Live audio with effects in Cubase

[Kanthos]

I'm sure this is easy to do, I just couldn't figure out how to do it.

I was playing bass last night and tried running the bass through my Edirol UA-25 audio interface and then into Cubase, with the intention that I could play on an audio track, have the audio track routed to Guitar Rig 3 for effects, and then have the output going either to the monitor/headphone output on the UA-25, to the UA-25's standard output, or (ideally) both. Obviously, Guitar Rig 3 is standalone, so I could just run it independently of Cubase if I'm playing live, but I'd want the setup the way I described it so that I can play with effects on (not that important for bass, but at some point I want to play around with wah saxophone, recording both the audio and MIDI data for the pedal) and hear what I play with the effects as I play it.

What actually happened was that Cubase was able to record the bass part successfully if I armed the track for recording, and the peak meter on the audio track was recognizing the input audio signal if I wasn't recording, but I couldn't get any sound output as I played, although if I'd recorded the part, I could play it back.

Anyone know how to do this? I imagine someone here has tried recording with effects? Or does everyone use physical effects boxes and just record the final signal, so hearing it monitored doesn't matter?

[SnappleMan]

You mean you want to use Cubase in a live situation? This is completely doable, but it's limited to the number of audio output channels your interface has. All you have to do is create a new audio track in a cubase project, add all your effects and what not, and then you hit the audition button (next to the Arm For Recording button on the track properties bar). This will let you play live audio through that track with all your effects on it, and it gets automatically routed to the output channel. You can do this with as many tracks as your interface has channels, just create more tracks and route them to use the seperate I/O channels, you can then have them all output through the same out bus, or you can route them independently (if your interface supports that) and run each to its own PA, but you probably wouldn't need that anyway.

[Kanthos]

Sounds like the audition button will do what I want. I think my audio interface only supports one output, which is fine since I'd only be using one thing at a time, or if I was recording an instrument with effects to add to an existing mix, I'd want to hear the mix as well as the new instrument anyway.

Thanks for the help!

[Fray]

You'll have to deal with the usual stability vs. latency tradeoff of course.