Thursday, August 21, 2025
Wednesday, August 20, 2025
Cubase 13: HALion Sonic’s Spectral Synth
By John Walden
X‑Stream’s spectral engine may offer an unconventional control set but it is very easy to experiment with. The settings shown here reflect the finished DIY example discussed within the main text.
Create a complete musical cue from just a single sample with HALion Sonic’s spectral synth engine.
Steinberg recently improved the spectral synth engine in their HALion 7 soft sampler, and all Cubase users can get a taste of it through X‑Stream, a new, free‑to‑download (using Steinberg’s Download Assistant) HALion Sonic instrument. While X‑Stream is monophonic only, it is bound to appeal to those with a liking for ambient soundscapes and textures. It offers plenty of DIY sound‑design possibilities, including the ability to drop your own samples into the engine. To explore just what this makes possible, I decided to don my experimental media composer hat, and see how close X‑Stream could get me to composing a complete musical cue using just a single sample.
Blank & Drop
Once you’ve managed to stop playing with X‑Stream’s excellent collection of presets (it might take a while), it’s a good idea to wipe the slate clean by loading in the Init X‑Stream Layer, which is easy to find if you pick Layers as the Preset Type in HS’s MediaBay panel. This includes a default sample but, usefully, it resets the synth engine parameters to a generic starting point. With the engine thus ‘blanked’, you can drag and drop (from the Project window or your file browser) your sample of choice directly into X‑Stream’s spectral display panel. Almost any sample can be a contender, but I deliberately started with something very simple: a single note played on a synth. I’ll come back to some more colourful sample choices later. By the way, you can hear some audio examples on the SOS website, at https://sosm.ag/cubase-1024.
Need For Speed
It’s worth noting that if you click on the Spectral panel header, you toggle between compact and expanded control displays. The latter provides access to the full control set, including the full pitch, spectral filter, standard filter and amplitude envelope controls. Other panels can also be expanded into focus in the same way. I couldn’t hope to cover all of X‑Stream’s many controls here, though, so I’ll focus on some highlights that will provide a solid base for experimentation.
In its expanded view, the Spectral panel offers five sub‑pages accessed via the top‑left buttons. These include the amp envelope shown here, with suitably long attack and decay times.
The Speed control sets the speed at which the spectral engine scans across the underlying sample to create sound (100 percent is the same playback speed as the original). Changing the speed doesn’t change the pitch, but X‑Stream’s underlying time‑ and pitch‑stretching algorithms are very impressive, and it’s remarkable just how extreme you can get with the Speed control (0‑800 range) while still hearing totally usable sounds. I’m attempting to create a textural sound here, and a slower Speed setting (50 percent) seems a suitable choice when seeking longer notes.
For sustained sounds, you can define a loop region within the spectral display (just drag the left/right markers), and here I’ve set the Loop Mode to Alternate. This means the playback head moves forwards until it reaches the right loop marker and then reverses direction back to the left marker. This loop cycle is repeated as long as the note is held. As my sample contains a naturally fading sound, the slow cycling back and forth through a portion of it creates a smooth rise and fall in level that works pretty well for a sustained textural soundscape.
The Spread option, once activated, shifts the playback position between the left/right channels of your sample (it works well with mono or multi‑channel samples too), and you see two playhead cursors offset from one another when you play a note. This delivers a nice spatial enhancement even when relatively low values are used.
A Blur Of Sound
Blur Time and Blur Depth create something similar to a modulation‑based effect, such as chorus. Increasing the Blur Time gradually adds a richer quality to the sound that is very much dependent on the nature of the original sample. Blur Depth can exaggerate this, with low values remaining fairly musical and higher values moving you towards something a little more unsettling.
According to X‑Stream’s PDF manual, the Purity and Inharmonicity parameters adjust the ‘spectral purity’ of the sound. No, I’m not sure I know what that actually means either! But a quick sweep of the knobs soon gives you a sense of what’s possible. Purity seems to change the tonal character of the sound, with negative values seeming brighter and more harmonically complex, while strongly positive values seem both darker and less complex. Inharmonicity also changes the harmonic complexity, and extreme positive or negative values induce something similar to a detuning effect.
Well Stacked
While X‑Stream is monophonic, the Stack feature (on the right of the Spectral panel) provides a way to add a chord‑like element to your sound. Once activated, you can create a total of five layers from your core sound, with control over the relative level and pitch of each layer. Layer pitch can be specified in semitone steps within a ±36 range. You can, therefore, build a chord by specifying the required note intervals in different layers and then triggering that chord from a single note on your MIDI keyboard. And by automating either the pitch or the level of your layers you can change the voicing of the created chord.
X‑Stream offers a great selection of modulation options including the excellent step modulator, which I used to create a pulsing effect within the example sound design.I’ve done that in my examples — see the main screenshot, in which the key settings for my final patch are shown — using layers 4 and 5. Relative to the root note (pitch = 0), these layers have pitches set to +16 (a major third, one octave above the root) and +15 (a minor third, one octave above the root). By automating the level values for these two layers, you can move (or, interestingly, morph) between a more major sounding harmony to a more minor one — I did this in my example by assigning them both to the mod wheel, mapped in opposite directions, so that as one increases, the other decreases.
Mojo Filters & Mod Magic
I’ve focused on some of the more unconventional parameter options offered by X‑Stream’s spectral synth engine, but it does, of course, offer a suite of more conventional sound‑shaping tools. These include a well‑specified filter (indeed, two filters, as there’s also a spectral filter with its own envelope and presets), a multiband EQ module, and both reverb and delay modules. All can be put to good use in your DIY sound design. There’s also an amp module, and if it’s sustained soundscape/ambient sounds you are after then this is most certainly worth a visit, even if only to add some suitably slow attack and decay elements to the amplitude envelope.
