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.

Some enhancements to the Pattern Editor apply to both Melodic and Drum modes, such as the ability to edit parameters directly from the Step Editor. You can now click to add or edit a step, or keep the button held down and drag the cursor up or down to adjust that step’s parameter value for the type currently selected in the Parameter Lane. This is tremendously handy, although I still wish the height of lanes was adjustable.

Another welcome improvement is that it’s now possible to move and copy Pattern Events between Drum, Sampler, Instrument, and MIDI tracks — albeit with some limitations. For example, Pattern Events can’t be shared with tracks if they already contain Events created using a different Pattern mode, which basically means you can’t mix and match Pattern Events created with Drum Mode and Melodic Mode on the same track.

Modulators For The Users!

Modulators were another great addition in Cubase 14, and Steinberg have also been busy improving this feature in version 15 with the inclusion of six new modulators. These offer even more ways to generate signals and, perhaps more importantly, the ability to combine modulators into composite sources.

Cubase 15 features six new modulators. Note the outputs of the Random and Attack Decay modulators are routed to the inputs of the Crossfader modulator. The Sample & Hold modulator is using the output of an audio track as a side‑chain source.

The aptly named Random modulator includes models inspired by the work of a computer scientist, a meteorologist and a biochemist. And while these occupations sound like the setup for a particularly nerdy pub joke, Steinberg’s developers had good reason to delve into such research: generating random numbers isn’t as straightforward as you might think. And generating musically useful random signals is even harder. Interestingly, one of the models is named after Ken Perlin’s eponymous noise algorithm, which was originally developed for the movie Tron as a way of making surface textures in computer‑generated imagery look more natural.

The ‘wave’ in the Wavefold LFO modulator refers to a single oscillator capable of generating a sine or triangle wave — or anything in between via a Shape control. Folding describes how the oscillator’s output is manipulated such that, if the value of the signal exceeds a specified threshold, the waveform is inverted — or ‘folded’ — back on itself. And of course, like any modulator control, the controls for Shape and Fold can be modulated, which only adds to the fun.

Attack Decay is an imaginatively named envelope generator, although a more suitable name might have been Impulse Decay since only the time and shape of the decay curve is adjustable — the attack stage is fixed with 100 percent amplitude and zero length. And while you could essentially create the same result more flexibly with the existing Shaper modulator, Attack Decay is simpler and allows the shape of the curve to be easily modulated.

The new Sample & Hold modulator works as you’d expect: the current value of the input signal is ‘sampled’ and then ‘held’ at that value for the specified time, defined in either note length or Hertz. And finally, the Morph LFO and Crossfader modulators are similar in that both enable you to mix — which is to say ‘morph’ or ‘crossfade’ — two signals into a single modulation output. The difference is that Morph LFO provides two built‑in oscillators, whereas Crossfader features two input knobs that can be modulated by the output of other modulators.

Unlike the improvements made to the Pattern Editor since its introduction in Cubase 14, many of the modulator shortcomings remain unaddressed. For example, modulators still can’t be used on MIDI tracks, and only destinations available on the same track/channel as the modulators themselves can be modulated directly. On the plus side, though, modulating a track’s mute control now works, except I did notice a visual anomaly where a modulated mute control can stop indicating its state on the relevant Track Header.

Cubase 15 also aims to unify the behaviour of the various bypass controls used by modulators. Whether you’re bypassing modulators at the connection, modulator or track level, any connected destination should, in theory, be restored to its original, root value when bypassed. However, in practice, quirks in how the root value is interpreted can induce some head‑scratching moments.

For example, if you add an LFO modulator and connect the track’s pan control as a destination, bypassing that connection sets pan to the value assigned by the connection dial. If the dial is centred, the pan neatly reverts to the centre position when bypassed, which seems fairly straightforward. However, if you establish the same connection using the new Wavefold LFO modulator, for instance, the bypass behaviour is slightly different.

Although bypassing at the connection level will again restore the pan control to the position of the connection dial as expected, bypassing the Wavefold LFO modulator itself — or the entire track on which it resides — sets pan to a level that’s the sum of the dial’s position and the specified modulation depth. It’s somewhat confusing, leaving you to wonder if this is a bug or a feature.

