STEINBERG CUBASE 4
Feb 1, 2007 12:00 PM, BY GARY ESKOW
MORE STUFF
Recently, composer and author Gary Eskow has been experimenting with his first dance music productions. One of the the first of these tracks, Slither, was created entirely in Cubase 4. Listen to it here...slither_mix_emg.mp3
As the power of host computers expands, makers of native digital audio workstations (DAWs) greedily consume it by adding more features to their applications. Several years ago, users of Digital Performer, Logic and Cubase had to temper advertising claims with real facts. But the promise of native recording has been realized, and the next generation of quad processors will make this alternative to stand-alone and external DSP DAWs even more attractive.
Steinberg's latest, Cubase 4 (and its baby brother, Cubase Studio 4) offers tons of new features. Cubase Studio 4 includes all the features of Cubase SX3 minus surround sound, while Cubase 4 includes everything from SX3, as well as more plug-in support, encoding options and more. Steinberg dropped “SX” from the name to end the confusion it caused regarding Cubase's earlier versions. All the major DAWs have their own personalities and sets of advantages and disadvantages; Steinberg's have always been well designed and easy to learn with a visually pleasing work environment.
If you use SX3, you'll notice Cubase 4's distinctive new look. After working with it for several days, I came to appreciate Cubase 4's darker hue. Some may minimize the importance of color schemes, but when I'm working for four or five hours at a clip, the visual element is quite important, and Cubase 4's look is gorgeous.
MASS MEDIA
The MediaBay tools allow you to quickly scan and catalog all connected hard drives for audio and video files and are a critical component of Cubase 4. SoundFrame can find all of the sounds whose names contain a certain word and bring them up for auditioning. It takes getting used to, but understanding the architecture becomes simple when you work with the Media Management System. If you're handling audio and video files in a single project, you'll stay in the MediaBay, which searches all file types. Subsets of the MediaBay, such as the Loop Browser, focus on specific file types. The MediaBay's Tag Editor, a two-column, user-editable list of file attributes, helps you design a search environment that's best for you.
If you own a soft sampler with its own browser — for example, Native Instruments Kontakt — that you regularly audition sounds with, you may not take full advantage of the MediaBay, particularly if you like to call up a sample, tune it and perform other edits within that same soft sampler.
STARS OF TRACKS & PLUGS
Cubase 4 incorporates the new VST3 spec, which supposedly helps you reduce the draw on your CPU by applying signal processors only when the presence of an audio signal is detected. I'm sure there is value to this improvement, but Steinberg has not provided files that quantify the difference between VST2 and VST3. Over the course of working with Cubase 4 for 60 or 70 hours, I was unable to discern VST3's affect.
Cubase 4 comes with a host of synthesizers, a sample playback instrument and a set of effects, all of which incorporate a new feature called Track Presets. This amenity places presets for all of your soft synths into one central data bank. For example, you can click in the name area of a device and get a list of the presets for that specific device, or you can highlight an icon to enter the larger database. If you've chosen to enter the database, you'll have the option of finding presets by looking through a list of all of the different types of presets in your system that the particular instrument can handle.
That's cool, but currently this functionality makes you dump all the presets that you create into this single, large database. I'm told this is a limitation of the way older VST instruments work with the new VST3 spec, and it may change. I hope it does because I don't like being forced to work this way. If you create a Multi sound of a complete setup, for example, Cubase 4 forces you to save it within this cataloging structure. That is not a huge hassle, but I would like to have a configuration option that lets me retain file independence.
Track Presets let you save your own edited versions of sounds for later recall, which can be invaluable. They also let you save all of the track settings you've created. Using Instruments Tracks, you can even swap out the original plug-in and insert another one.
ROLLED INTO ONE
All of the major DAWs are moving away from an earlier paradigm that required separate tracks for MIDI and VST plug-in data in favor of a single track from which you can edit all parameters. Previous Cubase versions used the VST instrument rack, which is still an option in Cubase 4. When you load a soft synth or sampler into the VST rack, the application creates a MIDI track on the main project window and another in the VST folder. EQ and DSP plug-ins are applied within the VST track, while MIDI editing is performed inside one of the MIDI editors.