As noted above, X‑Stream’s parameters can all be automated in your DAW and/or assigned for hands‑on control using a connected hardware control surface. The engine also includes two standard LFOs, an X/Y LFO and a step modulator — these can all be used to automate parameters. Right‑clicking on any X‑Stream parameter pops open a suitable dialogue box to make these assignments.
Alternatively, you can open the Matrix panel to make and/or adjust the automation settings. This provides up to 24 slots, with a huge selection of source and destination options. I used both LFOs to provide long tempo‑based sweeps on the resonance and cutoff of the main filter. The step modulator was also used to modulate the drive control within the filter. The step modulation pattern I used creates a pulse‑like effect within the sound, and I assigned a Quick Control to adjust the level of the step modulator, allowing me to blend the pulse effect in and out as required.
X‑Stream’s modulation matrix provides plenty of options for both modulation sources and destinations.
Finally for this example, as well as the stack layer automation that I mentioned earlier, I assigned the level controls of layers 2 and 3 to Cubase’s Quick Controls, allowing me to adjust the ‑24 (two octaves below) and +19 (an octave plus a fifth above) layers’ levels, to blend in these layers to change the tonal character of the overall sound in real time.
Do check out the audio examples, which illustrate just how I developed this sound from the original sample into a fully formed X‑Stream preset. I found it an interesting enough result that it prompted me to try writing a full soundscape cue (albeit a short one) using just this one sound — a totally arbitrary target, but you can hear the result in one of the examples!
One More Drop
The whole sound‑design process used here took me rather longer to explain in words than it did to actually perform. X‑Stream’s unconventional control set is, in practice, very easy to experiment with, not least because you can drag and drop your own sample into the engine. To encourage your own explorations, the last audio example includes some randomly selected samples dropped into X‑Stream and quickly tweaked based on a similar basic approach as described above. The results can be somewhat weird and unpredictable, but if you just keep dropping samples in then eventually something magical will happen... and off you’ll go exploring a new musical idea.
Tuesday, August 19, 2025
Monday, August 18, 2025
Cubase 13: Creating Lo-Fi Effects
By John Walden
The full signal chain I used for my lo‑fi processing experiment including Grungelizer, BitCrusher and FX Modulator.
Want to get the lo‑fi vibe using Cubase’s stock plug‑ins? Here’s how.
Whether it’s within the abundant supply of relaxation‑meets‑study music, embedded firmly in some types of hip‑hop, or just blended subtly into a whole range of other popular genres, lo‑fi is very much back in fashion. If you want to take your pristine recordings and add a touch of sonic degradation to create a warm, nostalgic sound there are some very popular third‑party effects plug‑ins tailor‑made for the job. But if you have Cubase, it’s also a style you can achieve using just the stock plug‑ins — with no need for additional expenditure required. So let’s see how Cubase can help you embrace all those perfect imperfections!
Tools Of The Lo‑Fi Trade
Typically, signal‑chains for lo‑fi feature a number of elements. For example, electrical noise or vinyl crackles might be applied. Tape (whether real or emulated) can be used to simulate the pitch modulation caused by varying tape speed or wow, flutter and dropouts. Distortion can be added via real or virtual analogue circuity or tube distortion. Sample degradation through bit‑depth or sample‑rate reduction can be used to ‘downgrade’ the sound. Pitch modulation or resonator components are often added to reverb or delay effects. And, finally, the bandwidth of the sound can be restricted using filters.
As with any effects chain, changing the order of the effects in the chain can lead you to different results, and you can use as few or as many of these options simultaneously as you wish, and adjust the wet/dry balance of individual effects or the whole chain to taste.
Stock Options
Given the typical processing options described above, the first screenshot shows some obvious candidates from Cubase’s bundled plug‑in collection that might fulfil each role. To give you a better idea of the kinds of effect this example signal chain can deliver, I’ve created some audio examples that you can find on the SOS website (https://sosm.ag/cubase-1124). These are based around two particularly common targets for lo‑fi processing: a piano part and a drum loop.
So, what have I got in my example effects chain and why? For ‘turntable noise’, Grungelizer is definitely the plug‑in for the task. It lets you add noise, crackle (with a turntable speed switch) and distortion effects as well as an element of mains hum. For this workshop’s experiments, I started with the suitably named LoFi 1 preset and dialled in to taste from there. Really, the only thing to note is that the noise elements added by Grungelizer are ‘always on’, whether or not the instrument it’s applied to is playing. Now you might want the sound all through your track, but often you won’t, particularly if you’re processing multiple parts in this way, where the effect will ‘stack’ unhelpfully. Here, I’ve added an (optional) instance of the standard gate plug‑in immediately after Grungelizer and set its threshold so that it mutes the noise from Grungelizer when there’s no instrument signal playing.
For a tape‑style detuning effect (caused when the tape’s playback speed varies, resulting in variations in pitch), I’ve used the FX Modulator plug‑in. This includes a preset called Old Tape Record, and I used this as my starting point. I then focused on just the Pitch module (I removed the Reverb, Chorus and Filter modules). The result is a long, slow, gentle modulation curve that’s applied to the pitch of the incoming audio. I tweaked the default curve to make the effect a little more obvious in the audio examples, but you can push things much harder and fully customise the modulation curve to suit your needs. Cubase Elements users could replace FX Modulator with one or more of the modulation‑style plug‑ins such as Chorus or Flanger: add a little parameter automation and you can recreate much the same sorts of gradual pitch‑drift.
I used a single band of Quadrafuzz to add some tube distortion to my lo‑fi processing, but there are other distortion options within the Cubase plug‑in collection that could serve a similar role.
