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Steinberg
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Steinberg offers the best tools for both aspiring and professional musicians, producers and engineers, being there for them throughout their journey in music and sound. We continue to invest in improving our internal infrastructure and a workplace culture that allows us to excel in catering for the needs of all areas of the company. We aim for a holistic approach to our product portfolio, that covers the entire workflow of music production. We deliver a complete service package around our products that truly sets us apart. Our Purpose is to deliver the best products and services to those on a creative audio journey.

Steinberg stands for quality and great service for those interested in recording, composing and producing music. Choosing us for the best audio experience available, our customers know and value the consistent product and service delivery that is the foundation of the trust between us. It defines our shared future and vision. Our Vision is for you to express your creativity with us.

Products by Steinberg

Latest reviews of Steinberg products

Model-E

Reviewed By Warkauze [all]
February 22nd, 2024
Version reviewed: 1.0 on Windows

This is a solid analog synth, and is definitely worth a try especially since it is free. While not the most impressive functionally, the sound and the UI make it quite a fun synth to have.

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Cubase Pro 13

Reviewed By rigidigi [all]
December 18th, 2023
Version reviewed: 13.0.02 on Mac

Presently trialling the Demo. Quite similar here - apart from thre common complaints abur plugin compatibility, UI redesign etc - stability is a very mixed bag in my experience & also hard to track down. Is not consistent & same project may load or crash and FWIW, in trying to change the sample rate. On macos Sonoma 14.2 or Monterey 12.7.2.

One thing that helped me a little - installing and auto-importing C12 prefs is a dog's breakfast. I got closer to better behaviour in ditching those prefs and building C13 prefs from scratch (if a little lengthy & boring). Still, the sudden hang can be still there - variously: opening a previously saved C13 project, or importing a C12 project.or importing a Nuendo 12 project. I guess one of the upsides is that there is a two month window on the 13.0.02 demo, however time-wasing. Perhpas it migth settle down but so far, no. Another update I suspect.

MacPro 7,1, 16 core, 192GB, MacOS 14.2, Vega II Duo. Apollo x8, UAD-2, Antelope Pure 2, Antelope Orion 32+. RAID-4 Thunderbay 6, RAID-0 Sonnet M.2 4x4.

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SpectraLayers Pro 10

Reviewed By Johnebuckle100 [all]
November 22nd, 2023
Version reviewed: 10.0 on Windows

Amazing product. Everything I was expecting and much more. There are so many applications for this from disecting and analyzing tracks to effecting minor and major repairs. It take a lot of the fear out of tracking when you know that the perfect take even if marred by something unexpected and unwanted can be seamlessly fixed.

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Dorico Pro

Reviewed By Christian_R [all]
September 29th, 2023
Version reviewed: 5 on Mac

Dorico is a fantastic and revolutionary software to notate, engrave, play and print music. In every aspect of music notation the Dorico Team (that previously developed Sibelius) was able to invent a workflow that is perfectly suited for the composer who want to be able to compose in the fly directly into the software. The note input and editing functionalities are truly revolutionary. You can also use the Dorico SE version FREE! And then decide later to upgrade. I strongly recommend Dorico 5 to all composers, arrangers, music teachers, and also amateurs. You will love it.

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Cubase Pro 13

Reviewed By Milkman [all]
June 29th, 2023
Version reviewed: 12.0.60 on Windows

Ive been using Cubase since 1999, as well as many other plugins, processors, tools, FX, instruments, hardware synths, etc. I have built and supported live production environments at large Sports & Entertainment venues, as well as built networks, servers, desktops, and embedded systems throughout my 30+ year tech career. I've also used Reason, Fruity Loops, and Live, but very little.

That being said, I have had a 20+ year love/hate relationship with Cubase and Steinberg that has finally ended, and it ended on the hate side of things today. I've built and rebuilt 6 workstations for use with Cubase starting in roughly 2000 (when the Core2Duo first released and Steinberg began its long history of being unable to manage multithreaded/HT DSP), ending in 2022 with the final workstation. I've also used 2 laptops for Cubase. Ive used version sx2 through professional 12.0.60.

Cubase Pro offers a very robust set of features and tools out of the box and represents a DAW that was once king of the industry - and still could be with proper QA, development, and customer support. Cubase's UI/UX is top notch, with MIDI and audio routing systems that set the standard for other DAWs that came after, not to mention the high quality of the internal signal path, native DSP plugins, MIDI timing, etc etc. Cubase really has so much under the hood, it is mind boggling.

