The 2015 NAMM Show: Dirty Loops talks about the new Korg Kronos

Steinberg Cubase Pro 15

 By Mark Wherry

What does the latest version of Cubase have in common with the 1982 science fiction movie Tron?

Since the release of Cubase 14 last November, Steinberg have issued three maintenance releases to the company’s “Advanced Music Production System”. And while this wouldn’t normally be notable — such updates have been common with previous versions — one of these releases contained far more than the usual handful of bug fixes. Version 14.0.20 might not sound like a striking step forward, but it brought substantive new features to what had already been an impressively ambitious upgrade. It also became the first official release to natively support ARM‑on‑Windows systems powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite processors, such as Microsoft’s latest Surface devices.

With so much momentum during the Cubase 14 era, an initial glance at the headlines for Cubase 15 might seem underwhelming by comparison; however, such an impression belies the work Steinberg have undertaken for this year’s upgrade. Whilst some of the new functionality inevitably builds on more recent additions to the application — particularly the Pattern Editor and modulators — it would be wrong to assume Steinberg’s developers have focused on these areas exclusively.

Hub‑A‑Dub‑Dub

Since the release of version 7 over a decade ago, Cubase’s Hub window has eagerly greeted users at launch, providing a starting point for creating new or opening existing projects. And while I can’t say I’m a fan of such windows, since the amount of utility they provide rarely warrants their gatekeeping nature, Steinberg have finally rethought this feature in Cubase 15. The Hub’s interface has been admirably overhauled, making it both more useful and more visually appealing.

A brief Guided Tour introduces the new Hub, reminiscent of a similar feature in Dorico. Although, unlike Dorico, the tour guide window jumps to each feature being described — instead of remaining in one place and highlighting the relevant feature — and conveys too little information to be truly helpful for Cubase neophytes. Existing users will find it a brief nuisance, and although it only appears once, it will resurface if the Preferences are deleted or disabled, such as when running Cubase in Safe Mode.

The new Hub’s centre area reorganises the recent projects and templates categories into sections, and additional sections can be included for custom locations via a new, dedicated Hub Settings window. This is a great way to provide quick access to Cubase projects belonging to different real‑world projects, and, although you can’t remove the Recent and Templates sections, it’s possible to toggle the visibility of these sections and any others you might add.

Cubase’s Hub window has been redesigned with some useful improvements, such as the ability to configure the centre area with sections based on custom folders.

Each section offers a ‘sort’ control to list projects by name or date in ascending or descending order. But the icing on the cake is a search filter to assist in finding projects across all sections in the centre area; the cherry would have been an option to automatically open and close sections to reveal matching projects without having to do this manually.

Like the Hub in Steinberg’s stage production application, VST Live, it’s now possible to change the current audio driver and set the main stereo output directly from the Hub. Although, being somewhat lazy, it’s perhaps a shame that — unlike Logic Pro’s equivalent Choose a Project window — you can’t specify a surround format for a new empty project in the Hub or activate Dolby Atmos, incorporating the behaviour of the Atmos Setup Assistant.

This is presumably because the Audio Connections window can manage input and output configurations independently of projects, which persist after a project is closed. So, if the previously open project used anything other than a stereo configuration for its main output, Cubase will substitute the Hub’s stereo output menu for a button to open the Audio Connections window.

In addition to being able to set the audio driver from the Hub, Cubase 15 introduces a new Audio Settings window, consolidating the Audio System and Driver pages from the Studio Setup window into a single, dedicated panel. However, rather than serving as a replacement for these same settings in Studio Setup, the Audio Settings window duplicates this functionality, which seems like a missed opportunity to do something more radical.

Behaviour Patterns

Although the Pattern Editor debuted alongside Cubase 14’s Drum Track feature and was primarily intended for programming drum patterns, its underlying nature as a step sequencer — triggering notes on different lanes — meant it could just as easily be used with instruments beyond drum machines. After all, step sequencers have long been used to craft TB‑303‑inspired bass lines or homages to Kraftwerk. The only catch was that such patterns are typically monophonic, whereas the Pattern Editor was conceived as a polyphonic sequencer for programming drums.

To address this minor inconvenience, Cubase 15 introduces a new Melodic Mode, providing the Pattern Editor with a complementary set of tools making it more versatile for both monophonic and polyphonic pitch‑based sequencing.

The Pattern Editor’s new Melodic Mode makes it easy to program sequences monophonically.

Unlike Drum Mode — where lanes are derived from drum kit assignments and can be added or removed individually — Melodic Mode displays lanes for pitches within a defined range. All chromatic pitches within this range are shown on individual lanes by default, but you can also select a root note and scale so only pitches within that scale are shown. For example, setting the root note to D and the scale to Harmonic Minor displays lanes exclusively for pitches belonging to the D harmonic minor scale, which is — of course — the saddest of all keys.

These pitch constraints are particularly helpful when generating patterns automatically using Shapes or Randomisation. Shapes create rising and falling contours spread out over a number of steps, while Randomisation is carried over from Drum Mode and produces a sequence based on user‑defined conditions.

Once a pattern has been generated or created manually, Melodic Mode allows further refinement via the Variation and Density controls. Variation transforms the pattern based on a specified amount of complexity, whereas Density non‑destructively thins out the number of notes deployed. And, if a root note and scale have been set, changing the root note offers a quick and musical way to transpose the pattern.

Published December 2025

Korg’s new Kronos at Dubway Studios in NYC

Cubase 14: Controlling Acoustic Drum Dynamics

By John Walden

Screen 1: With two instances of Compressor on your drum bus, you can both tame transients and add some extra punch, without losing the natural sound of the kit.