For distortion duties, there are lots of options but I chose Quadrafuzz. I added a single band of tube‑based distortion in the 1‑5 kHz frequency range and boosted the output gain a few dB to make it more obvious. On its own, this gave a somewhat crunchy, crisp, and bandwidth‑limited flavour, but you can then use Quadrafuzz’s built‑in mix control to dial in the effect to taste. Elements users could easily substitute in DaTube, or either the Tape or Tube Saturation modules of the MixConsole’s Channel Strip to achieve an effect that’s in the same ballpark.
BitCrusher is the obvious choice for downgrading your sounds. Again, there’s a preset called LoFi that provides a good starting point, but the plug‑in’s Depth control makes it easy to dial in whatever degree of bit reduction your ears are comfortable with. The Sample Divider and Mode buttons provide plenty more variation, while the Mix knob can again be used to blend the wet/dry balance to taste.
By this stage, you may well have all the options you need to downgrade your sounds to pleasingly lo‑fi status but, just for good measure, I finished off my example effects chain with instances of ModMachine and RoomWorks (choosing the Rhodes Beneath The Waves and FX LoFiverb presets, respectively). The former works well on my drum loop, adding a subtle movement, but you can raise the Mix value to increase the amount of ‘seasickness’ it induces. The latter works better with the piano part, injecting an additional element of lo‑fi to the ambience. Again, you could easily substitute alternative plug‑ins for either task or both, but these options are built into Cubase.
Insert Or Send?
The whole chain can be set up using the insert slots on the relevant instrument’s track, of course, but you may well want easier control over how much of this lo‑fi processing you hear versus the dry sound, and in that case it makes better sense to have the whole signal chain sitting on an FX Channel that’s fed by a send from the instrument track. That’s the approach I adopted here, and I chose to make the send pre‑fader. That way, you can set‑and‑forget the actual send level, and simply use the instrument’s track fader (unprocessed signal) and FX Channel fader (processed signal) to set the desired blend of clean and lo‑fi.
As shown in the screenshot, I also used the High‑Cut and Low‑Cut filters in the FX Channel’s Pre section to bandwidth‑limit the lo‑fi processed element between 250Hz and 5000Hz, for an even less hi‑fi sound. Again, I’ve provided audio examples to illustrate the possibilities.
On, Off, Wet, Dry, Up & Down!
With the initial plug‑in selection and settings sorted, it’s then a case of dialling in exactly what combination of these effects you wish to use in any particular case. The options are pretty much endless: turn individual plug‑ins on/off via their bypass buttons; finesse the unprocessed to processed balance further using the wet/dry mix controls found in many of these plug‑ins; or drag individual plug‑ins up or down in the FX Channel’s insert slots to change the order in which they process the sound. The choice is yours, but I’ve included another audio example to illustrate some of the possibilities with the same drum and piano examples.
Free Lo‑Fi Plug‑ins
Hopefully you can see, then, that Cubase’s bundled plug‑in collection can do a decent job of pushing your sounds into lo‑fi territory, but that’s not to say we couldn’t identify a couple of areas that aren’t quite so well catered for. And if you’re not ready to stump up for one of the dedicated third‑party lo‑fi effects processors such as XLN Audio’s RC‑20 Retro Color (probably the most well‑known), you can still usefully supplement Cubase’s plug‑ins with some rather good freebies.
For example, for those turntable‑style noises, iZotope’s free‑to‑download Vinyl plug‑in is an excellent alternative to Grungelizer. It includes emulated turntable noise based on different decades (with more sonic compromises the further you travel back in time) and speed settings, as well as a whole range of noise types that you can sprinkle across your audio to give it a more lo‑fi retro sound.
If you feel the need to expand your lo‑fi processing options, there are some excellent third‑party free‑to‑download options including iZotope’s Vinyl and Caelum Audio’s Tape Cassette 2.
Another personal favourite is Caelum Audio’s Tape Cassette 2, which is also a free download. As the name suggests, it emulates the distinctive sound of cassette tape (anyone under 25 might need to ask their parents about this), including tape saturation, noise, and the wow and flutter created by variations in the tape speed on playback. For a degraded tape sound, this perhaps does a more convincing job than just adding pitch modulation using FX Modulator, Chorus or Flanger, but a combination of both can also be very effective.
Again, I’ve included some audio examples to make a comparison between the stock plug‑in approach and what additional lo‑fi character these third‑party options can deliver. Oh, and while we are on the subject of ‘free’, don’t forget Steinberg’s own and rather excellent free‑to‑download Lo‑Fi Piano expansion for HALion/HALion Sonic. This is a cool piano library in its own right, but there are also a number of lo‑fi effects options within it.
Saturday, August 16, 2025
Friday, August 15, 2025
Cubase 13: The VST Plug‑in Manager
The VST Plug‑in Manager, with its multi‑panel layout, lets you create custom collections of both VST Effects and VST Instruments to streamline your workflow within Cubase.
Organise your plug‑in folder with VST Plug‑in Manager.
With so many bundles, demos and tempting offers around, many of us probably have more plug‑ins than is really manageable when we go to choose one in the middle of a busy mixing session; it’s all too easy to get lost among the possibilities. Thankfully, though, Cubase makes it easy to get your plug‑in folder under control, thanks to its VST Plug‑in Manager. It offers plenty of options to customise which plug‑ins are visible and how they’re arranged when you open a plug‑in selection panel, and a little time spent here can repay itself many times over when your projects are in full swing.
Call The Manager
When you first launch it, Cubase scans your computer and creates two default plug‑in lists (Steinberg call these lists ‘collections’): one for VST Effects and another for VST Instruments. It also does a quick scan every time it is subsequently launched, so it can detect any new plug‑ins you’ve installed. By default, these collections are what’s shown to you whenever you go to select a plug‑in effect or instrument.
