be done from his side also and there you go so you can monitor yourself and the first the person can record himself with some reverb that is not going to be recorded and then we have a plus and minus that is also only available on the pro version to add other channels so if I want to record a live drum for example that has more than 10 microphones I can set up ten different channels link those two to their correct input from the performers interface and I'm gonna get I'm gonna be good to go and record those multitrack drums which is quite nice and this is one of the big feature of the VST connect pro is the ability to to record up to 16 channels okay separately which is very very nice then at the bottom we we saw the reverb and there's also a compressor that you can activate if you want to you know if the performer wants to record or just play with a compressor on while he is recording and also an EQ that can be worked on and inserts also that will be connected to the performers side you know so on the performers side of things we are going to see that later on there's a way we can connect VST connect performer to our plugins our VST plugins and virtual instruments and this is where those plugins are going to be listed then if we look at right in the center of this window and go down we have all the the parameters of VST connect now we have the show mixer view if you want to have like a view of your mixer because if you have like several channels activated within VST connect pro you know having that open is going to be very useful and then we have the show video window because there's a webcam connected to the other computer I I'm connected to and and this is going to allow you to see the other person while doing your recording session so if you click on that you can have that on a separate window bring that down and always have a visual of the person you are working with very cool then we have this show setup view now we have the audio upstream this is the quality of the audio I am sending to the performer I'm keeping that low okay I can go up to lossless but it doesn't matter if I keep that one low it's gonna be easier on the internet connection anyways and it's going to keep things more stable then the video stream same here I don't need to have like an HD version of the webcam I'm working with with the performer I keep that very low those are small things that are gonna add up which is going to help you to have a smoother experience while collaborating with the performer then we have the video device which is the webcam that is connected to your system now video mirror is if you just want to flip around the the look of the video so we have like the mayor version of that that video and then chat latency I keep that as in automatic but you can actually decide the amount of milliseconds that you want to set that up to then we have remote delay seconds so that means that when you start playing your song in Cubase okay when you start your playback VST connect will delay that playback by the amount of time that you specify right here in this this option now during that delay the playback is started internally in the cue mix is transferred to the performer via the control room VST connect cue mix channel now you can set that up to 0.5 to 5 seconds but it says in the manual that the sweet spot is going to be between point 75 - around 1.5 seconds now the HD recording bits is also only available on the pro version of VST connect and with that you'll be able to go from 16-bit to 24-bit and that will determine the amount of bits the the performer is going to record on this side because with the pro version the performer will have a copy or an original copy of everything that is going to record directly on his computer so this way you'll be able as a host to record only a achieve I would say a low-quality version of the signal again so it's easier on the connection and then you'll be able to get those high definition files and transfer and and downloading them directly into your session and this is very well done and we're going to talk about that later on when we'll get into a session with Simon it is a very cool feature and then we have to performer side if you want to check what is the the audio device he is using it's going to be listed right here and his buffer size also and then the audio upstream so that is the quality of the audio he is sending your way same for the video upstream and then you will see the video device he is using for as its webcam then we have is media input an output and the version of course a VST connect then we have the manager we're going to look into this later on when we are going to be into our recording session and also we are going to have the list of all the recordings right here under the recordings tab ok so this is what you get with the the Vista Connect Pro in Cubase now if we look at the VST connect performer which is free and this is something that is very very cool about this entire system is that the performer software is free to use the only thing that the performer will need is a free account on the Steinberg websites so he can connect directly online and start recording so this is a big advantage of using VST connect so this way you can collaborate with someone that doesn't work in Cubase so it's not a it's not mandatory to both be on Cubase which is nice okay now let's look at all the features we have here on the the interface itself it looks a lot like we have on the host side of things but let's look at a few few different things here that we have again we login you can find a user or connect with your friends and then if we click at the bottom we we still have the same type of options like we have on the host side so now we have D makes a console right here again this will allow you as a performer to set your mix levels in case you're