Cubase 5
Yup, it’s time to decide how brave you’re feeling and to maybe climb onto that upgrade ladder once again. Cubase 5 is coming with a load of new features designed to separate you from your beer money. In a nutshell, here are some of the highlights:
- Loopmash - a plug-in multi-track loop mixer / combiner thingie.
- Groove Agent One - a built in drum-machine / sample trigger.
- Beat Designer - a step-based rhythm programming tool.
- VariAudio - offline (in the wave editor) vocal tuning a la Autotune / Melodyne with time-stretching tools. Looks cool!
- PitchCorrect - a realtime pitch-correction plug-in.
- REVerence - a built-in convolution reverb plug-in complete with over 70 impulses. Nice.
- Better automation and midi controller data handling.
- VST Expression - tools to ease the pain of working with sample libraries with multiple articulations.
- 64 bit compatibility for Vista, lifting the 2GB limit!
- Total Export - track export selection options. Should be great for creating stems.
In all it looks like a fairly significant update, and it seems the tie-up with Yamaha has certainly yielded some fruit in the area of effects processing. Of course history tells us you’re a brave person to dive-in with a first release, but give it a few months (ok, maybe a few more than that) for the bugs to be ironed out and it may be an attractive upgrade. That attractiveness will probably depend on whether you already own plug-ins that do the job of many of the new features, or if you’re a ‘beats and loops’ kinda guy/gal (I’m not). You can check out a video of Cubase 5 in action from NAMM 2009 at AudioFanzine.
Update: Cubase 5 will cost £544.13 new, or £180.77 as an upgrade from Cubase 4 or, bafflingly, Cubase SX3. As a reasonably recent Cubase 4 owner that feels like a bit of a raw deal. Details in the Steinberg shop, or get it for cheaper at Dolphin.