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VI review Fig. 4: The Prologue analog-style synth. erful EXS24 sample player built in. Fig. 5: Spector is a spectrum filter synth, one of These new VST instruments have more than 1,000 instrument sounds, drum kits, and the new instruments included with Cubase 4. While most of these are familiiar, the VST effects to offer, so it’s becoming increasingly instruments are completely new. Prologue possible to compose entirely using internal compliant, meaning that it runs on PowerPC (Fig. 4) is an analog-style synthesizer, Spector instruments rather than having to spend and Intel Macs. (Fig. 5) is a spectrum filter synthesizer, and more money adding plug-in instruments. New additions such as the Control Room Mystic is an impulse/comb filter synthesizer. Steinberg obviously still has other soft instru- Window and the Media Bay/SoundFrame These are all based on individual pages of the ments available—their high-quality Steinberg browser (Fig. 6) combination for searching and flexible Steinberg D’Cota softsynth, and offer Grand piano for example—but particularly at accessing the presets of VST instruments and various numbers of oscillators and sound syn- the price of a package like Cubase 4, it’s only effects running within Cubase should speed up thesis techniques together with hundreds of reasonable to expect to find a wide range of the work process considerably. On the subject preset sounds, promising much greater syn- powerful instrumentation included. of speeding workflow, for those who like to use thesis power than the simpler A1 and other key commands as much as possible and avoid analog-style synths built into earlier version of Progression the use of the mouse, Cubase 4 has a com- Cubase. Steinberg has made a lot of progress with pletely revised set of key commands; Halion One in contrast is a stripped-down Cubase 4. A full printed handbook is now Deactivate All Solo and Unmute All are going version of Steinberg’s Halion sample playback supplied, not just a set of PDF files on disk, to be particularly useful, as are being able to software. This is a very simple instrument with and between this clearly written 600-page select altenative mixer views and open the envelope attack and decay, filter cutoff and monster and the 75 pages of Getting Started Control Room, MediaBay, SoundFrame, and resonance settings, however its “ROM” info, Cubase 4 is not going to be difficult to Loop Browser windows quickly. sounds come from the Yamah Motif key- understand. The cosmetic appearance has And if you want to limit the budget a little? boards. This helps put Cubase 4 more on a changed, but not all that much (the new VST Cubase Studio for around half the cost offers par with Apple Logic 7, which offers the pow- instruments look pretty sleek though, and many of the new improvements. It comes rather similar to their Apple Logic equivalents) without the Spector and Mystic instruments, and some major annoyances such as the split- Surround facilities, or full MediaBay searching, Fig. 6: The Soundframe browser, which is functing of mixer channels between the MIDI and and it has fewer VST effects. But it includes tionally much like Native Instruments’ Kore, makes audio facilities of virtual instrument tracks the Halion One sample player and Prologue it easy to manage and categorize large libraries of have been eliminated. Most importantly, analog-style synth, and it has similar multi- sound by name. Cubase 4 is Universal Binary/Intel Mac OSXtracking and scoring abilities. 60 VIRTUAL INSTRUMENTS Score? Cubase works smoothly and reliably without any needing any settings in the background, and many of the layout aspects that were less than perfect—such as the channel split between MIDI and audio facilities of virtual instrument tracks—have now been removed. The new VST instruments in Cubase 4 are powerful and flexible, and having a built-in sample-playing instrument is a massive bonus. Users on a limited budget can readily upgrade from Cubase Studio, while users on an unlimited budget can one day upgrade to the even more audio/visually-oriented Steinberg Nuendo. Cubase 4 is a strong candidate for either Mac or PC users as the center of any recording studio. VI
andom tip Importing Yamaha DX-series patches into Native Instruments FM8 It’s hard to imagine anyone who worked with music technology in the 1980s and didn’t own a Yamaha DX-series instrument at one time or another, most likely a DX-7. That means many of us have old projects that use those sounds. It also means that billions of people were programming sounds for DX instruments, and a lot of those sounds are still very good (never mind that a lot of them are also still very bad). Native Instruments FM7 and FM8 have a great feature: the ability to import DX-series sounds and play them back at 2006 sound quality. Fortunately getting those sounds into FM8 (or FM7) is a lot easier than choosing which ones to import. FM8 can accept System Exclusive (SysEx) Data from Yamaha’s DX7, DX7II and DX200 synthesizers and convert them into its own parameter format. There are two approaches; which one you choose will depend on whether or not you already own a DX series synthesizer. A. Connect your DX-series synthesizer to your computer via a standard MIDI interface. In stand-alone mode (rather than using it as a plug-in) FM8 will automatically receive any MIDI SysEx data, in other words the sounds just go in over MIDI. Single Presets go into the edit buffer and you must save them manually; Banks are converted into .ksd files and are saved automatically. It’s not possible to receive SysEx data via MIDI when running FM8 as a plug-in due to the current limitations of the plug-in standards. B. Load SysEx data from a file. To do this, simply click on the Import SysEx button in the File menu, navigate to a compatible SysEx file, and open it. Note that SysEx files will have a .syx extension under Windows. On the Mac, it’s usually a good idea to add this extension to the file before attempting to import it. VI 1. First choose “Import SysEx” from the File menu 2. FM8 converts a DX7 SysEx bank to the .ksd format 3. The converted DX7 SysEx bank appears in the KoreSounds browser for use in FM8. VIRTUAL INSTRUMENTS 61
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Page 18 and 19: VI feature Let’s Make Some Noise!
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Page 60 and 61: VI review Steinberg Cubase 4, $999.
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