X Marks The Expression

One area of Cubase that’s remained largely unchanged since its introduction back in Cubase 5 in 2009 is the ability to work with articulations and playing techniques — especially when writing for orchestral instruments — using Expression Maps. Indeed, the ideas behind this feature have arguably evolved further since Dorico introduced its own implementation. And the reasons are perhaps obvious: whereas playing techniques are fundamental in notated composition, production‑oriented applications like Cubase can tolerate a more laissez‑faire attitude.

However, as sample libraries have become larger and more complex, the use of Expression Maps in Cubase has only increased, which is presumably why Steinberg finally chose to revisit this feature in Cubase 15. And since the interoperability between Cubase and Dorico has been steadily improving over the years in both concept and compatibility, it makes sense Cubase’s developers would turn to Dorico for inspiration.

In Dorico, articulations are triggered by switches, of which the two main types are base switches and add‑on switches. Base switches define core articulations such as legato, staccato or tremolo, while add‑ons describe complementary techniques that can be added on, such as up‑ and down‑bow directions for a violin.

For Cubase’s Expression Maps, Sound Slots serve a similar role to switches, and in earlier versions a slot could comprise up to four articulations with each being placed in one of four numbered groups that operated exclusively. This meant if your base articulations were placed in the first group of each slot, only one would be active simultaneously, although more complicated mappings could quickly become confusing.

Both the Expression Map Setup window and the way in which playing techniques are represented in the Key Editor’s Articulation Lane have been redesigned in Cubase 15. Note the ‘Bowing Direction’ group has been consolidated into a single lane.

In Cubase 15, these four, numbered groups have been replaced by an unlimited number of named groups for each map, accompanied by Dorico‑inspired Add‑On Sound Slots. These changes affect the way Articulation Lanes are used and displayed in the Key Editor, offering a clearer organisation, with the ability to collapse groups into single lanes. And the Articulation Lane is complemented by another Dorico‑inspired feature, which optionally displays a Sound Slots lane in the Key Editor to indicate which slot is active at any point in the timeline.

Given that Dorico could already import Cubase’s Expression Maps, it makes sense that Steinberg would add support to import Dorico’s Expression Maps in Cubase 15 — which can be dragged and dropped onto the updated Expression Map setup window just like any other Expression Map file. However, the import is quite limited and currently restricted to slots within a single group, which seems a little ironic: despite Cubase borrowing Dorico‑style add‑ons, it can’t yet import them.

The only minor grievance I had with the modernised Expression Map setup window is that it no longer manifests itself as a floating tool window, meaning that it doesn’t stay on top of other open windows. And even though a customisable toolbar has been added, there’s no Always On Top option (as is the case with many such windows in Cubase) to restore the prior behaviour.

Odds & Ends

As is always the case with a major Cubase upgrade, there’s a long list of smaller improvements that could easily double the length of this review if I mentioned them all. However, a few worth noting include the ability to add volume and pan controls to track headers. These resemble the horizontal volume and pan controls used in the Inspector and are particularly beneficial when you want to maximise screen space by hiding everything except the track list and event area.

Folders and automation tracks now use indentation colour to make ownership clearer. Notice also the new automation parameter menu.Another change related to track headers concerns folder tracks. Previously, a folder’s colour was indicated by its colour bar — or the entire track header if Colourise Tracks is enabled — and any tracks within a folder were indented with black space. In Cubase 15, a folder’s colour is now used as the indentation colour, making the relationship between a folder and its contents much clearer — assuming you’ve chosen your colours sensibly, of course!

Unlike previous versions, assigning a colour to a folder track in Cubase 15 causes all tracks within that folder — and any tracks added subsequently — to inherit the same hue, which is a move that might not necessarily be hailed as progress amongst longtime users. Happily, a new option in the Event Display (Folders preferences page, Apply Colour of Folder Track Automatically) allows the previous behaviour to be restored by setting it to Never rather than Always.

This new indentation style extends to automation tracks, where the inset now appears as a darker shade of the track’s colour, making the allegiance of automation tracks more obvious. There are some neat improvements for quicker access to automation parameters, with the automation pop‑up menu now divided into two menus: one for parameters — which is searchable and displays the five most recently used — and another for commands. The new parameter menu is such a useful addition, I wish somebody had thought of it sooner! (I also wish Drum Machine’s automation parameters were less obfuscated, but you can’t have everything.)