The Studio menu (or a key command) access the VST Plug‑in Manager, in which you can view the contents of these two default collections. In its left window, you can view three different categories of plug‑in that, between them, should include all of the plug‑ins that are installed. These are: VST Effects, VST Instruments and the Blocklist. The latter, which may well be empty, is simply a list of plug‑ins that Cubase has scanned, but thinks might have compatibility issues — if you can’t find one you’ve installed it’s worth checking here; you can force a plug‑in off the Blocklist if you are feeling brave, but I’d probably test that in a fresh project just in case! If you select an individual plug‑in in any of these three panels, the bottom‑left panel shows further useful information about it, including where on your machine it is installed.
The panel on the right shows the plug‑ins in the current ‘collection’, depending upon which tab (VST Effects or VST Instruments) is selected in the left‑side panel. These will, at first, be the Default collections (this name appears in the tab at the top of the panel). But you can move, remove, or add plug‑ins to the current collection within this panel, including reordering (almost) any folder structure. For the default collections, via the top‑right drop‑down menu, you can choose to show the plug‑ins organised by Category (eg. EQ, Dynamics etc.) or Vendor; this choice is reflected in how the plug‑ins are shown when you’re making selections in your Cubase project.
List Of Lists
The VST Plug‑in Manger also lets you create your own custom collections, and there are a number of reasons why these might prove advantageous compared with the catch‑all ‘default’ list. For example, you can compile a ‘favourites’ list — a compact selection of your current go‑to plug‑ins that make it easy to find the right effect or instrument — or to hide expired demos, duplicate versions of plug‑ins or any plug‑ins installed within a bundle to which you don’t actually have a licence.
The drop‑down menu located top right lets you create new plug‑in collections and instantly switch between any of the existing collections.
Alternatively, it could be useful to create collections with only the plug‑ins available to any collaborators you work with — a collection containing only Cubase Elements’ stock plug‑ins, for example, the more comprehensive Cubase Pro options, or a specific third‑party developer’s bundle. Another possibility is more streamlined collections designed for specific tasks, such as composing, tracking, mixing or mastering. In each case, you can customise what’s visible so that you don’t get bogged down with certain plug‑ins or plug‑in formats that you don’t currently use or need to see (for example, mono versions, VST2 versions or older trial plug‑ins).
Two points are worth emphasising. First, adding or removing a plug‑in from a particular collection doesn’t change its actual installation status on your computer, just its visibility in Cubase’s various plug‑in selection panels. Second, whether in the default collections or new custom collections, your VST Effects and VST Instruments form separate lists.
New From Old
Creating a new collection is easy. Select the VST Effects or VST Instruments tab in the VST Plug‑in Manager window, then simply choose one of the New Collection options from the drop‑down menu located top‑right. Any of the three options (Empty, Add All Plug‑ins or Copy Current Collection) can be used, but if you’re currently using the Default collection, the last one is probably the most sensible choice, as it may take less time to move or remove plug‑ins from an existing collection than to start from scratch. Collections can be named, edited or deleted, and allow you to create custom folder structures that can be populated with your chosen plug‑ins.
Let’s imagine we’re creating a ‘favourites’ VST effects collection. First, create a New Collection from the menu using the Copy Current Collection option. This will prompt us to give our collection a suitable title (you can change it later). Once done, the new collection will become the active collection; its name will appear at the top of the VST Plug‑in Manager’s right‑hand panel and the plug‑ins within it will be what we see if, for example, we try to add a plug‑in by clicking on a channel’s insert slot.
With its custom folder structure and just a few ‘go‑to’ plug‑ins within each category, a ‘favourites’ VST Effects plug‑in collection lets you quickly pick what you need and get on with your mix.By default, our new ‘favourites’ VST Effects collection will contain folders based on Vendor. I prefer to organise my go‑to plug‑in options by type, though, so a useful second step is simply to create a new folder (just click on the New Folder button located top right), name this folder ‘Vendors’, and drag and drop all the individual Vendor folders into this one. This folder will serve as a useful catch‑all category in any collection; while it hides them in a subfolder, if your current ‘favourite’ selections don’t offer you quite what you need for a specific task then you can still easily seek something out here.
At the top level of this folder structure, alongside the Vendors folder, you can now use the New Folder button as many times as required to create your own custom list of categories. For example, in my own VST Effects ‘favourites’ collection for mixing duties, I’ve got folders such as EQ, compression, limiting, saturation, amp modelling, pitch‑correction, creative, vocals, drums, bass, reverb, delay and tools.
Finally, you can find those favourite plug‑in choices and then drag and drop them into their appropriate place in the new custom folder structure. This drag and drop can be done in two ways. First, you can drag them from the catch‑all folder you created (the Vendors folder in our example) or, second, if you want a particular plug‑in to appear in multiple folders (for example, a channel strip plug‑in might appear in a dedicated channel strip folder and also within an EQ folder), then you can simply find it within the main left‑side panel and drag and drop it from there as many times as needed.
In my case, my selection of VST Effects favourites might only consist of three or four go‑to plug‑ins in each category. When subsequently adding plug‑ins to my project, this makes finding those go‑to choices in the plug‑in selection panels much faster. Creating a favourites collection for VST Instruments can be done in exactly the same fashion. And, of course, you can easily edit/update any collection as your tastes change or new plug‑ins replace older favourites.
Switch & Find
Custom plug‑in collections exist globally on your host system so, once created, they can be accessed in any Cubase project. A further neat element of these custom plug‑in collections is that you can quickly switch between them: just visit the VST Plug‑in Manager, select either the VST Effects or VST Instruments tab, drop down the menu from the top left and you can then choose the required collection. The change is applied instantly so, next time you go to select a new plug‑in instance within your current project, you will see your plug‑in choices as organised in the currently selected collection.
Finally, note that changing the collection doesn’t influence any plug‑ins already inserted into your project — a plug‑in that isn’t included in the current collection won’t suddenly disappear from your project; you simply won’t be able to ‘see’ it in the plug‑in selector panel to insert a new instance.
