By bduffy
On 15th May 2006
Version: 3
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This is only the second review ever of Cubase! Incredible.
Cubase SX 3 will probably go down in the books as the most deceptive update in Cubase’s history. Often billed as the “2.5” update, the worth of the changes and restoration of older features aren’t as immediately obvious as the update from SX 1 to SX 2, say, and some of the most important features have been added via small patch updates.
Steinberg tightened up the look for Cubase a little bit, but it remains basically the same as SX 2 – which made for less confusion after updating; I thought the interface was already bang-on, so small changes are appreciated here. Right away, I liked how Audio Channels, MIDI Channels, Groups, etc have different colours in the VST Mixer, something that drove me nuts about earlier Cubase versions! Colour in general has become more flexible in Cubase; you can change Cubase’s whole colour scheme, there is a bucket, automatic track colouring, etc. All very welcome features.
The keyboard shortcuts are just wonderful; there is so much control; anything can be assigned to anything, and I like Cubase’s Key Command dialogue the best out of any program: it’s the only one I can think of that gives you ample room to read the commands and lets you search easily for the commands. Changing Key Commands in Cubase is easy and effortless; I often change commands on the fly, even while recording – it’s that easy. People often wonder why we’re still using Cubase, and this is one of the reasons Cubase users stay loyal. Remember: Cubase had this feature long before others were even thinking about it! Another feature that keeps Cubase users coming back it the VST Mixer: this sucker feels like a real console. I’ve always loved how you can use the arrow keys to speed along from track to track and to turn up/down track levels, or you can cut and paste from one channel to another with hotkeys. Even without a control surface, it “feels” more like a mixer, and the graphics help too. It looks like a physical mixer, but has it’s own, original software-look to it too. No big changes here, except there is a greatly expanded Key Command set for the mixer, something I need to explore more.
A bigger addition to v3 is the Audio Quantize feature; as soon as I got this installed, my mission was to remix something. I grabbed a track from the 80s and brought it into Cubase and started messing around with the Audio Quantize feature: this allows you to set Hitpoints in a wave file and freely move the song’s beats to new positions, and the gaps are automatically stretched to match. It took a bit of time to do a whole song, but it works very well, and I could change my mind about tempo and make time changes, with the original song following along. Very nice for remixes and, I imagine, for correcting errors in live performances. Hugely powerful feature and I really welcome this.
Another great new feature is the Playback Order editor. You can now define portions of your song as verses, choruses, etc and change the playback order virtually, in real-time and hear those changes right away – without altering the timeline! This is a real godsend to someone like me, who works with multimedia productions that can change very quickly, and for trying out different things with my band’s song that I’m stuck with arranging! Amazing innovation here.
Many people will appreciate the enhanced Freeze function. Steinberg’s first attempt at freeze in SX 2 was pretty shoddy – the freeze file would bounce down the entire length of the project, even if the file has a different length! Now, it’s much more reasonable, and you can choose to keep the freeze files after unfreezing. You can also freeze insert FX, freeing up resources. Also they’ve included “In-Place” editors in the Track View; you can edit a MIDI channel’s Key Editor (Piano Roll) right underneath the track! Just assign a Key Command to “In-Line Editor” and you’ll speed MIDI editing up immeasurably.
I don’t have any external effects to patch through Cubase, but an important feature to mention is that you can use external effect gear AS INSERTS and SENDS in Cubase, and not only that, but it will do instant recall with these effects as if they were internal VST FX. This could really make things interesting in a studio, increasing the chance that the sound you laboured over for hours can be reproduced if you need to restore a session. Yamaha’s acquisition of Steinberg seems to be accelerating the development of these features, which I’m sure will be well received by professionals.
All in all, this is an excellent, stable upgrade to Cubase. I still think that nothing does what Cubase does, matching its staggering amount of features and quality. Even though I can see some places for improvement (most notably in routing flexibility), I can’t imagine using anything else. |
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