MusicRadar

You can control all of your monitoring without bringing an external mixer into play.

1 of 8 » View in gallery

• Related News
• Review
• Manufacturer's Description

Let's not keep you in suspense any longer - we're happy to say at the outset that Cubase 4 is an upgrade that's been well worth waiting for.

As well as adding a number of major new features, it also streamlines and eases workflow when you're creating complex projects. What's more, it does so without forcing you to make radical changes to the way you've worked in the past.

That said, some things have been taken away. The circular knobs on the mixer channel equalisers are gone (given that the aux send knobs vanished long ago, we suspected their days were numbered), and even Britain's new anti-age discrimination laws haven't prevented the elderly A1 synth from getting the chop before reaching retirement age. LM-7 and VB-1 have been pensioned off too. Admittedly, the latter two instruments were starting to look like Victorian toys, but the sacking of A1 seems a bit harsh. It was, after all, a reasonably capable 2-oscillator polysynth. There are several new and very capable VSTi's in place to take up the slack, though.

What's dropped

Another (very visible) thing that's been dropped is the SX branding, and Cubase SL no longer exists either. The two major versions of the program are now known as Cubase 4 and Cubase Studio 4, with Studio being the less capable of the two (slightly confusing, we think). We're looking at the full-on Cubase 4 here, which costs a hefty £650. This is a pretty scary sum if you're a casual home user. However, we reckon the inclusion of some excellent new synthesizers and plug-in effects ensures that the high price is one worth paying. What's more, you get a proper manual now, too: a real, environmentally-unfriendly paper one. And not just a 'getting started' guide either - this is a chunky reference book. You also get an electronic copy, but given Cubase 4's complexity, the hard one is very much appreciated.

Launch Cubase 4 for the first time and you immediately notice that the user interface has been given a bit of a paint job. The changes are actually quite subtle, but everything feels cleaner, simpler and just a little flatter than before. It's certainly a lot easier to see what's going on. As many of us expected, Cubase 4 features more technology from Nuendo, Steinberg's flagship broadcast/post production application. There's now a Listen button on every mixer channel and a new PFL (Pre Fade Listen) function that's also switchable to AFL (After Fade Listen). This enables you to solo channels during recording (to check for quality) without interrupting the headphone mix going to your artists.

New features

Best of all, though, is the wonderful new Control Room feature. This is a blindingly obvious omission from most music applications, and we've been hankering after such a thing for years. Basically, the Control Room adds a significant monitoring layer between the main mix output and the physical soundcard outputs. It has its own control window (on a hardware mixing desk this would be referred to as the centre or control room panel) and it offers all the features that you'd expect to find in a top-flight recording studio. So now - after what seems like a lifetime - you can finally control the main loudspeaker volume from within Cubase without affecting the mix levels. But that's not all.