Here is the reason I give this DAW (And Steinberg) 2 stars, despite everything that is positive about their software, and despite the 20+ years I spent with it: Steinberg QA and Steinberg customer service, as well as the inherent instability of Cubase.

If you've used Cubase much at all in the last 20 years, you know what I mean about multithreading/hyperthreading issues, and you also know what I mean about customer service. (2 months+ for email replies, public denial of major issues on their forums, shifting the blame to customers).

I spent YEARS trying to work with Steinberg to determine WHAT HARDWARE PLATFORM they recommend for a stable Cubase workstation host, and yet they never offered a "supported hardware" list and let users figure out which platforms (MB chipset + CPU combination + power management features like speedstep) the hard way. So I spent *years* tweaking systems, removing all of their CPU power management features (resulting in higher power use), altering, disabling, and reenabling hyperthreading, rebuilding machines to make sure I did my diligent testing and troubleshooting FOR Steinberg, all the while dealing with projects that always crashed on exit, projects that randomly crashed, and the occasional file corruption that would result in a rebuild.

I spent HUNDREDS of hours of my own time trying to find the magic combination of hardware that would remove the dreaded "ASIO internal overload" issue caused by Cubase's inability to manage multithreaded audio, and what did Steinberg do for me, the paying customer, that entire time?

Steinberg FOUGHT me, they denied my issue on the forum despite 1000s of others reporting the same issue, they claimed "you are all alone - the only one really reporting this issue" back in 2018, and then their moderator "Steve" disabled my account when I became extremely angry about the way they were handling this. I went from being a die-hard Cubase user and proponent, to a bitter, angry, unproductive musician and I spent the next few years... not making much music and feeling extremely frustrated because Cubase was my only DAW.

Then I built a new machine in 2022, and found that Cubase 12 now finally performed perfectly, despite that machine having many of the same features that caused cubase to overload and pop/glitch the audio stream on earlier machines. Then Cubase 12 crashed during one of my projects and corrupted its licensing process, leading to high CPU every time Cubase was ran.... and....

I rebuilt the machine again, installed Bitwig 4, spent the next month using ALL my spare time learning Bitwig, and you know something? After a decade or more of frustration, YEARS worth of back-and-forth in email and on their forums, abuse from their moderators, etc?? Forgive my French but FUCK Cubase! More importantly, FUCK Steinberg for the years of stress and frustrating music production. I became connected to Cubase emotionally (it was my instrument) and so I kept dealing with stress I normally would not have, but now I have a new DAW and I'll never look back. Bitwig is 100% more stable than Cubase already, in my identical environment, with my identical hard and software libraries. Its more stable on any PC or laptop we own, where we have to carefully pick and choose to see if Cubase will work or not.

Steinberg customer service is THE WORST, and their inability to manage modern, multi-threaded audio is the reason for the CLAP protocol being developed, which may replace VST some day. The frustration with Cubase being unable to handle multithreading led to CLAP, and this should inform any new digital musician seeking a DAW -- Cubase/Steinberg are a dead-end today, and the level of dishonesty Ive seen from them about the issues in their platform is the icing on the cake.

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HALion 7

Reviewed By Don Deluxe [all]
March 13th, 2023
Version reviewed: 7 on Windows

If I was told that I could only use one plugin for the rest of my life, I would choose Halion (immediately and without question).

This immensely powerful, complex and deeply misunderstood instrument has everything you need to create...whatever it is you create. The sampler is deep and its stock collection of sounds is outstanding.

The quality of life improvements in version 7 make it a bit easier to use (NO MORE DONGLE).

FM lab is immense, X-LFO is great fun, and the spectral resynythesis engine is insane (the new timestretch algorithm rivals the best in the industry). The wavetable and granular synths are still stellar, and direct sampling has vastly improved throughout the years.

Halion is not an intuitive instrument. It demands time and patience to learn. Get comfortable with the manual, because you're going to need it. Keep it close and spend time with it.

FM Lab might be the best FM soft synth ever created.

It will deeply reward those who choose explore learn it. You can define your career with it.