Working with two tracks for every plug-in chews up monitor real estate pretty quickly, even if you're creating track folders for different groupings. Cubase 4's Instrument Tracks clean things up nicely. Some will undoubtedly hold onto the familiar VST instrument rack way of working, but there's no practical reason for it. Not only are you able to create presets within an Instrument Track that include your preferred EQ and effects inserts and then swap out VST instruments, but you can also remove the instrument completely while retaining all of your MIDI data and settings as a way of conserving computer resources.
NEW MEMBERS IN THE ONE-APP BAND
We DAW owners have become quite greedy. Not only do we expect our recording platform to handle all audio and MIDI processes flawlessly, but we also want all the extras we can get, including a package of VST instruments. Logic, DP and Sonar 6 all provide a gaggle of soft synths and sample-playback devices. With Cubase 4, Steinberg antes up with four new virtual instruments: HALion One, a limited version of Steinberg's HALion virtual sampler with hundreds of instrument sounds; Prologue, a polyphonic analog-modeling synthesizer; Spector, a spectrum-filter synth; and Mystic, which combines physical modeling and spectrum filters to create textures.
In short, if you're operating on a budget, you'll appreciate the hundreds of presets found in each of these instruments. They earn passable grades, but serious pros who own a number of dedicated, high-quality soft synths and a software sample-playback/editing module will find them to be of limited value. Interestingly, Steinberg doesn't even cover them in Cubase 4's operation manual.
Much the same can be said about the package of audio plug-ins that ships with Cubase 4. If, for example, you already own a quality stereo image expander like the Waves S-1 Imager, you won't turn to Cubase 4's Spatial when you need to tweak the width of your stereo image. Otherwise, this plug-in will be very helpful, as will Cloner, the app's new doubler; and Flanger, Octaver and the new EQ plug-in, GEQ-10.
Speaking of which, I've always liked the EQ component of Cubase SX a lot. I heard that the basic EQ package of Cubase 4 was improved, but it was hard to tell. Regardless, I was able to get the results I wanted using the 4-band EQ on each channel — for example, sculpting out the low end of a bass guitar, highlighting its mids and reversing the process on the kick drum to create space for each — without ever turning to the GEQ-10.
SPECIAL INTERESTS
Many project studios lack isolation booths. For those without isolation booths, the inclusion of a feature set such as Control Room — which adds multiple headphone-mix capability, talkback functionality, the ability to switch between as many as four sets of monitors with the flip of a virtual switch and more — may not be important. But if you use your DAW as the front end of a true recording studio, you will embrace Control Room as a stunning addition to Cubase 4.
Configuring the Control Room to match your studio's requirements is simple; highlight the Studio tab in the VST Connections window to begin. All of the options you'd expect to find in a top-of-the-line hardware console — including the ability to integrate as many as six external devices (signal processors and tape decks), support for surround-sound monitoring and multiple insert points on all channels — are available in the Control Room corner. A maximum of four discrete mixes (designated as “Studios”) can be created, in case the drummer doesn't want to hear any of those washy string parts, the guitar player needs more cowbell, etc. Your engineering chops will be tested, but if you're up to the task, Control Room will allow you to shine in a live recording session. Control Room also has its own mixer, independent of the Project Mixer.
The Cubase SX score editor was always pretty good, but I did notice one Cubase 4 improvement that will come in handy for those who like to print parts from within the Score Editor: display quantize. Unless both note entrances and lengths are quantized, the resulting score can look like garbage. But if you don't want to mess up the feel you put on your keyboard part by quantizing it, display quantize lets you clean up the score without affecting your MIDI performance.
NOBODY'S PERFECT
Just about every time a major software application or upgrade is released, users on different systems run into problems and discover bugs, and I came across my share in Cubase 4 while putting it to work in real-world tests on a dance ballad called “I Won't Stop” and a trance/funk piece called “Slither.”
By and large, Cubase 4 did an excellent job handling all MIDI and audio tasks. The bottom line, in fact, was that I felt comfortable saving the pieces in the Cubase 4 format knowing that I could never go back and work on them in SX3. There were a few disconcerting application malfunctions, however, that I should point out.
