Steinberg Cubase Pro 14 review - Mod About You

Cubase updates come and go, and they don’t resemble each other. Some focus more on audio, others on MIDI, and still others on productivity or ergonomics. So, what sauce do the wizards at Steinberg intend to serve us with the new version of their famous DAW? Well, it’s safe to say that this time around, the German developers have opted for creativity, with an orientation that should delight electro and hip-hop musicians, among others.

Modulato cantabile

This version marks the arrival of Modulators: sort of MIDI plug-ins that will take care of animating most parameters in Cubase by means of LFOs, envelope followers, step sequencers, or even more complex things. Bitwig and Reaper users have been familiar with this type of tool for a long time. It’s a real pleasure to see it land in Cubase, as it opens up extremely vast creative horizons, knowing that you can automate the bulk of the parameters of any effect plug-in or virtual instrument — or even Cubase!

The simplest of VSTs can now do the most complex things: an EQ band can be triggered by an envelope follower, while the size of a reverb, the level of a fader or the position of a console pan can be varied cyclically. This is a good alternative to tedious automation curves in certain cases: no need to draw curves and points to ping pong a track, or resort to a Cableguys Shaperbox-style effect to make a synth pad pump. Modulators can also generate random variations in the pitch or attack of certain instruments, making them sound more realistic or analog.

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In short, this is an excellent idea, all the more so as Steinberg has implemented it well ergonomically: it’s as simple to understand as it is to use, and it can prove extremely powerful with the possibility of combining several modulations via a macro knob, or even scripting complex modulations. This feature alone makes the update worthwhile, but it’s obviously not the only one. Steinberg also worked hard on the plug-in side.

New in the Branch In department…

We’ll start with the instruments and the arrival, via the new Percussion track type, of a pattern sequencer that’s as simple as it is complete for creating your own grooves in just a few clicks, and making them more complex and evolving through functions based on randomness or Euclidean sequences. Once again, it’s simple and well thought-out, all the more so as this sequencing tool is accompanied by a new instrument called Drum Machine.

The latter allows you to create drumkits using samples as well as synthesized sounds, stack up to four sounds on a pad, and play with a nice effects section. The only shortcoming, in my opinion, is the impossibility of assigning layers to a particular velocity range, which will limit Drum Machine’s use to rather synthetic/electronic music… And that’s no problem in itself, as it’s in no way intended to replace Groove Agent, which is more the point.

Four effects also make their appearance. Shimmer, as its name suggests, offers pitch-shifted reverbs such as those invented by Eventide back in the day with its famous Harmonizer: ideal for creating lush ambiences as long as your mix leaves room for the reverbs.

As for StudioDelay, this is a new sound-design-oriented Delay that completes Cubase’s already comprehensive arsenal in this respect. With its austere but extremely easy-to-understand interface, StudioDelay lets you play with the interaction of a classic delay with a selection of effects that can be used pre, post or in the feedback loop: modulation, distortion, reverbs or pitch changes. It can take your delays into another dimension, although you have little control over the effects themselves, but it’s a great way to get the most out of your delays. A fine butchery that we’ll take pleasure in making even more complex with a few modulators.

Autofilter is a resonant filter that will be modulated according to the incoming signal, while Underwater allows you to obtain the typical effect used by Drake and co. There’s nothing unpleasant to say about the latter except that any filter flanked by an envelope-following modulator would achieve what Autofilter does, while Underwater’s use is relatively limited in its filtering/downsampling mix: one senses that the aim here is to appeal to the hip-hop audience and get them off their FL Studio…

But still…

Beyond the big new features, however, there are a thousand little things that are making progress or appearing here and there: a clip gain curve as we see with competitors, which makes quite a difference when it comes to editing and allows you to homogenize, for example, a vocal track without having to rely on a compressor and without playing scissors at every turn.

We’ll also note that we finally have tempo-synchronized pre-listening of Mediabay audio files, as well as DAWproject compatibility, click/drag track reorganization in the console, multi-assignment of external ports for effects or instruments, improved surround sound support (Dolby Atmos as well as Ambisonics) and 4K and 8K support for video. We’ll also mention the visual overhaul of the famous Control Room where we finally get a detailed CPU/RAM performance manager, allowing us to see what’s eating up resources and freeze accordingly.

As you can see, there’s plenty to satisfy more than one user on these micro-features often demanded by the community, bearing in mind that some of them are also innovative, such as the new option in the keyboard editor of assigning a playing probability for each note, which will make it possible to vary a pattern automatically. Last but not least, the score editor has been entirely redesigned based on the latest iteration of Dorico. At a time when Finale has hung up its gloves, this is no mean feat, even if you obviously won’t find here all the features of Steinberg’s score editor in its full version.

Overall, this fourteenth version is exciting in more ways than one, allowing Cubase to remain one of the most complete and attractive DAWs on the market. However, it would take much longer to list everything it contains than what it lacks. For example, there’s still no simple way to manage M/S in the software apart from a few plug-ins, while the ability to create Reason Combinator-style multi-instruments or multi-effects is still absent. The absence of real audio objects like those found in Samplitude must also be deplored… Finally, compared with the competition, we note that there’s still no Ableton Live-style matrix like in Logic, Digital Performer or Studio One, nor “ intelligent ” instruments or plug-ins like Logic now offers. Finally, we’re surprised that full-screen is still not supported on the Mac.