monitoring levels and then you can also add some reverb that can be managed here by the performer itself and also of course by the host and then so if you want to use a reverb you make sure you activate your reverb and you can tweak the parameters of that reverb and add the amount of signal you are gonna send to that reverb by just bringing that small level up and down okay and this is quite nice also so it gives you a lot of control then if we look here we have the compressor also so if you want to record with a compressor or an EQ you can do so and on the host side the host in Cubase will be able to record the compressor and equaliser or not to record it which is also a good option then we have the inserts now the inserts will give you access to your VST plugins but to set that up we need to click right here at the bottom the show setup view okay and this is where we're going to have the main configuration like we we saw on the VST connect pro version but now we have the plug-in manager tab and this is what you have to open if you want to load some plugins some VST plugins that you have first you need to set up the path so you need to tell the performer where to go and look for your VST plugins' usually on Windows you're gonna find that folder under Program Files v and VST plugins' and then you can check for activate VST three plugins as well the next time you will load the VST connect performer the performer will scan that folder for plugins and then when you'll click on insert you are going to see all of your plugins that you will be able to choose from so let's go and open one of them I get our amp simulator and there you go so this way the cool thing is that the the guitar player would be able in this case to record his guitar directly through AmpliTube and then the host in Cubase is going to be able to record that effect also if he wants to and also on the top left of the performer window we have the VST instrument okay and this is where you'll be able to load your VST instruments this will allow you to use a virtual instrument for the recording and on the host side the person is going to be able to record your full signal the audio signal and also the MIDI signal we'll see that later on so let's go back into configuration and look at what we have we have the same same approach in same kind of settings and the parameters we've seen earlier with the VST connect pro on the Cubase so we have the audio device that you are using also your buffer size and if we look on the right side we have the HD projects folder this is the location where you are going to store your recordings locally on your computer so this way if the studio which is the host is working with VST connect pro he's going to be able to download those files doing so you'll be able to set your audio upstream to a lower quality and that might be a bit option if you don't have a good internet connection now if the studio works with VST connect se that means that the HD projects folder will not be available on the performers side so in this case the audio upstream will determine the audio quality of the recording and now we are going to connect with Simon walls a good friend of mine that is in Montreal where 4550 minutes away from each other so what I'm gonna do here is I'm going to open a VST cloud and click on VST Connect Pro create VST connect and I'm gonna open myself a VST connect session like we saw earlier I'm gonna connect to my account mysteinberg account and I'm gonna go and look for Simon and there he is I'm gonna double click put on my headphones and I think Simon is with us there you go hey Simon how are you there we go hello hello hey awesome this is cool okay so now Simon is using the performer version of VST connect while I'm using the Vista Connect Pro there are clean Cubase okay so we're gonna set up our session now I have directly on the the the Cubase window I have a performer rec track that was added directly the minute I I open an instance of VST connect so this is the track that I'm gonna use to record the audio with Simon now Simon is gonna play an acoustic guitar with two microphones okay so we're gonna use two mics and we're gonna record those microphones in mono okay each of them are going to be in mono now the thing is that we need to understand here with VST connect is when we're gonna record the signal the signal is going to be recorded in stereo so it's only going to be one stereo track and then you'll see what's gonna happen if I want to convert those at that recording into mono tracks I'm just gonna rename that to guitars there you go and if we look at the input we see that the input for that stereo audio channel is VST connect okay now a Simon we're gonna test our microphones okay now you hear yeah you can hear me well I hear you super well that's awesome that's cool I hear you perfectly on my end just like I'm not in the studio together the same thing there you go okay I have those those two channels here that I'm gonna use to record the signal that Simon is going to send me I'm gonna rename this one to Mike one and the second one to Mike - okay now I have access to all the inputs that Simon has on his end so the first one is going to be ideal device or one and the second channel I I'm gonna select audio device zero - okay so both are going to be mono there you go okay so let's try this up if you just want to play a bit of your guitar that would be great so I can just check the levels if everything is up to pace a little bit [Music] yeah that sounds good to me yeah yeah it sounds okay yeah okay so what I have here in my session just a basic drum loop that I worked on Simon is going to record some slide guitar on this loop and we're gonna build from that point [Music] awesome that's good it's perfect so Thank You Simon now let's convert those that recording into mono files because we activated