Steinberg Cubase 5

Cubase 5 is the fifth generation of powerful tools for recording. Almost two decades Steinberg have been gaining its perfect reputation and finally we get a new generation of capabilities for recording in Cubase 5! With its emphasis not only on technology and precision but also on user friendliness, usability and ergonomics, Cubase 5 provides you with all the tools helpful for recording your music. Nevertheless, Cubase 5 is even easier to use for both professionals and beginners than ever before.

You can now create a Tempo track and a Time Signature track in the Track List on the Project window, and edit Tempo and Time Signature events directly on these tracks.

Steinberg has brought the Virtual Keyboard from their Sequel 2 into Cubase, allowing you to use your computers keyboard as a MIDI input device. When Virtual Keyboard is enabled (from the Devices menu or by toggling Alt/Option-K), a new section of the transport panel shows a visual representation of what keys on your keyboard trigger the Virtual Keyboard.

A series of indicators underneath the Virtual Keyboard display shows you which octave youre playing, and you can adjust this range with the left and right cursor keys. A slider to the right of the Virtual Keyboard shows you the velocity level that will be triggered, which can be adjusted using the up and down arrow keys.

An alternate piano-roll display mode is also provided for the Virtual Keyboard, offering enhanced mouse control over a three-octave range and adding a few extra notes playable by the computer keyboard as well.

One more important feature is VariAudio, which makes it possible to detect and manipulate the individual notes of a monophonic audio recording directly in Cubases Sample Editor window.

To edit an audio recording with VariAudio, you simply open it in the Sample editor (usually by double-clicking an audio event on the Project window) and open the VariAudio section of the Sample editors Inspector to switch to this mode. Youll notice that the vertical amplitude scale is replaced by a piano keyboard, and a single waveform will be displayed, even if the audio event itself is stereo. In order to edit the individual notes, Cubase needs to analyse the audio and create so-called Segments, where each Segment will represent a single note in the audio. You can do this by enabling the Pitch & Warp mode in the VariAudio Inspector section.

VariAudio can be used for corrective editing as well, enabling you to easily fix the tuning of notes, or even iron out pitch deviations within a note, such as a singers vibrato. You dont necessarily have to adjust each Segment manually, thanks to two useful functions that proportionally adjust the currently selected Segments closer to an absolute state. Pitch Quantize gradually pulls a note closer to its identified pitch, while Straighten Pitch evens out the micro-tuning within the note that VariAudio detected.

Whats nice about VariAudios micro-tuning detection is the way the editor plots this information as a graph for each Segment, allowing you to easily see the pitch deviation within a Segment. VariAudio even allows you to go beyond simply straightening out this micro-tuning, so you can tilt the micro-tuning graph by dragging the top left or top right of a Segment, making it possible to easily apply a portamento from or to the next Segment.

Overall, Cubase 5 is a really fantastic update, and, compared to version 4, actually has musically useful new features that cater to many different groups of musicians. From major new facilities like VST Expression and VariAudio, to more workflow-oriented improvements like the batch export feature in the Export Audio window, which I didnt have space to discuss in more detail, allowing you to perform multiple exports of tracks or mixer channels with a single command, there really is something to make every Cubase user smile in this update.