Pick & Mix
As soon as your plug‑in collection starts to expand beyond the stock Cubase offerings, the workflow advantages of creating custom collections via the VST Plug‑in Manager is an absolute no‑brainer. So don’t let your plug‑in addiction slow you down!
Thursday, August 14, 2025
Wednesday, August 13, 2025
Steinberg Cubase Pro 14
Cubase 14 introduces a wide selection of new features while refining old ones.
Last year’s Cubase 13 release was, in many ways, an opportunity for Steinberg’s developers to refresh and polish the foundations. Because while there were many headline‑worthy additions — such as the Channel Zone, improved editing with the Visibility Zone, Track Display, multi‑part editing and the ability for the Region Selection tool to be used in certain editors — many of the giant leaps forward were perhaps less obvious. MIDI 2.0 support was added, along with Direct2D for hardware‑accelerated graphics on Windows, and a streamlined, more cohesive user interface emerged. And who could forget the long overdue redesign of the Key Commands window?
But for all these improvements, there was something about the upgrade that left me feeling a little flat. Everything in Cubase 13 was better, no question. It was sleeker, smoother, and working with it felt undeniably more productive. But when demonstrating that new version to fellow musicians, I couldn’t really point to any one feature that truly ignited excitement. A year on, though, and my view of the latest Cubase release couldn’t be more different.
Drum Track Redux
Cubase 14 sees the return of a Drum Track to the application, and if you’re thinking to yourself: ‘Hold on, Cubase has never had a Drum Track!’, you’d only be half right. The very first versions of Cubase — before the program’s rebirth as Cubase SX in 2002 — did in fact offer a Drum Track Class, although its purpose was rather pedestrian. Drum Tracks functioned like MIDI tracks, but with two key differences. Drum maps could be assigned to the tracks, enabling the Drum Editor to display drum names, and MIDI parts located on a Drum Track would open in the Drum Editor by default.
The new Drum Machine instrument is an integrated part of Cubase’s 14’s new Drum Track.
Cubase 14’s Drum Track is significantly more sophisticated. Instead of triggering an external drum machine or a VST instrument like Groove Agent, Drum Tracks include a new, dedicated Drum Machine instrument. This mirrors the way in which Sampler Tracks employ a built‑in Sampler instrument. And even though both the Sampler and Drum Machine instruments are technically VST plug‑ins, they’re designed to be used exclusively with the Sampler and Drum Tracks respectively.
With a Drum Track selected, Drum Machine’s interface appears in a new page in the Lower Zone; although it’s puzzling why Steinberg didn’t consolidate the Drum Machine and Sampler Control pages into a single page, given that a Track can’t contain both instruments simultaneously. Similarly, while Drum Machine’s interface, like Sampler Control, can be opened in a separate floating window, a Drum Track’s ‘Open/Close Drum Machine’ button always opens the Drum Machine in the Lower Zone. Frustratingly, there’s no modifier or command to open it directly in a separate window, which is particularly irksome since it’s useful to have Drum Machine in a dedicated window, especially once you start editing patterns.
Machine Drumming
One of the differences between Groove Agent SE and Drum Machine is that the former is designed for sample‑based playback, whereas the latter offers a hybrid of both sample and synth‑based sound generators known as Modules. The Sample Module is straightforward, offering pitch, filter and amplifier components — each with its own envelope. You can adjust the start and end points, fade‑in and ‑out times, and reverse the sample’s playback. However, the Synth Modules are where the fun really begins.
In addition to a Sample Module, Drum Machine includes an impressive array of Synth Modules covering the most common kit drums and percussion.
Organised into seven categories covering the most common kit drums and some simple percussion, there are 38 sonically superb Synth Modules from which to choose. The percussion category includes a single‑operator FM generator, two noise oscillators, and two indispensable cowbell Modules! Cowbell 1 is perfect for those Whitney Houston‑inspired ’80s tracks, while Cowbell 2 is most definitely the one to deploy when more cowbell is required.
A Drum Machine Kit contains 128 pads organised into eight pad banks, and the pad area displays one pad bank at a time using the familiar 4x4 grid of 16 Pads. Each pad consists of four Layers and each Layer can host a single Module, which means each pad can trigger up to four Modules simultaneously. This is great when extra weight is needed to enhance a sampled kick drum, for example, since you can easily layer a Sample Module with a kick Synth Module, adjusting the volume of each Layer to taste. The only small complaint I have when assigning Synth Modules to Layers is that there’s no way to preview a default sound from a Module without first adding it to a Layer.
Drum Machine’s interface is divided into pages, including the main Instrument page where Modules are assigned and their playback parameters adjusted. Each page has settings relevant to the currently selected pad, except for the Group page that contains a row of configuration parameters for each pad within the selected pad bank. These parameters include the note range that triggers a pad, whether it belongs to one of up to 32 Exclusive Groups (useful for having a closed hi‑hat ‘choke’ an open one), and the output to use for a pad’s playback. Each instance has a master stereo output, along with 31 additional outputs, which should be enough for most purposes.
Drum Machine’s Pad FX page provides a four‑processor effects chain, including a Bit Crusher where you can manipulate the upper eight bits individually.
However, you may find you don’t need to separate the outputs of different pads too widely, since each pad has its own independent effects chain that’s accessed via the Pad FX page. Each pad offers an effects chain with four effects — Bit Crusher, Distortion, Filter and EQ — which can be individually toggled on or off and re‑ordered by simply dragging an effect to a new position within the chain. Of these effects, Bit Crusher is the most interesting since it offers options beyond simply setting the resultant bit depth, with controls to separately adjust how the upper and lower bits are manipulated.