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Cubase Elements 13

Reviewed By ebsynth [all]
October 11th, 2022
Version reviewed: 12 on Mac

Downloading and installing Cubase Elements 12 on MacOS requires at least 9.33 GB of disk space when including the required application and recommended libraries Halion Sonic SE 3 and Groove Agent SE 5 sample and loop libraries. Additional libraries and loops can also be downloaded if the user so wishes. All this can be easily managed using the Steinberg Download Assistant and Steinberg Activation Manager applications. The Steinberg Library Manager application allows the user to do custom installs of the libraries, samples and loops ... on an external disk for instance.

Steinberg is moving away from the USB-eLicenser system which means that you can now activate your single user license online and use it on three different computers. See https://www.steinberg.net/licensing/. Using the same MySteinberg ID that you used for downloading Cubase, you can also join Steinberg forums at https://forums.steinberg.net to discuss further software-related issues.

Being an erstwhile Logic user, one evident missing feature was not being able to use virtual instruments that only existed as their VST executables. So, it was mainly for this reason that I decided to purchase Cubase 12 Elements at a very tempting price point i.e. with a 40% discount. It turns out that the VST exclusive virtual instruments that I wanted to use were all in their 32-bit versions so they were useless anyway (read: they had to be purged from my MacBook Pro running Big Sur.) Nevertheless, I did some preliminary tests to get some idea of Cubase's workflow. This review then, is limited to the workflow in my MIDI home studio.

My first test was to integrate my MIDI hardware synths. This was very straightforward for most of my synths since Cubase Elements already contained configuration files for many classic prominent synths like the Yamaha DX7II, Korg Wavestation, Clavia Nord Lead, Roland JD-800 etc. However, in the case where a patch script (in Cubase parlance) did not exist for certain MIDI hardware, I had to search the internet for these files. For this literally hundreds of patch scripts could be found in the downloads section of rivetedstudios.com. Adding the necessary scripts to the /Applications/Cubase*/Contents//scripts/patchnames/inactive/* folder was easy enough requiring administrative permission. However, after relaunching Cubase and attempting to "Add MIDI Device" in the MIDI Device Manager, the newly added patch scripts were not recognized by my Cubase installation. I am looking into this issue in the Steinberg forums.

It was also not possible to set up an external MIDI instrument like a virtual one since the "Audio Connections" dialog box did not have an "External Instrument" tab in the Elements version.

With regards to setting up external MIDI keyboards for specific compositions, recording Sys-Ex dumps seemed impossible. Consulting the Operations Manual, this setup requires that you uncheck the SysEx boxes in the Preferences —-> MIDI —> MIDI Filter dialog box. Setting up custom patch banks was now easy.

Recording MIDI tracks using external synths was straightforward and rendering their respective sounds on to a separate audio track also went smoothly when routing audio outputs from the synth via an external sound card into the DAW.

Configuration scripts for well-known external MIDI controllers like Arturia Keylab, Korg nanoKontrol. Akai MPK and Novation Launchkey are also included in the software.

Navigating the timeline using key commands was easy enough using the "B" (back to the beginning of a segment) and "N" keys to the end of a segment. Shift-N was then required to proceed to the next segment. The "G" and "H" keys could be used to expand and contract the timeline. Without going into further details of the key commands my one complaint was proceeding backwards and forwards in bar length increments or triggering "Record" on an armed track could only be done using a numeric keypad with Num lock enabled. I was obliged to use the mouse pointer on the Transport bar for these operations since the Num Lock function does not exist on my MacBook Pro.

Creating Instrument tracks from both VST and VST3 collections was seamless. Tracking using external keyboard controllers was also a breeze.

Even though I have highlighted a couple of persistent glitches above, I considered my money well spent.

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Cubase Pro 13

Reviewed By Boy Wonder [all]
June 9th, 2022
Version reviewed: 12.0.30 on Windows

I'm an old school Cubase user going back about 25 years. Even though it was my favorite DAW, its instability caused me to look elsewhere (Studio One). Version 12, however, appears to have been cut from a different cloth. Extremely full-featured, it nevertheless has been as steady as a rock - mostly. There's been the occasional lockups when trying out new plugins, but generally, I'm able to get a lot of work done without pulling out my hair because of crashes.

Cubase 12 has everything I need - scoring, snap to scale, alternative scales, impressive effects, VariAudio, sampler, ASIO-Guard, etc. I can go on and on. I'm glad that, with Cubase 12's new complexity, its workflow is still silk-smooth. There's nothing worse than having a workflow stymied by extra hoops you have to jump through.

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