Finally, given how much functionality has been added to the Export Audio Mixdown window over the years, Cubase 15 introduces a handy Quick Audio Export command for expediently exporting a stereo mix. The export range is automatically determined based on event locations (including reverb tails), so the only decision you need to make is whether to save the rendered output as a 24‑bit WAV file (at the project’s sampling rate) or an MP3 file (encoded at 256kbps with a 44.1kHz sample rate). And while it would be easy to criticise this feature for omitting ‘insert‑any‑option‑here’, such criticisms would rather miss the point!

Cubase 15 is far more than merely a polished iteration of the prior release...

Fifteen To One

In many ways, Cubase 15 feels like the conclusion to what would have made Cubase 14 the perfect release. And while such a remark runs the risk of sounding like a back‑handed compliment, it very much isn’t. Cubase 15 is far more than merely a polished iteration of the prior release — version 14.0.20 already delivered that — since it enhances what came before whilst still adding multifarious new functions.

Scaling New Heights

In addition to supporting high‑DPI modes, recent Windows versions of Cubase have also offered an Application Scaling setting, allowing the user interface — and that of well‑behaved VST3 plug‑ins — to be scaled independently of the system’s setting. In version 15, Steinberg not only bring this feature to the Mac, but enable changes to take immediate effect (on both platforms) without the ceremonial restarting of Cubase demanded by the earlier Windows implementation.

The Plug‑in Manager’s appearance has been modernised in Cubase 15. Because this screenshot was captured on the Windows‑on‑ARM version of Cubase, the Architecture column identifies plug‑ins that natively support the ARM64EC environment.

This newfound rescaling ability on the Mac will be welcomed by users with Retina displays, especially those lacking an option between More Space and their native resolutions — which appear to have been designed for birds of prey. Reducing Cubase’s interface by, say, 25 percent, allows more of the application to fit on‑screen without affecting the rest of the system — and this feature is even handier now that Cubase 15 supports macOS’s dedicated full‑screen mode.

Curiously, while the Application Scaling setting now sensibly resides on the User Interface preferences page, the Enable HiDPI control in the Windows version has been left marooned under General. Given that these two settings are closely related, it seems odd they wouldn’t be kept together — as indeed they were in version 14.

Separation Anxiety

Perhaps one of the least interesting new features in Cubase 15 — and to be fair, its intrigue is only diminished due to such functionality becoming de rigueur in the current generation of competing products — is the integrated ability to separate stems from fully rendered audio files.

Steinberg’s Stem Separation can unmix up to four stems from a selected audio event — vocals, drums, bass and other — which is similar to other implementations. Dedicated products like Rip‑X offer considerably more advanced capabilities, of course, though a more apropos comparison is that Logic Pro’s equivalent Stem Splitter can extrapolate six stems in the current version, keeping piano and guitar separate from the ‘other’ stem.

Stem Separation in Cubase is configured from a dedicated window, which can be opened by choosing Separate Stems from the Audio menu or by assigning a key command — sadly, you can’t summon it from the Project window’s context menu. This window lets you toggle which stems to separate; and, if you select only two or three of these, Cubase can optionally combine the selected stems into a new audio file rather than creating individual stems.

The results will vary depending on the source material. But, listening back to a mix of the stems summed at unity gain, the sound was noticeably more band‑limited than the original file, with the individual stems containing a little more leakage than I’ve heard with other algorithms. Although it’s worth noting such analysis is subjective and quantifying the integrity of the stems generated is surprisingly difficult.

While it’s perhaps tempting to consider comparing the phase‑cancelled results from such algorithms with the original, this kind of assessment reveals very little about any qualitative differences. Many separation processes enforce a degree of mixture consistency to provide more musically useful results when recombining stems, which is why you can re‑sum all the stems except the vocal one, as an example, without too many unwanted artefacts.

Stem Separation wasn’t functional for the initial Windows‑on‑ARM version of Cubase 15, although it will be enabled in the 15.0.5 update that should be available by the time you read this.

Pros

• The Pattern Editor’s new Melodic Mode makes it easier to program bass lines and similarly sequenced patterns.
• Six new modulators are more than the sum of their signals.
• A welcome reworking of Expression Maps, borrowing ideas from Dorico.

Cons

• Stem Separation isn’t quite on a par with some implementations in competing products.
• Modulators still can’t be used on MIDI tracks or easily routed from one channel to another.

Summary

Cubase 15 builds on the functionality introduced in 14 — making features like the Pattern Editor and modulators even better for a broader range of musicians — without neglecting other areas of the application.

