Recording - June 2013 - 31

While all of these make for a full-featured release, it’s the new MixConsole
that stands out, with a host of new features all its own.
MixConsole
Cubase 7’s new mixer has a bolder,
sleeker and darker look, more akin to
Cubase’s big brother Nuendo. Its styling
will be a matter of taste for some; I like it
a lot, to me it has a slightly more high-end
professional look than previous versions.
Its layout is similar at first glance to previous versions, but as mentioned, everything has been redesigned from the
ground up and its new feature set
includes but is not limited to:
~ Full-screen mode
~ The ability to resize and scale the channels with a simple drag of the mouse
~ Improved channel linking
~ Plug-in searching
~ Improved dragging and dropping of
plug-ins
~ Improved channel copying, saving and
recall
~ Redesigned control room integration
~ Channel zones and View Sets (i.e., customized channel snapshots)
~ Track Icons, i.e. graphic representations
of instruments on each channel that can be
fully customized with your own full-color
pictures; for example you could take a studio snapshot of a unique mic setup and
place it right on the relevant channel.
~ Full-scale loudness metering on the master bus, compatible with the EBU R128
loudness standard
~ A completely new channel strip setup
~ A brand-new channel window dubbed
Channel Central
~ A new look and feel to all of the buttons
and controls
I would love to highlight every new feature
listed and more, but there is not space here
to do so, it’s that extensive! Lucky for us,
Steinberg has some great new-feature videos
and a full list at www.steinberg.net/en/
products/cubase/whats_new.html
Mixer workflow
The new mixer can initially be frustrating to longtime users of Cubase, as you
try to coax it into doing what the old
mixer did. But once you get the hang of
it, it can yield a greatly improved workflow—the new mixer really is quite customizable and scalable. Not only can
you make the fader/meter section taller
and bigger, but you can expand and collapse the insert, channel strip and send
sections at will and even specify how
many slots are visible in them.
You can also easily select which channels are visible in your mixer, with a simple drop-down menu. Then they can be
placed into zones and you can even
weight your favorite channels to the left or
right of the mixer, like always having the

master fader on the right, the lead vocal
on the left, and so on.
The strip
Each channel now has a full-fledged
channel strip like you would find on a fullscale console, and each element can be
viewed or hidden so you can make use of
only the sections you need. Each channel
starts with the Input Routing followed by a
full-on Pre section with high- and lowpass
filters, gain and phase.
The redesigned eq section that follows
will take some getting used to, as the sliders are visual rather than descriptive.
Numeric values like frequency and attenuation only show up when you hover over
them. My favorite eq feature is that if you
click in the graphic eq field it launches a
momentary pop-up window where you
can drag and alter the curves, and then it
shrinks back down once you are done.
This eq window also sports a real-time
FFT representation of the audio. Nice!
The next part of the channel strip takes
some Cubase plug-ins which would previously have been available only as inserts
and makes them an integrated part of
each channel. You get a Noise Gate, a
Compressor with a choice of Cubase’s vintage, tube, or standard comps, a
Transform section with an envelope shaper
for altering transients, a Saturation section
with a choice of tube or tape saturation,
and a Limiter with choice of standard or
brick-wall limiting or a maximizer.
This is rounded out by the sends section, the track icons, and a channel-bychannel note pad, where you can make
notes of what mics, instruments, preamps
and such were used on each track. This is
a huge boon to hurried engineers who
must take notes as they go but haven’t
had a centralized place to put them!
Lastly your favorite settings, plug-ins and
configurations can be stored, copied,
and recalled.
The improved Channel Linking can now
be momentary—for instance, if you want
to adjust all your guitar tracks down equally by 3 dB. You can now choose via a
drop-down menu what parameters of
each channel are and are not linked.
Oh, and speaking of plug-ins: Cubase
7’s organization of third-party plug-ins is
vastly improved. Now plug-in lists are
grouped seamlessly in arrow-based collapsing folders of brand and type that are
scrollable, no longer the sideways
expanding drop-down style menus of past
versions. There is also a plug-in search
window to save you time in sifting
through your hundreds of choices, if all
you want is a tape delay for instance.
Channel Central
Channel Central is the new Channel
view, and as with MixConsole, there are
many visual improvements with regard to

send levels, the graphic look of the eq
(which is kind of a hybrid SSL-meets-Neve
VR series look), and—my favorite new feature—it allows you to see a channel’s signal
flow. Now when you pull up your snaredrum track, for instance, you can also
choose to see all the channels in its signal
path, like the drum-bus fader and the master
fader. This is handy to see how adjusting
one channel affects its subsequent routing.
Also as with MixConsole, all of the
mute, solo and other buttons have been
simplified and share a common look. This
is easier on the eyes and on the brain
over long sessions.
Install, performance and support
Cubase 7 is sold boxed, but can be
updated via download, eliminating the
wait for the arrival of a boxed copy. If
you are expecting a bug report—sorry,
but I have experienced no bugs or crashes in my workflow, although I should note
that I did not install version 7 until it had
two maintenance patches under its belt.
Steinberg needs to be commended for the
level of support, care and transparency the
company now offers. Yes, there was a list of
bugs upon Cubase 7’s release, but a quick
look at the support forum shows that over 70
of them (most were not life threatening) have
been acknowledged, addressed and fixed.
I have been running Cubase 7 on my
Windows 7 PC and my Mac OS X 10.8
Mountain Lion MacBook Pro, both with 8
GB of RAM, with zero issues. I have no clue
what has been done under the hood in version 7, but I do find Cubase 7 to be
smoother and faster on my Mac than version
6.5 was, and I am able to run at lower latencies. This was most noticeable when running
live synths and realtime effects with external
instruments in live performance, and remote
tracking with a MOTU 4pre audio interface.
Conclusions
In my Cubase 6 review I stated “best
Cubase ever”! My reason at the time was
not new plug-ins or bells and whistles, but
the then-new workflow improvements of
drum editing and improved take comping.
In version 7 I am happy to see that
trend continue. The new MixConsole
with its myriad features is a big deal,
and once mastered it can yield a much
more intuitive way of doing things. Add
in the workflow enhancement of Chord
Tracks and VariAudio’s harmony builder,
and composers should see an improved
workflow as well. Until version 8 comes
along, I will once again shout, “Best
Cubase Ever”!
Price: $499.99 (Cubase Artist 7,
$249.99—see Steinberg website for
feature list)
More from: Steinberg,
www.steinberg.net
RECORDING June 2013

http://www.steinberg.net/en/products/cubase/whats_new.html http://www.steinberg.net/en/products/cubase/whats_new.html http://www.steinberg.net

Recording - June 2013

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