Steinberg announces Cubase 5 and Cubase Studio 5

Steinberg Media Technologies has announced a major new update to its Cubase Advanced Music Production System and Cubase Studio Music Production System products. Cubase 5 and Cubase Studio 5 offer a host of new capabilities including new beat creation tools, an integrated vocal pitch editing toolset, extended composing features, a convolution reverb as well as many other workflow and technological enhancements, including full support for Windows Vista 64-bit Editions. Cubase 5 and Cubase Studio 5 will be shipping in February 2009*.

"This major release is a milestone in the history of Cubase," comments Kazunori Kobayashi, Steinberg's Managing Director. "In 2009, Steinberg can look back on over 25 years of creating software with the aim of supporting musicians, composers and producers in realizing their artistic dreams. Cubase 5 represents the apex of this development, incorporating not only all the engineering know-how but also the many years of working with our customers that have been key to Cubase becoming the world's most popular music production software", Kobayashi adds.

Steinberg's Cubase Marketing Manager Helge Vogt comments on the new features. "We've added important new features in five areas that are essential to modern music production. Firstly, we've come up with a new set of beat creation tools that focus on beats, rhythms and grooves, which are fundamental to most genres. These include the revolutionary LoopMash** VST instrument developed with Yamaha, the Groove Agent ONE drum sampling plug-in as well as Beat Designer, which all cover different aspects of getting the perfect groove going." Cubase 5 also offers a new toolset designed for working with vocals. "Our new vocal pitch editing tool is called VariAudio**, which is integrated directly into the Sample Editor," Vogt continues, "and we've also added a new VST3 PitchCorrect plug-in based on Yamaha Pitch Fix technology, that corrects intonation automatically."

Songwriting and composition features have also seen significant enhancement in Cubase 5, with the new VST Expression technology, which assists in controlling musical articulations, radically simplifying work with large orchestral libraries for symphonic or film scoring. The brand new REVerence** VST3 convolution reverb and a new handling system for automation add additional tools for mixing.

Cubase 5 and Cubase Studio 5 also see a range of workflow and technological enhancements. "We're pleased to offer full support for Windows Vista 64-bit editions, which allows Cubase to address up to one terabyte of RAM. That's great news for anyone using larger sample libraries," says Vogt. Multiple improvements to the MediaBay sound management system and editing windows, new recording features and an advanced Batch Export are among the many additional new features in Cubase 5.

Pricing

• Cubase 5: €599.00*** (Update from Cubase 4 or Cubase SX3: €199.00***).
• Cubase Studio 5: €399.00*** (Update from Cubase Studio 4 or Cubase SL3: €129.00***).

* Dates of availability may vary regionally.
** Available only as part of Cubase 5.
*** Suggested Retail Price, includes 19% German VAT. Prices may vary regionally.