RECORDING July 2022 - 22

REVIEW
Steinberg Cubase Pro 12
Buh-bye dongle, hello updates!
REVIEW BY PAUL VNUK JR.
F
or 33 years running, Steinberg has been growing, evolving and
pushing the boundaries of the digital audio workstation. That evolution
continues with version 12 of the company's popular Cubase. Version
12 includes more than a dozen new marquee features and additions,
and around 34 further improvements and enhancements.
Version 12
Steinberg has adopted one of the
most regular yearly release cycles in
the audio world - every Fall brings a
new update. We looked at Version 11
in June of 2021, and perhaps you are
wondering if you missed 11.5? The
answer is no. Apparently, the company
felt the new features were big and bold
enough to warrant a full numeric jump
rather than the typical .5 release.
RIP eLicenser
One of the most divisive devices in the history
of plugins and DAWs is the copy protection
dongle. In Cubase-land, this longstanding
protuberance was the eLicenser. Great
news, it has been retired. We introduced this
new paradigm shift in our recent Dorico 4
review (May 2022), and essentially when
running Cubase 12 for the first time, users
sign in using the Steinberg Application
Manager. The new license allows installation
on up to three computers simultaneously,
and computers can be freely activated and
deactivated without limits. This applies to
Cubase 12 Pro, Artist and Elements.
22 RECORDING July 2022
Fades
Cubase Pro 12 improves how fades
are handled. In past versions, when you
shortened an audio event with a fade,
said fade would proportionately retain
its total length regardless of the adjusted
size of the audio clip, forcing you to reset
the fade. Now, holding the option+CMD
keys (on Mac) maintains the fade position
when resizing the event. And with this
one new feature, Steinberg has fixed one
of my most longstanding annoyances.
Scale Assistant + VariAudio
Thanks to the power of VariAudio,
I rarely reach for external vocal pitch
plugins or editors. Just as Scale Assistant
has done for MIDI tracks, ensuring
all of your MIDI performances are in
key, it now does the same for VariAudio,
complete with note guides and snap-topitch
editing.
Automatic Chord Detection
The Chord Track and Chord Assistant
have become a large part of my workflow,
especially when helping singersongwriters
flesh out their acoustic guitar
and piano arrangements. However, the
tedious part was manually entering the
chord information in the Chord Track.
In a big time-saving move, Cubase Pro
12 can now detect the Chords and
Scale for you by simply dragging and
dropping an audio file onto the Chord
Track. I am impressed by how easily
and accurately this works. If Cubase
does get a chord voicing wrong, the
Chord Assistant can aid you in finding
the correct option.
Chord Assistant
AudioWarp
AudioWarp, the ability to manually
stretch and massage audio in time versus
cutting, sliding and crossfading, has
many new improvements. The big news
is it works across multi-miked recordings,
like drums, with complete phase
and track coherence live in the project
window. The warp point can also be set
to snap to exact quantized values. This
process will also work across groups
of non-multi-miked tracks. For instance,
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