Information

Cubase Pro 15 $579.99, Artist 15 $329.99, Elements 15 $99. Upgrade pricing available.

www.steinberg.net 

Published December 2025

Keystage: Video Manual - Chapter 5 - Using the Arpeggiator

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, but with the sustained portion of each hit (where Compressor has fully released) sounding a little louder (because of the make‑up gain). Judge it right, and the result should be more impactful drums.

The second Compressor instance is optional. The first Compressor has already handled the highest peaks, so this one targets a different aspect of the drum sound. A slower attack time allows the transients to pass through unscathed before the gain reduction kicks in, and the combination of a longer release and a lower ratio (3:1) than on the first instance results in smoother‑sounding compression. Again, the threshold can be adjusted to refine the overall result, and if required (it depends what you want to achieve here) a little make‑up gain can be applied to restore the final level of the drum mix. As with any compressor, the various controls interact, but unless you push specific controls to an extreme, it’s relatively easy to retain a very natural sound, and the gentle compression of the kit’s overall dynamic range makes it easier to integrate into your overall mix. Compressor might not have the vibe of some more esoteric dynamics plug‑ins, but it is capable, flexible and transparent.

More Control

Sometimes, you’re going to want more detailed control over the dynamics, and if that’s the case then you might want to consider compression of the drum kit’s close‑mic channels. If a transparent result remains your aim, then the same dual Compressor configuration we used for the drum bus is a perfectly suitable starting point for individual kit pieces. But you’ll want to tailor the settings to suit the dynamics of each drum element, of course. This is particularly useful for the key kick, snare and hi‑hat or spot‑cymbal mics.

Screen 2: At the channel level, it’s pretty easy to achieve additional control over a specific drum sound — but always listen out for interactions with the rest of the kit and your bus processing.

Depending on how you’re approaching mixing your drums, you might want to configure this compression with any drum bus dynamics processing you have in place bypassed — in changing the peaks and levels of the individual mic channels, you’ll change how the bus compressor reacts. Note, though, that each mic will have captured spill from other kit pieces, so if you wish to do any of this work with your drum element soloed to better hear what the compressor is doing to the track, you’ll still need to listen to the processing in the context of the whole kit — particularly overheads and room mics, with which all the close mics will interact.

Once the individual drum dynamics have been tweaked, you can re‑engage the bus‑level processing, which might need small adjustments. For example, if your channel‑level processing is now catching the initial transients, you may be able to back off the same processing on the drum bus. Or if your kick and snare are now louder because of make‑up gain, they might be tripping the bus compressor more, and you might either want to back off the threshold a little, or use a side‑chain filter to reduce the compressor’s sensitivity to the kick’s low frequencies to avoid pumping.

Targeting individual mic channels also lets you explore additional options on a specific drum, without worrying too much about undue impacts elsewhere in the kit. Yes, as I said, there’s often spill and with it a risk of changing phase relationships other mics, but the risk of significant problems is less than with radical EQ. One of those additional options might include replacing Compressor with one of Cubase’s more characterful compressors or other dynamics processors. The bundled compressor options depend on the Cubase version you’re using, but there are plenty of free alternatives if you need one, such as Klanghelm’s DC1A and MJUC jr. In this example, I’ve gone for two additional (and I suspect often overlooked) options that are available in all versions from Elements upwards: EnvelopeShaper and DaTube.

Throwing Shapes

In the second screenshot, I’ve placed an instance of EnvelopeShaper after my dual Compressor configuration (you can also use this without the separate compression, by the way!). This allows you to shape the transient and sustained (release) portions of a typical drum hit independently and in some interesting ways.

The Length control sets the duration of the ‘attack’, so determines how much of the drum’s initial transient is influenced by gain applied using the attack knob. You can subdue the transients by choosing a negative attack value, or emphasise them with a positive one. The latter can add extra ‘click’ to a kick or initial ‘snap’ to a snare for better definition, for example. But be careful — you’re likely boosting the peaks, which could lead to the signal either overloading any plug‑ins you have downstream, or peeping above the threshold of your bus compressors, making them react differently.

The release control then applies a gain adjustment to the ‘sustain’ (non‑transient) portion of the drum sound. So positive values tend to make the ‘ring’ or ‘body’ of a kick, snare or tom more obvious, while negative values generally give you a tighter‑sounding drum. Negative values will also tend to reduce any bleed from other drums, along with any room sound, rather like a gate can. There are more sophisticated transient shaper plug‑ins out there, but do you really need them? I find EnvelopeShaper easy to use and very effective!

