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VI review Steinberg Cubase 4, $999.99 Cubase Studio 4, $499.99 www.Steinberg.net, distributed by www.Yamaha.com Formats: Mac OSX 10.4 (G4 or better) including Intel Macs, and <strong>Wind</strong>ows XP Home/Professional Copy protection: USB dongle (comes pre-licensed; upgrade requires online update) Steinberg Cubase 4 A look at the update to this massive sequencing package Review by Mark Jenkins 58 VIRTUAL INSTRUMENTS Steinberg’s Cubase digital audio sequencer is especially popular in its native Europe, but it also has a lot of users in the US. The program has undergone constant development for a lot of years, and that shows in the depth of its features and refinement. The last version of the massive Cubase sequencer was SX3, but now the SX prefix seems to have been quietly dropped, so the new revision is referred to simply as Cubase 4. There’s also a Studio version with a strippeddown feature set, a much lower price point, and an upgrade path to the full version. The fact that Cubase (as we’ll simply call Cubase 4 from now on) runs on both Mac and PC offers some flexibility, and a Steinberg USB key—omitted from some of the company’s simpler packages—is included. You’ll need a DVD drive to install, followed by an internet licensing procedure. As always with major revisions of complex sequencers, the manufacturer lists scores of updates (as well as updates to the way it handles scores), but the basic look and feel of Cubase has not changed very much in this Fig.1: The main Project window in Cubase 4 handles audio, external MIDI, and internal virtual instrument tracks with absolute equality. It can be made as plain or as multi-colored as you wish. revision. The same large Project window (Fig. 1) handles audio, external MIDI, and internal virtual instrument tracks with absolute equality, and can be made as plain or as multi-colored as you wish. A large Transport window can be positioned anywhere, helping to make the package ideal for use with dual monitor set-ups. But beneath the hood Steinberg claims 50 or more major revisions, and there are certainly many new virtual instruments and effects included, offering thousands of new sounds. Let’s take a look at some of these additions and revisions in more detail. Mixing and editing Cubase was always pretty flexible as regards final mixdown, but the addition of a new Control Room Mixer window (Fig. 2) will help interface the package better to the out-
Fig. 2: The new Control Room Mixer features Talkback and Headphone busses, External Inputs, and Control Room Monitor busses, all without having to leave the software. side world. Now there’s a Talkback and a Headphone buss, External Inputs and Control Room Monitor busses, assuming of course you have the external hardware to take advantage of all those. With up to four Studio Send busses per audio channel, the whole cosmetic appearance of the mixer (Fig. 3) has been sharpened up so it’s easier to read, and insert plug-ins can be copied from one channel to another simply using drag and drop. The individual preset name of the plug-in effect is also now visible (like “BigFlange6” rather than just the name of the effect). Some editing functions are also improved. In earlier versions of Cubase it was difficult to edit controller data alongside the related notes, so for example if you moved some notes you may have lost contact with the vibrato that accompanied them. Now notes and controllers can be edited together, which is a huge improvement. There’s a new Trim Tool to trim start and end points for multiple events, which is going to be useful for complex cues. A new Preferences setting allows event selection to select the relevant Track automatically. In fact there’s a whole new type of track too: the <strong>Instrument</strong> Track, combining a MIDI input and an audio output for VST instruments into a single track and mixer channel. One of the most confusing points of the old Cubase up to SX3 was that a lot of the mixer channels were doubled—for a virtual instrument you’d have one for its MIDI activity and effects, and one (often far removed from it) for its audio output and audio effects. This made it hard to pin down exactly where an instrumental sound was coming from, and made for big mixer displays too wide to fit on one or even two monitors. The VI review introduction of this new track type is a huge improvement. MIDI and VST There’s little change to the way the new Cubase handles MIDI except in the area of scoring. The settings dialog has been simplified and the score editor now has clearer icons. There are two new score fonts—”Jazz” and “Classic”—and song lyrics can now be imported from a MIDI file. In fact there are several improvements in the area of file and preset handling. MP3 Surround (which is compatible with MP3 stereo) can now be imported and exported, and a new media management system called MediaBay makes it much easier to search for and modify files and preset sounds within VST plug-in instruments via the “SoundFrame” Universal Sound Manager. Beneath the hood Steinberg claims 50 or more major revisions, and there are certainly many new virtual instruments and effects included. In other words, Cubase now accesses and searches the preset list of any virtual instruments in use, and also adds a preview function that if you select a looped sound, plays it at the current project tempo. The MediaBay browser can help search for audio loops and clips, MIDI Files, video files and entire Cubase project files on your system too. The greatest excitement though probably lies in the new Cubase VST (Virtual Studio Technology) instruments and effects. In fact the standard has now been revised to VST3, and some 17 original plug-ins having been updated accordingly. VST effects now include mono, stereo, and ping-pong delays, nine different dynamics controllers including compressor and expander plus vintage and multiband compressors, nine modulation effects including chorus and autopan, an octaver and tuner, plus mono-to-stereo and stereo enhancer routines. Fig. 3: With up to four Studio Send busses per audio channel, the whole cosmetic appearance of the mixer has been sharpened up so it’s easier to read, and insert plug-ins can be copied from one channel to another simply using drag and drop. The individual preset name of the plug-in effect is also now visible, rather than just the effect. VIRTUAL INSTRUMENTS 59
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