Each of the four Layers has its own independent dry and wet mix controls for the Pad FX chain, which is a nifty touch, and each pad has send levels to delay and reverb effects that are applied to the overall kit. The output from these send effects is always sent to Drum Machine’s master output, although it would be useful if this routing was freely assignable.
Drum Machine is empty by default, but Steinberg include 40 kits as Track Presets that can be recalled by clicking the Load Track Preset button (in the Drum Machine’s toolbar) and navigating the Media Bay.
A Step Sequencer By Any Other Name
Complementing the new Drum Track and its integrated Drum Machine is the Pattern Editor, which presents a step‑based approach to drum programming. Unlike Cubase’s other editors, the Pattern Editor can be opened for immediate use without having to first select something to edit. Therefore, with a suitable track selected, such as a new Drum Track, you can open the Pattern Editor from the MIDI menu. Provided that track is empty, the ‘Play with Project’ button will be enabled on the Pattern Editor’s toolbar, allowing the contents of the Pattern Editor to play and loop with the project. This is particularly neat, since it’s easier to program a new drum pattern whilst hearing the project playing.
The new Pattern Editor makes it easy to program drum patterns using a familiar, step‑sequencer‑esque interface.
A pattern is programmed by toggling steps on different lanes in the editor area, although sadly there’s no Acoustic Feedback mode. While each lane has a preview button to audition the assigned sound, there’s no audible confirmation when you activate a step. If the editor is opened with a Drum Track selected, a set of lanes based on the current Drum Machine kit is automatically created, although it’s easy to add and remove lanes as required. However, unless I’m missing something unbelievably obvious, there doesn’t seem to be a way to resize the height of the lanes or re‑order them.
The length of the current pattern, along with its step resolution and play direction, can be set via the Pattern Editor’s toolbar or on a per‑lane basis. This makes it easy to have a one‑bar pattern of 16th notes where the hi‑hat lane is playing an eighth‑note triplet rhythm, as an example.
Selecting a lane in the Pattern Editor automatically selects the corresponding pad in Drum Machine, which is handy if you have both the Pattern Editor and Drum Machine interfaces open simultaneously. Additional controls for the selected lane, including some neat options for generating steps, are accessible in the Lane Inspector. Taking our bar of 16th notes again: if you have a bass drum lane selected and want to activate a step on every quarter‑note beat, you can program this very quickly by clicking the ‘Add Every 4th Step’ button. There’s even a Euclidean mode, enabling you to set the number of pulses and rotation to determine which steps are activated according to a Euclidean distribution.
At the bottom of the Pattern Editor is a dedicated Parameter Lane where step parameters — Velocity, Repeats, Offset (±30 ticks), Probability, Velocity Variance and Gate — can be adjusted for the currently selected lane. Additional parameters like Skip (to skip over a step) and Tie (to merge adjacent steps) would have been welcome, although you can add extra parameters for automation assignments made in Drum Machine or any MIDI controller.
The Pattern Management controls on the toolbar assist in managing the collection of patterns associated with the track that was selected when you opened the Editor. The state of a pattern being edited is automatically preserved, but you can duplicate the current pattern if you’d like to experiment with a variation, as well as starting a new pattern, removing one, or renaming. And once you have a pattern you’d like to use in a project, you can drag it onto the corresponding track via the aptly named ‘Drag Pattern to Project’ button to create a Pattern Event on that track.
Pattern Events can be used on a suitable Track in the Project window, such as a Drum Track, to trigger a pattern created in the Pattern Editor for that track. Which pattern is referenced by an Event is shown in the top‑left corner, and you can click this identifier to switch between projects or convert the current Pattern Event to a MIDI part via a pop‑up menu as shown. Note the MIDI part amongst the Pattern Events, which has been converted from the Hat+Kick Pattern.
However, a Pattern Event on the project window isn’t a copy of the pattern itself; it’s an Event that tells the track what pattern to play. Which is why Pattern Events contain a small number in their top‑left corner that refers to the pattern number the Event will trigger. If you create another Pattern Event on the same track by using the Draw tool, you won’t be creating an empty pattern as you would an empty MIDI part. Instead, you’ll be creating an Event that triggers the pattern referenced by the number (and any custom name) shown.
This means that if you update a pattern by double‑clicking the Pattern Event to open the Pattern Editor, the current state of that pattern will be reflected by all Pattern Events set to that pattern. Usefully, if you have a Pattern Event referencing a one‑bar pattern, resizing that Event will fill its length by looping the pattern as needed. And if you want to change the pattern that’s triggered by an Event, you can click the pattern identified in the top left and select a different pattern from the available list.
The down side to this somewhat idiosyncratic approach, aside from being slightly confusing at first, is that Pattern Events — unlike MIDI parts — can’t be moved freely between tracks. This is due to the fact patterns are tied to the tracks on which they were created — a pattern that exists on one track doesn’t uniquely exist on any other track. Which explains why there’s no option to convert MIDI parts into Pattern Events, despite being able to do the reverse and convert Pattern Events into MIDI parts.
Overall, the Pattern Editor is a welcome addition to Cubase, although it’s hard to avoid feeling the paint might still be wet in a few places. In addition to the quibbles mentioned, most editing actions carried out in the Pattern Editor aren’t added to the undo stack, meaning you can’t undo steps (or steps), which is rather unsettling. And you wonder if Steinberg haven’t been victims of their own conceptual cleverness to some extent, especially when even the Operation Manual appears noticeably sparse in demystifying the subject at hand.
Modulating Modulators
If you’ve ever found yourself creatively stymied by the capabilities of automation, Cubase 14 likely has the answer for you with a new feature called Modulators. And while Cubase isn’t the first music creation application to leverage modular‑synth‑style components to control parameters on the mixer or within plug‑ins, it can be tricky to strike the right balance between flexibility and usability.