Klanghelm’s MJUC jr — one of many great‑sounding free ‘character’ compressor plug‑ins you can check out if your version of Cubase has fewer options.

What A Character!

Some compressors (in hardware or plug‑in formats) don’t just turn the signal up and down — they can also add additional character to your drum sounds, with subtle transformer‑ and valve‑like distortion that we might call ‘saturation’ or ‘harmonics’. To emulate this, there are various options in the different versions of Cubase, including in the channel strip, and plenty of third‑party options including freebies such as those mentioned above. Since all Cubase versions come with DaTube, I’ve used that here.

As shown in the screenshot for my kick drum channel, I pushed the Drive control quite hard and then backed off the output to balance (to taste, by ear) the processed and unprocessed signal. In this case, DaTube’s harmonics add a lovely warmth to the kick tone, and result it a more solid ‘thump’.

Two Buses At Once

Another technique that’s well worth exploring for acoustic drums is parallel compression. Some plug‑ins let you do this internally — that’s what a wet/dry mix control gives you — but there are often advantages to adopting the ‘old‑school’ approach of putting a duplicate signal through a compressor on a separate track, and I’ve done that here using a send to a dedicated effects track. This allows you, for instance, to EQ the ‘wet’ part of the signal different from the dry one, which can be helpful.

If you want to move beyond a natural sound, parallel processing of the kick, snare and tom mics can be used to dial in some additional grit without making your cymbals suffer.

In fact, as you can see in the final screenshot, I chose to create two such effects buses for this project. The first receives sends from just the drum shell channels (the kick, snare and toms), while the second gets the hi‑hat, overheads and room mics. The purpose of this separation is to allow you to be more assertive with the close‑miked drum‑shell processing than with the metalwork, which can start to sound weird if overcompressed, or when the longer sustains are compressed in response to loud close‑mic hits.

There are plenty of creative options that you might explore on the ‘shells only’ bus, but I’ve kept it relatively simple in this case with an instance of the Tube Compressor pretty much ‘slammed’, followed by the Distortion plug‑in to add extra grit. As demonstrated in the audio examples, blending just a tiny amount of the resulting signal into the overall drum mix injects a much more aggressive character to the overall kit sound. But you can easily dial in something super‑grungy if you really want to. Importantly, the cymbals, having not been subject to this OTT processing, retain their definition — they sound neither ‘splashy’ nor too harsh.

Bypass Plug‑ins, Not Taste

So whatever version of Cubase you have, you have plenty of scope to experiment. That said, it’s fairly easy to take your perfectly decent acoustic drum recording from ‘natural and dynamic’ to ‘flat and overcooked’, so make sure you avoid the potential for a taste bypass by regularly bypassing your dynamics plug‑ins for an A/B reality check. Side‑step that possibility and, with a combination of taming your transients, reduced dynamic range, and possibly a little colourful saturation, you can increase the overall level, and dial in some attitude, so that your acoustic (or multi‑out virtual instrument) acoustic drum mix delivers just what the song requires.

Published January 2026

Keystage: Video Manual - Chapter 4 - Controlling a DAW

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. You can enter lyrics one note at a time, but you can also enter multiple words. For example, entering ‘broken heart’ into the Text box of the first note of a three‑note phrase would spread the words on a one‑syllable‑per‑note basis. So, the syllables of ‘broken’ would be placed into the first two notes (with the ‘oh’ sound being sustained across the two notes) and ‘heart’ into the third note.

Helpfully, once Omnivocal has analysed your lyrics, the phonetic form is also shown in the Text box and superimposed on the MIDI notes.

Helpfully, once Omnivocal has analysed your lyrics, the phonetic form is also shown in the Text box and superimposed on the MIDI notes. In addition, you can enter some special characters, the most important being a hyphen (‘‑’), which forces the engine to extend a vowel sound across multiple MIDI notes. You can also customise the phonemes used in the Text box (the Omnivocal PDF manual has useful information on this) but learning how to finesse the pronunciation of your lyrics is something that will require a little trial‑and‑error experimentation.

That caveat aside, with your notes and lyrics added, Omnivocal will apply its AI‑assisted engine (all the processing is done locally and based on a voicebank of data for each virtual vocalist) to render the vocal part and, on playback, it is then performed with the rest of your project. And, of course, as with any virtual instrument, you can then change the performance by editing the MIDI note pitch, timing and lengths, changing the lyrics, or adjusting the vocal character as required.

