HOW TO ADD AN AUDIO INPUT BUS IN CUBASE
Today we are going to learn how to create audio inputs in Cubase. Let’s imagine, for example, that you have an 8-channel audio interface, and you want to record a drummer’s performance.  You will mike the drum pieces with eight microphones, and you need the audio signals to be recorded simultaneously, each one routed to one channel of the audio interface.  How to do that?
- Open a new project in Cubase and create eight mono audio tracks for each drum piece. Then click on Devices > VST connections (or just press F4):
2. Click on the ‘Inputs’ tab. Notice that Cubase has configured a stereo in bus, which is divided into left and right channels. If you click on any of the device ports, Cubase will display the available audio interface channels as seen below:
In the picture above, the audio interface has 8 analog, 16 ADAT and 2 SPDIF inputs. We want to use the eight analog inputs right now, so we need to create busses to them, otherwise when you add an audio track to your project, you will have just the 2 existing channels available:
3. Click on F4 to open the VST Connections and notice that Cubase has assigned the audio interface’s channels 1 and 2 automatically to the default Stereo In bus:
4. We won’t need the stereo in bus in this project. We are going to add 8 mono input channels. To do that, just click on ‘Add Bus’. A new popup will appear:
Choose ‘Mono’ in the Configuration option and 8 on the Count. Click ‘OK’.
5. Notice that Cubase has created eight new inputs:
6. Now we have all eight analog inserts from the audio interface already routed to the DAW. Since we don’t want to use the Stereo In, we can remove the bus from the project by right-clicking on the ‘Stereo In’ and choose ‘Remove bus’:
7. Notice that Cubase has assigned the eight analog inserts to each new bus:
You can freely rename each insert bus as you wish. Try to change ‘Mono In’, ‘Mono In 2’, etc. to ‘Channel 1’, ‘Channel 2’ and so on, for example:
8. You can save this configuration as a preset, so you don’t need to start the process all over again on a new project. Just click on the’+’ icon at the right of the ‘Presets’ option:
Choose a name for your preset and click ‘OK’.
9. Back at your project, when you click on the input bus of each track, you can route the desired audio interface channel:
That’s it! Now you can route each mic on the drum set to the respective audio insert.
Happy productions!