Audio‑based tracks now feature eight modulation slots that can each be assigned to one of six Modulator types. Three of these are the bread‑and‑butter modulation sources you might expect — an LFO, Shaper (or envelope generator) and a Step Modulator — which can output a modulation signal that’s either synchronised to the project start, left to run freely (ignoring the transport state), or is retriggered by a MIDI note.
The remaining three Modulator types are something of a mixed bag, starting with the humble Macro Knob that can be used to modulate multiple parameters via a single knob. Envelope Follower takes the audio output of the track on which it’s used (or a side‑chain input) and translates the amplitude of the input into a modulation signal. And, finally, ModScripter, as the name implies, makes it possible to write your own Modulators using JavaScript. This does require a little coding experience, although several examples are included for study purposes or just to be used as additional Modulators. One such script is Intensity, which features a single knob to scale an input signal.
The Modulators page is accessible in either the Lower Zone or a separate window, with both options provided as key commands — making it even more annoying similar key commands aren’t available for the Drum Machine or Sampler Control pages! Modulators can also be conveniently accessed in a new, appropriately named section in the Inspector.
The Modulators page in the Lower Zone gives access to the eight slots available for each audio‑based track. Here you can see examples of each of the six Modulators, with audio from the selected instrument track feeding the Envelope Follower module in the first slot. The instance of ModScripter at the end is loaded with one of the included example scripts, which creates a single control labelled Intensity.
Once a Modulator has been assigned to a slot, it can be connected to a destination by clicking that slot’s Add Connection button. Up to eight connections can be established per slot, although only four such connections are visible at a time because they’re split across two pages. And despite the availability of displays with generous horizontal dimensions, there isn’t an option to extend the number of connections shown in a single page. Also, I couldn’t help thinking it might be useful if one could assign a background colour to help distinguish on slot from another.
Once a connection has been added, a destination can be chosen by either activating the Learn button and clicking a parameter or selecting the parameter manually from a pop‑up directory. After the connection has been established, you can set the value of the destination parameter, the modulation depth, and whether the polarity of the signal is unipolar (0 to +1) or bipolar (‑1 to +1). For an idea of how you might get started with Modulators, consider the example shown in the screenshot.
Here you can see an example of the kind of scenarios the new Modulators feature makes possible, as described in the main text.
Three Modulators have been added to an instrument track featuring two inserts, Shimmer and Studio Delay (see image above). The output signal of the first Modulator — an LFO — modulates the High Frequency Cutoff parameter in Shimmer, while the output signal from the third Modulator — ModScripter (which is behaving as a Slew Rate Limiter thanks to an included preset) — is connected to the Intensity parameter of the same plug‑in.
It’s important to note that a slew rate limiter doesn’t generate a signal, it merely smooths out an incoming signal; and in this example the input signal is coming from the second Modulator — Step Modulator — which is connected to ModShifter’s Modulation Input parameter.
To make things interesting, the Step Modulator has a second connection, routing its output signal directly (without passing through the slew rate limiter) to Studio Delay’s Distortion parameter. What’s particularly neat, though, is that the Modulator Connections assigned to plug‑ins can be displayed above the plug‑in’s interface by enabling the Show Modulation Connections button on that window’s toolbar. This makes it much clearer to understand what’s going on.
There are of course some obvious limitations in this first iteration of Modulators, such as the feature being absent from MIDI tracks. It’s also impossible for a Modulator on one track to modulate a parameter on another track — although, depending on what you’re trying to accomplish, sometimes you can find a workaround by side‑chaining audio from another track to use as a modulation source. Overall, I think the Modulators feature ended up becoming my favourite new addition in Cubase 14.
A Cubase Valentine?
Cubase 14 is an incredibly ambitious release that debuts three major new areas of functionality: Drum Tracks (including the Pattern Editor and Drum Machine), Modulators and a new Score Editor. And while you could criticise this direction as being emulous, since many of these features are similar to those found in comparable music creation software — notably Logic Pro and Bitwig — it’s not as though these applications were the first to invent, say, step sequencers or modular synths.
What’s most important, of course, is that any new features are implemented in a manner that makes sense for Cubase and its users. And, to their credit, Steinberg’s developers are often relentless when incorporating new functionality, covering practically every conceivable usage case for almost any workflow. Such dedication makes it all the more surprising when you notice what seem like obvious omissions in, say, the Pattern Editor, since it lends an unfinished quality to something that evidently has a great deal of potential.
Indeed, if there’s a criticism one could make, it’s that Steinberg’s goals for Cubase 14 were possibly too ambitious, and, as a result, there are perhaps a few more creases than usual to be gradually ironed out. Although, if being too ambitious is the most negative remark I can muster about an update that’s generally brimming with creativity and musicality, perhaps it’s not really a criticism at all.
What’s The Score?
Cubase 14 introduces a brand‑new Score Editor built with technology from Dorico, Steinberg’s publishing‑grade music notation system, replacing what was previously referred to as the ‘advanced’ score editor. However, rather than attempting to Frankenstein Dorico directly into Cubase, Steinberg’s developers have decided to start with a mostly blank piece of paper.
Perhaps the biggest problem with integrated notation is that production and notation are very different approaches to music creation; and history has shown how being a really good solution for one of these approaches moves you further away from being a really good solution for the other. Therefore, Steinberg have decided to side‑step this problem by refocusing the new Score Editor on the scoring tasks most Cubase users really need, rather than providing a full scoring solution within Cubase that is an unwitting and less good alternative to Dorico.
However, the down side to this change in focus, combined with the fact the Score Editor has been rewritten, means there are fewer features and capabilities than before. It also means, perhaps obviously, that scores created with earlier versions won’t look the same, so you’ll probably want to keep your existing version of Cubase installed alongside if you need to open such projects. But the advantages to this new approach are numerous. Cubase 14’s Dorico‑inspired Score Editor is easier to use, produces higher‑quality results more efficiently, and does a better job at interpreting the musical events of a Cubase project into readable notation. And for most users, this will be enough.
