Cubase 5 My Review(s)

[braincell]

When it first arrives, you notice how heavy the box is. It comes with a 672 page manual and another 208 page getting started manual. The plugin synthesizers and effects are not included in the manuals, they are in the PDF help tab. The installation takes a while. It is 4 DVDs. Two of them are the 90 day Halion Symphonic Orchestra 16 bit demo. I didn't get to trying that yet and I will cover it in another review in this thread. Before you put the first DVD in, get the latest Syncrosoft software and select "Download License". Enter the long Cubase 5 code and the Halion Symphonic Orchestra code (if you want to begin using it).

Today I spent mostly using the "VariAudio" function in the Sample editor. It is similar to Auto-Tune although I haven't used Auto-Tune so I could not tell you how it compares. I found this function to be very good and easy to use. Even if you change the pitch by an octave, it still sounds fairly natural. You can vary the amount of pitch correction a little or a lot. At the highest setting it sounds like the overused Auto-Tune effects in techno and hip hop recordings. You can also export the audio as a midi file (select "functions"). I was skeptical about this but it worked perfectly. There is also a plugin which has a similar function to "VariAudio", it is called "pitchcorrect". This is a simplified version of the same thing but it also offers formant controls. Both methods allow you to use a keyboard to alter the pitch if you wish.

I briefly tried Groove Agent One. It's a drum machine with the controls you would expect. The filter sounds good to me. You have to drag files in from a track or the audio pool. If you slice a part in the editor with "hitpoints", it will assign each slice to a different pad. Of course you can play it from a midi keyboard or drum pads. Initially, I didn't like the REVerence convolution reverb. I like it more now. In the attached example you can hear one of the halls followed by a similar patch in the RoomWorks reverb. I adjusted the later to sound as close as possible to REVerence.

Hear the results:

1. Loop unaffected
2. Pitch Correction
3. More Pitch Correction
4. Extreme Altered Pitch
5. Loop With MIDI Exported to Halion Soprano Sax
6. REVerence Reverb
7. RoomWorks Reverb

In the image the red part is selected. You can see I set the "straighten pitch" option to about 90%. The last part shows it at 100%.

Final note: Several times I got a message that there was a critical failure but I just kept using it and nothing bad happened.

[bassdude]

Interesting.
2. Pitch correction has had quite an impact on the sound. You can certainly here the pitch correction and also some weird artifacts in the tail right at the end. I also haven't used autotune so i can't compare to that. But I do use melodyne which does a very good job IMO. You probably wouldn't be able tell the difference in a full mix anyway!

[Throttler]

nice one.

How's the VST performance? Is it a cpu eater ?

[braincell]

I can not tell you how it is with the CPU because I just built a new Core 2 Quad computer.

[braincell]

I made a nice discovery today.

When you use the Media Browser to search for drum loops, it creates a track for that loop which plays on the "Groove Agent" drum machine, however that track has no information on it other than the name of the loop in the inspector window. Now solo that track and export it as a midi file, then import the midi file and select the Groove Agent as the midi output. Now you have the same loop but you can edit the midi, create new patterns etc..

The drum loops are very nice but there are not thousands of them. I guess they want you to buy more.

[braincell]

It maps to the Groove Agent but I don't know what you mean by correct mapping. I forgot to mention the loops automatically adjust to the tempo of the current song.

When you select a loop, it automatically opens groove agent and those samples are put in it.

Update:

I figured it out. You import the MIDI to the same track as the groove agent then deselect "beat designer" from the inspector window and yes they map perfectly and can be edited etc..

[braincell]

Yes I just posted 1 second after you. Read above.

I just closed it and opened it and all is fine so they did fix that problem at least with this free Cubase 5 Groove Agent player.

Update: I just noticed the Loop Browser so they are not all drum loops but other instruments. I have to look into this.

This Cubase is a significant step up.

[valis]

Loop browser didn't exist in v4 as well? Perhaps not in current form, but I was under the impression that it did (not a Cubase 4 owner)?

