Don't let our focus on our favourite headline features fool you into thinking that's all there is. Cubase 7 is bursting with other new goodies.

If you are collaborating with long-distance partners, you'll be thrilled with VST Connect SE. Built-in talkback and chat, live video and audio streaming are available here. Better still, you can even use it with collaborators who use other DAWs, thanks to a free standalone version.

The audio engine has also been given a look-in. There's a new technology called ASIO-Guard designed to prevent dropouts. Does it work? Well, we're not sure. We didn't experience dropouts - but then Cubase has always run pretty smoothly on the system on which we tested version 7.

Other useful tools include the ability to search for tracks in large projects. Type in a few letters or full words and any track named thusly will pop up in the ‘tree’. It's not foolproof - a tracked called ‘TempoGatedGuit’ won't pop up if you type in ‘Guitar’, but will if you type in ‘Guit’. Still, it can be a real time saver if you have massive projects.

Another time saver comes in the form of MemZap. We're sure you micro-editors will welcome this one with open arms. Zoom presets are cool, but with MemZap, you can attach key commands to various zoom factors and locations, allowing you to quickly toggle between them with a keystroke. Nice.

Yet more goodies: A new Remote Control Editor can be accessed from your plug-ins and used to assign any MIDI controller to its various functions. You can create and save your layouts for later recall. It's easy enough to use and comes with presets for various popular controllers.

Speaking of plug-ins, we want to give a special mention to the newly-bundled Voxengo CurveEQ, a ‘smart’ EQ that can analyse the frequency content of one track and apply it to another. These things have been around for yonks, but that doesn't diminish their usefulness and we're glad to see it included.