Getting Hooked

Whether it’s in the writing/composing phase, or as a key production element in a top‑tier final mix, we’re now all very accustomed to the concept of virtual instruments being an integral part of the music that we hear. So, in that context, where can this initial Omnivocal beta release get us? Is it useful only as a writing tool (a less ambitious bar to jump) or can it deliver a final performance (a much higher bar)?

To answer that question, I’ve worked through a few examples, and you can find some audio clips to accompany them on the SOS website (https://sosm.ag/cubase-0226). I started with a simple target in my sights: creating a vocal hook or two that might be used in an electronic music project. The screenshot with the MIDI clip shows an example of what’s required for this sort of thing. I played the melody in from my MIDI keyboard (Omnivocal provides a simple synth sound for auditioning purposes as you play), over the top of a suitable backing track. I then entered the lyrical content in the Text box, one phrase at a time, and Omnivocal mapped each phrase across the appropriate number of notes based on the syllable count.

This simple vocal hook idea was more rhythmic than melodic, and once the lyrics were rendered by the engine I did some tweaking of note timings and lengths to improve the flow of the vocal delivery. I also picked the Dynamic delivery mode, and set both Attack and Power quite high to provide a more forceful performance style. But while there was some tweaking involved, the initial process was remarkably quick: just a few minutes’ work. As demonstrated in the audio example, I then generated a number of different variants with some ear‑candy processing applied to spice things up. I’ll make no great claims for the composition(!) but in sonic terms at least I feel that Omnivocal is a perfectly capable tool for experimenting with these kinds of vocal ideas.

As seen for our backing vocal example, once you have created one Omnivocal part, as with any MIDI‑based virtual instrument, it’s easy to then create – and edit — multiple variations.

Back Me Up

If you already have a human lead vocal in your project, a second possible use case for Omnivocal would be to experiment with potential harmony and/or backing vocal parts. Again, you can create the required Omnivocal MIDI by playing along to the lead vocal part using your MIDI keyboard. But I adopted a different approach for this example, instead applying Cubase Pro’s VariAudio to my lead vocal, then exporting the extracted MIDI note data. This MIDI data was then imported into my initial Omnivocal track for preparatory editing and the addition of the lyrical data.

It’s at this point that the ‘utility’ nature of Omnivocal comes to the fore, because whatever type of backing vocal part you want to experiment with (double, octave, third‑above or counter‑melody, say), it’s now easily explored with MIDI edits. And if you want multiple backing lines, then just duplicate the first and edit the notes. I explored precisely this workflow to create the second audio example, going from some simple doubles to a pair of basic third‑above harmonies, and then finally to something closer to a counter melody... and all with the ease of MIDI editing, which included some subtle randomisation of the note start positions for each harmony part. Whether Omnivocal’s backing lines make it to your final mix or not is another matter, but it certainly makes it easy to explore ideas for backing‑vocal parts in the absence of an actual singer.

Take My Lead

By this stage, it shouldn’t take much of a leap for you to start wondering if Omnivocal could be used to generate lead vocal demos as a guide for an actual human vocalist. Well, it can, and the basic process remains the same. As with the backing vocal example, once you have an initial Omnivocal performance, the simplicity with which you can edit the timing, pitch, lyrics and, to a certain degree, the performance style, make it a really useful songwriting tool.

That just leaves one obvious and very big question: can Omnivocal deliver lead vocals that are good enough to use in a final mix? Well, context is everything here, of course, and Omnivocal is still in beta, so expecting it to jump over the highest of realism bars at this point is perhaps unrealistic. Right now, I think the answer is ‘probably not’! For fun, though, my final audio example is a comparison between an Omnivocal lead vocal and the same vocal part created using Dreamtonics’ Synth V. Currently, the most obvious challenges when using Omnivocal are in crafting notes where words flow across multiple pitches. There are also limitations when it comes to adjusting the length of and emphasis placed upon particular syllables to influence pronunciation and delivery style.

But fingers crossed, there is more to come, and in any case don’t let any of that stop you exploiting Ominvocal’s considerable potential as a vocal sketching tool. Hats off to Yamaha/Steinberg for bundling this fledgling virtual singer instrument with every main edition of Cubase 15: whether you’re a Pro, Artist or Elements user, if you can hum it (or rather, play it on a MIDI keyboard), Omnivocal can sing it.

Published February 2026