[Shroomz~>]

One of these decades they'll actually nail it & have something that lives up to the 'Virtual Studio Technology' concept quite well.

[braincell]

I used it quite a bit tonight and the one thing that caused a crash was the Halion Symphony Orchestra demo in Cubase 5 64 bit. I tried it twice, same thing. Glad they have a demo. I will not be buying that!

[garyb]

One of these decades they'll actually nail it & have something that lives up to the 'Virtual Studio Technology' concept quite well.

actually, they've had a functional product for some time. these days, they spend most of the update time in adding features that competitors develop.

[Shroomz~>]

I'm actually surprised that it's taken Steinberg so long to properly add an all singing & dancing ReCycle type technology into Cubase. They've had beat slicing in there for quite a few years, but only now seem to be getting their act together with it in proper conjunction with a sample based drum machine. ReCycle was first introduced & widely used way over a decade ago, certainly leading the field in beat slicing at the time, so it's a mystery to me why it's taken them so long to get it right in that area (assuming that they've now got it right).

[valis]

Probably because there were numerous 3rd VSTi plugins that gave .rex & .rx2 manipulation abilities, and their sequencer being the 'most compatible' with their own VST technology(ies). Plus the 'hitpoint' slicing in their track view (as of SX3? 2?)

Sonar has had several different methods of doing what it seems they've added now (including a loop browser). Some were 'external' applications from Cakewalk that had additional internal support for opening 'directly in' Sonar (Kinetic 1&2), others were plugins in their own right. Cakewalk's application is actually relatively powerful for electronic music production, aside from the 'gapping' issues and formerly poor ASIO support. They also have had the best native windows 'multiprocessor/multicore' support (until Reaper hit the scene that is).

Ableton Live 7 brought quite a few methods of doing slicing 'recycle style' that were based around its own file-detection format, going beyond its track-based format (simpler & sampler drag&drop actions for exporting midi to a track).

Logic's 'recycle' support is relatively poor these days, needing an update along with its aging EXS-24 sampler. Pro Tools has made inroads, both with its plugins & new sampler and with track-based loop & multitrack drum editing. Though I couldn't tell you exactly what from experience (having only read reviews on PT 7 & 8's newer plugins and 8's improved 'beat detector' functionality). No idea where MOTU's flagship stands in this regards either.

[braincell]

They didn't put enough electronic music loops in there, meaning analog synth loops.

I noticed a new driver which gives me 20 ms latency over my motherboard's s/pdif. I'm not sure if Steinberg installed it or if it is a part of Vista but I don't remember seeing it before.

[Zer]

Looks like elastic audio easy from the music maker.

[Zer]

well they all look the same as the original melodyne But as far as I'm concerned melodyne has the best results.

[braincell]

The pitch shifting and time stretching is much better in Cubase 5 than it used to be though.

[braincell]

Here is something they didn't mention in the Cubase 5 hype. The editing of midi sustain is much easier now in the Key Editor. This always drove me crazy before. Now there is one node at the top for sustain on and one at the bottom for sustain off and you drag them.

I like that you can see the tempo track in the Project Window but you can not cut the track with the scissors like all the other parts. Instead, you have to insert nodes in places you want to move, copy, delete along the tempo track.

[braincell]

Currently VST Expression isn't totally compatible with Vienna Symphonic Library but in an email VSL told me they are working with Steinberg to correct this.

I am still getting the message "A fatal error has occurred" once in a while but then I continue working and nothing bad happens.

Sometimes a VSTi stops sounding and I have to mute and unmute it to get it to sound again.

[braincell]

Those cards are in the old computer and I don't know if XTC mode worked in that computer plus there is no more room for another Cubase. I need to keep it as it is for now for when I want to use Scope; which reminds me I have another dongle I can Cubase 4 DRM on so mmm this could be used for networking.

It's too bad they didn't release a 64 bit patch for Scope in time. Some people think the Scope can not be patched but that is a lie because Ralf patched the Cubase ASIO bug. The needs of loyal long time users are no longer a consideration for SC apparently.