those two recording buttons or lights right here on top of those channels and now we have the sum up of that recording in stereo and what I'm gonna do here on VST connect I'm gonna click on these settings the show setup View window I'm gonna go into the recording tab and this is where I'm gonna see my recording that I see here on my track and there's a small arrow I'm gonna click on and there you go now I have my two mono audio that I just recorded as you can tell sample rate 48 and both are mono so what I'm gonna do I'm gonna click on manager and all manager I'm going to see my audio event that I have right here in my session I'm going to see that version of the audio event directly into the manager tab now I'm going to click right here at the bottom right and click on get HD files and look what's gonna happen now Cubase has created two mono channels right here just under my main stereo guitar Channel and now I'm downloading the high-definition audio files from Simon's computer and this is a feature that is only available again on the pro version of VST connect and I really like this feature just because it's it's a very good way to smooth out your session while using VST connect just by recording some low quality versions of the audio to start with and then you can download all the high definition high quality audio in your session so this way you keep a very smooth session as far as the internet connection goes all right so now I have my mono signal right here so let's have a quick listen I'm going to mute the main one and just listen to those two those are those two tracks [Music] so there you go it sounds pretty good so not too complicated when you get a hold of everything with within VST connect so that's why I'm here with you showing you what you need to know to be able to run a smooth session with VST connect so on your side Simon how was a pretty smooth as in volume controlling everything I kind of knew where to put my input of the the microphone so I didn't have any I didn't have to touch the faders or anything I feel like the balance that you have on your side with music and everything was really good for me so I didn't have to touch anything and when I play that guitar I usually don't put a reverb on it when I track so I can hear what I'm really doing but that can be an option I mean yeah because you could you could have just used the reverb if you wanted to yeah exactly kind of like a no-brainer on my side pretty cool that's very cool so alright so there you go so now I have that to get the guitar tracks that we recorded with Simon and then I'm going to look for another musician that I can collaborate with to add to this recording and we'll see where this is gonna lead us okay now I am back with Jimmy my good friend Jim you probably saw him on one of my videos that I that I did a few months ago so I'm gonna link that on top if you didn't see Jimmy yet but yeah so we're gonna record some acoustic guitars on this piece of music and also an electric guitar now since my last session with Simon I actually modified a bit of the drum groove you know just to to fit better with what Jimmy is gonna is going to play so this way it changes the groove a bit you know but it's kind of cool so let's jump with Jimmy and start to do some recording so Jim you're all ready yep I am let's let's do with my friend guitar number two all right so now what we're gonna do here is to record electric panel with my good friend Matt now I'm gonna record the audio side with the regular regular audio track link to a VST connect input and also I'm gonna record the MIDI data okay and to do so it's very simple you create yourself a MIDI Channel and as an input you look for VST connect insert now matt has a VST I've is the instrument loaded on the performer side of VST connect and this way I'm going to be able to record the audio out of that vsti and also the MIDI data so if I want to change things around later on I'm gonna have the option to so let's do it my friend and start recording [Music] [Music] [Music] so there you go this is all you need to know to be able to run a remote recording session using VST connect in Cubase now let me give you my impressions on working with VST connect at first it wasn't very easy to get around there was a kind of a learning curve to it the manual wasn't that great also so it took me a bit of time to figure everything out and to be able to control with confidence VST connect but I have to say that it's an amazing tool for online collaboration for remote recording now this will not replace an actual on-site recording session and I don't think it was designed this way anyway but it will definitely gonna bring my collaboration projects to the next level so there you go my friend I hope you enjoyed the video and I hope this video is gonna be helpful for you now let me know in the comment section down below if you're planning on using VST connect or if you already worked with VST connect I would love to know about your experience working with it and also if you have any other questions related to mixing production Cubase and so on leave everything down below alright my friend stay safe take care and I'm gonna see you next time bye bye [Music] you

Channel: Chris Selim - Mixdown Online

Views: 38,078

Keywords: vst connect, how to use vst connect se, vst connect remote, musicians connect, create vst connect, remote recording, music collaboration tool, VST Connect Pro, online collaboration, how to use vst connect to record, recording tutorial, worldwide collaboration, online multi track recording, cloud recording, VST cloud, recording over the internet, remote recording solution, music collaboration, Remote recording, recording online, vst connect performer, vst connect 4

Id: yD6xIONaApg

Length: 35min 16sec (2116 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 28 2020