For situations where a greater level of sophistication is required than the new Score Editor can provide, you can now export a Dorico project directly from Cubase that can be opened natively in the other application. And although Steinberg plan to extend the new Score Editor’s functionality, the seamless handing over of a project from Cubase to Dorico is by design, since the intention is for the Score Editor and Dorico to be considered as a complete workflow solution.
As you might imagine, Cubase 14’s modern approach to integrated notation is a big subject, requiring more space than this review can afford to do it justice. Even the manual covering the new Score Editor contains over 100 pages, which should convey something about the depth of its abilities! Look out for a more in‑depth dive into the new Score Editor and its relationship to Dorico in a forthcoming issue.
Scalable, Shimmering, Studio Plug‑ins
Every collection of new plug‑ins added to each successive Cubase release presents a new user interface design, and the latest batch included with Cubase 14 is no different. Although, to be fair, Steinberg’s latest plug‑in veneer features a pleasing aesthetic with interfaces that scale proportionately if the plug‑in’s window is resized. Which is really, really useful — except for the fact it highlights how Cubase’s older plug‑ins lack this functionality.
Five new effects are included, two of which are tools. Underwater uses a low‑pass filter to make audio sound as if it’s being played, well, underwater; and while it may have musical uses, it seems designed more for audio post‑production, creating that muffled, indoor sound when a scene is set outdoors. Volume is — and I hope you’re sitting down for this — a gain adjustment tool, although it’s surprisingly versatile since it can be used with any configuration. A single fader controls the overall level, as you would expect, and individual channel faders are also available, which is handy for trimming levels in a 7.1.2 configuration and highlights the usefulness of resizeable interfaces.
The new Volume plug‑in is particularly handy when inserted on channels with a wide Configuration, such as the 7.1.4 instance shown here. As with the other new plug‑ins included with Cubase 14, Volume’s interface usefully scales to the size of the window.
Shimmer takes inspiration from Eventide’s ShimmerVerb, emulating an instantly recognisable sonorous effulgence of the early 1980s. Traditionally, this effect was achieved by deploying Eventide’s pitch‑shifting hardware in conjunction with popular digital reverbs. Steinberg describe the effect as a reverb and pitch‑shifter in a delay loop; I’d refer to it as the Mr Sheen of reverbs.
Studio Delay is a bit like a Roland Space Delay on digital steroids and is therefore considerably more exciting than its somewhat pedestrian name suggests. A choice of eight delay patterns is available, each described by an icon representing the number of repeats, relative volumes and pan positions. Four integrated effects — modulation, distortion, reverb, and pitch — add some extra sonic character alongside a few pleasing extras, such as an Age control to simulate older, analogue tape machines. Combined with Shimmer, every sound can be instantly and effortlessly transformed into a pad.
Last but not least, Auto Filter is a playful way to modulate the cutoff frequency of a filter via either its input or side‑chain signals. If you’ve ever used Soundtoys’ FilterFreak, you’ll know what to expect, although this effect is far simpler.
VST2 Est Mort, Vive VST3?
The enduring popularity of VST2 has caused something of an ‘Innovator’s Dilemma’ for Steinberg; after all, it’s easy to forget the company have been trying to phase it out in favour of VST3 for 16 years! However, while Steinberg have mostly continued to support VST2 plug‑ins in the company’s own applications, it’s worth remembering a 2022 statement where Steinberg announced VST2 had been discontinued. For Mac‑based Cubase users, this meant the Apple‑Silicon‑native version of Cubase 12 would be VST3‑only; but Steinberg are now actively nudging Windows and Intel Mac users in the same direction.
In Cubase 14, VST2 support is disabled by default, although rather than forcing you to use Cubase 13 for those VST2 plug‑ins you can’t quite let go of just yet, support can be re‑enabled in the VST Plug‑in Manager window. In the bottom right of the window, simply click the ‘Enable VST2 Plug‑ins’ button, and you’ll notice that, in addition to your VST2 plug‑ins becoming available, the ‘VST2 Plug‑in Path Settings’ button also reappears. However, I would consider this change a final warning. Don’t be surprised if the next major version of Cubase jettisons VST2 altogether.
It’s The Little Things
As usual, Cubase 14 includes numerous workflow improvements that will make life immeasurably better for existing Cubase users. For example, it’s finally possible to re‑order channels in the MixConsole windows directly. And just this one seemingly small feature has caused most die‑hard Cubase users I’ve told to retort: “This is not a small feature!”
A smaller but no less welcome enhancement is the ability to create new MIDI parts (or Pattern Events) anywhere on a track by double‑clicking the appropriate spot in the Event Display. Previously, the Pencil tool was required to do this, or you could only double‑click to create a part between the Left and Right Locators.
Moving along to Audio Events, these no longer contain a Volume Handle to adjust the gain of an event. Instead, in a manner not dissimilar to Pro Tools, the bottom left of each Audio Event now contains a small volume icon. Clicking this displays a mini‑fader to adjust the volume, which no longer changes the selection status of the Audio Event, and the static gain offset value is displayed next to the icon. Previously, Volume Handles could only indicate gain decreases, so this is definitely an improvement; and you can now Shift‑drag the mini‑fader to make fine adjustments or Command‑click the icon to reset the Event’s gain to 0dB.
Pros
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Summary
Cubase 14 adds both impressive new features and time‑saving workflow enhancements to Steinberg’s Advanced Music Production System, making this one of the most musically creative Cubase releases for new and existing users alike.
Information
Cubase 14 Pro $579.99, Artist $329.99, Elements $99.99. Upgrade pricing available.