Add impact and attitude to your drum parts with Cubase’s stock dynamics plug‑ins!

When you’re mixing, there are lots of processing options that can make a significant contribution to your acoustic drum sound, but dynamics processing can be particularly useful when the musical style or nature of the mix mean the drums must make a larger‑than‑life impact. Such processing might come in the form of gating, expansion, compression, limiting, transient shaping, clipping and even as a side‑effect of tape emulations, amp/speaker sims, saturation and distortion.

So what, on this front, does Cubase’s stock plug‑in collection have to offer? With the aid of some audio examples (available on the SOS website: https://sosm.ag/cubase-1225), we’ll explore all that in this article. It’s a big subject, though, so to keep things focused and ensure that all the techniques I cover below can be achieved in any Cubase versions from Elements upwards, I’ll concentrate mostly on compression, transient shaping and saturation.

Remember that the multitude of options at your disposal always includes doing nothing!

And I’ll add one final note before we dive in: remember that the multitude of options at your disposal always includes doing nothing! Your first job is always to listen carefully, and if your drums were recorded well and sound great, then just balancing the faders and allowing the glorious natural dynamics of the kit and performance to be the star of the show may well be enough, particularly if you have any bus processing going on. It’s not an unrealistic prospect, if you’re happy to live without winning an award for crafting the loudest mix in history!

Drums, Naturally

Normally, though, you’ll want at least to reign in some aspects of the performance/recording just a little, even if you don’t want to overtly change the energy or character of the part. For such duties, you don’t need to look for anything special: Cubase’s standard Compressor plug‑in is a transparent and very flexible tool, and well up to the job. An instance, or possibly two in series, placed on your drum subgroup might well be all that’s required.

The first screen shows a setup with two Compressor plug‑ins, each instance having different attack and release times so they react differently. The first is intended just to catch the highest peaks in the signal. Its threshold has been adjusted so that compression is triggered only by the loudest section of a hit: the initial transient. But, the very fast attack and release times mean that as soon as the transient has passed through (and thus the signal level drops below the threshold), the compression ceases quickly — the gain reduction meter should almost just ‘flicker’ to indicate this short‑lived processing.

The ratio you can set to taste, and you can juggle the ratio and threshold controls to finesse the amount and character of gain reduction this compressor gives you. But note that generally you’ll want more assertive settings than the (roughly) 2:1 you might opt for on a mix bus; I used 5:1 in this example. Incidentally, if you crank the ratio up to 8:1 (the maximum ratio the Compressor plug‑in offers), it starts to become something like limiting, and if that’s what you’re after, you could easily use an instance of Cubase’s Limiter here instead. Personally, I like having the additional control offered by Compressor. Once configured, and you’ve noted the maximum gain reduction (around 6dB in this example), you can then apply a little make‑up gain (I used a fairly conservative 3dB here). Because we’re pulling down the peaks, the end result is a sound with less overall dynamic range, 

Published January 2026

NAMM 2015: Toshi Hiketa performs with Nutube

Cubase 15: Exploring Omnivocal

 By John Walden

The initial beta release of Omnivocal ships with two voice characters.

Find out just what’s possible — and what’s not — with Cubase’s new virtual vocalist.

Steinberg dropped something of a leftfield surprise with Cubase 15: the inclusion of Yamaha’s Omnivocal. Supplied initially in a beta form but available to Pro, Artist and Elements users, Omnivocal is a virtual vocalist instrument plug‑in. Of course, Yamaha have a longstanding history in vocal synthesis — for example, it was way back in March 2004 that we first reviewed their Vocaloid software, whose synthetic vocals have spawned something of their own genre online, particularly within the anime/manga world. But in recent years, developers such as Dreamtonics and ACE Studio have used AI techniques to push vocal synthesis technology forwards, allowing users to craft remarkably natural‑sounding and expressive vocal lines from a virtual instrument in much the same way as they might for a virtual string or wind instrument.

On the surface, it would appear that Omnivocal aims to do something similar — in essence, you just instantiate it on an instrument track, record (or program) a standard MIDI clip with the desired melody, and Omnivocal will then synthesize a human vocal to ‘sing’ those notes. So for those who’ve upgraded to Cubase 15 or are considering it, let’s find out exactly what you can expect from your new virtual session singer...

Singing Lessons

As with other virtual instruments, you can choose between different sounding presets. In its current beta form Omnivocal lets you choose between a male or a female singer, but I gather more options featuring different singing characters are planned for the future. You also get a number of parameters that can adjust the sound character of each singer. For example, you can pick between Straight (more subdued) and Dynamic (more expressive) singing styles.

There are also automatable parameters, such as Formant, Attack, Air, Power and Vibrato, all of which can change the character of the vocal delivery. You can automate these parameters, but they require the synthesis engine to re‑render the sung vocal to reflect your changes. While this happens automatically and very quickly in the background, it does mean that you can’t actually adjust these controls in real time like you might with, for example, a synth’s filter cutoff. That said, pitch‑bend data and the Presence (a tonal control) and Output dials operate outside the vocal synthesis engine, so they can be adjusted in real time.

The Text box allows you to add lyrics for Omnivocal to sing.

Initially, your melodic line will be sung with an ‘ah’ vowel sound for each note, but you can enter your own lyrics in the Text box on the MIDI Editor’s Info line. It has to be said that, in its current beta form, this aspect of Omnivocal feels a little cumbersome in operation.

Published February 2026

Rie Tsuji (of Beyoncé) and the Korg Kronos Music Workstation