REVIEW: Cubase Essential 4
Producing music on a computer is a pain, typically made inaccessible to wannabe chart toppers thanks to expensive hardware and complicated software. Steinberg plans to fix all that with Cubase Essential 4, an entry-level VST3-powered personal music production system.
Tailored to musicians, home studios and anyone on a tight budget, Cubase Essential 4 is a streamlined version of Steinberg’s amazingly powerful Cubase 4. Including a relatively powerful set of audio recording and mixing tools, comprehensive MIDI features and a full set of VST3 plug-ins (including a great guitar amp plug-in), the sequencer makes a great entry-point for those looking beyond Garage Band, Guitar Tracks Pro or Sequel.
Cubase Essential 4 offers a great music production system, but it’s still not the most intuitive music software around. But it does leave products like GarageBand standing in terms of features and sound quality. For instance, Cubase Essential 4 offers comprehensive composing, recording and mixing tools including 64 audio tracks and unlimited MIDI tracks. It even supports MIDI plug-ins and has full latency compensation.
That’s not all. Integrated HALionOne sampling provides over 100 playable instruments (including waves from the Yamaha Motif synthesiser), an Amp Simulator allows instant guitar recording with 14 amps and 10 speaker simulations, and real-time time stretching and pitch shifting with formant correction provides natural-sounding transposition and full tempo matching.
An Arranger Track with pattern-based arranging tools stores up to 16 different arrangements for on-the-fly reordering of song sections, and MediaBay sound management technology lets you manage all audio, MIDI and video files, track and instrument presets with in-context auditioning. Those upgrading from Cubase SE3 should welcome Track Freeze, VST Plug-in Bridge, a redesigned Sample Editor, better QuickTime 7 support and more, so it’s definitely worth a look.
Compatible with both the latest Mac and Windows operating systems, Cubase Essential 4 (£119/$199) takes some beating considering the advanced functionality it offers for the relatively low price point. Sound quality, effects and instruments are all excellent, too. Don’t expect to create a number-one hit over night (you’ll need to spend a few hours with manual in hand), but it’s great for the newbie looking to dabble with MIDI and VSTs. [8]
April 13, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Does this qualify as a review? Looks more like a rewrite of the Steinberg press release.
May 3, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Seems perfectly good cubase information to me, cubase is a great tool so the more facts people publish on it the better.