For starters, the Audio Pool gave me some problems. I opened up “Slither” and saved it as a Cubase 4 file. Shortly thereafter, I began bouncing tracks to disk as WAV files so I could send them to a Pro Tools studio for mixing. For some reason, the first several audio files I created weren't visible, so I closed the app and navigated to the song's Pool files, and there they were. Going back to the song file, I decided to try to import the WAVs and was able to do so by importing them into the “Slither” Pool folder from its own pool folder. I know it doesn't make sense, but that's what happened initially. The problem disappeared and reappeared periodically. Each time, importing the files in that manner solved it.
Another Pool-related problem occurred when I decided to add an 8-bar bridge into “I Won't Stop.” I wasn't sure if this bridge would work and didn't want to erase the shorter files, so I created a new audio folder inside the Pool — exactly as the manual says to do — as a residence for the new audio files. After creating this folder and making sure it was selected as the default (a red dot lets you know which folder is active), I started recording. The first audio clip I recorded went into the original folder, the second into the target folder and all subsequent recordings went back into the original. Interestingly, a new audio clip named “Rhodes” did not erase the earlier “Rhodes” file. I concluded that the program was separating the files on some level, while the visual element was confused.
After automating volume moves on an East/West Symphonic Choirs patch in Touch Fader mode, I realized that the overall level of the track was too loud. I switched to Trim Mode to drop the level of the entire track by a decibel or two, only to discover that Trim Mode wasn't working.
Another disconcerting problem involved Group Tracks. I set up separate groups for Drums, Synths and Keyboards, and for a while, everything worked normally. Eventually, Group Tracks no longer worked; I could press the Solo or Mute button on the Drum Group strip in the Project Mixer, but the tracks being bused to that or any other group stopped responding to commands at a certain point.
The relationship between the new VST3 spec and older soft synths may be at the root of one other significant problem. I recorded an organ track using Native Instruments B4, dropped it to disk, but then had to redrop it because the engineer working on this track wanted me to send it to him with the B4's internal reverb turned off. Because I use an ancient Yamaha KX-88 that has limited ability to work with soft synths in MIDI Learn mode, I generally draw automation curves for MIDI tracks. Using this method, I was able to create a reasonably authentic Hammond performance with ample drawbar manipulations. Unfortunately, when I opened B4 again to play back the previously recorded MIDI data, the controller information — which had not been touched — produced a horribly distorted sound. The controller curves seemed fine in the Key Editor. Nonetheless, the playback was unusable, so I deleted all of the controller data and reprogrammed the drawbars before bouncing the track to disk again.
I also experienced weird glitches that appeared early on, only to vanish later. For example, when executing a punch-in on a track, every time I tried to record enable the track, the record-enable icon jumped seven MIDI tracks higher on the Project Window. All of a sudden, however, the problem was gone and never came back.
Some of these bugs may have had something to do with importing a Cubase SX3 file into Cubase 4. Steinberg's response was that the company is constantly working on bug fixes and that users should consult the online knowledgebase and other support options for the latest developments.
BOTTOM LINE
As far as music-making goes, we live in pretty good times, particularly for those of us relying on DAWs. Steinberg has historically produced user-friendly digital-audio sequencers loaded with many powerful features for serious users to tap into, and aside from a few bugs, Cubase 4 is no exception. Its complete feature set encompasses more than most users will even need, and it is without question an outstanding application. Cubase 4 is also visually pleasing and capable of helping you produce tracks of the highest standard.
To listen to the track “Slither,” which the author produced entirely in Cubase 4, go to remixmag.com.
STEINBERG
CUBASE 4 > $999.99
Pros: Slick new interface with many workflow features. New Instrument Tracks for virtual instruments. New instrument and effects VST3 plug-ins. Control Room section for pro-level studio use.
Cons: Some bugs associated with the update.
Contact: www.steinberg.net
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
MAC: G4/1 GHz or Intel Core/1.5 GHz; 512 MB RAM; OS 10.4; USB port for dongle
PC: Pentium or Athlon/1.4 GHz; 512 MB RAM; Windows XP Home/XP Pro; USB port for dongle
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