By John Walden
Bring the hype: UltraShaper is a one‑stop option to take your drums from polite to powerful.
Looking to hype up your drum sound? Cubase’s new UltraShaper plug‑in might be just what you need!
In SOS January 2026, I explored dynamics processing for acoustic drums at a number of different points in the signal chain (read it here). My aim then was to retain a natural sound while controlling the drum dynamics. But what if you want a more aggressive or ‘hyped’ sound coming from your drum bus? Well, Cubase’s stock plug‑in collection has long had plenty of options for more assertive processing, including some you can use in combination. Cubase Pro 15, though, introduced a new option that’s well worth exploring: UltraShaper. Let’s find out just how much drum hype can you extract from this powerful new plug‑in.
Sum Of The Parts
UltraShaper is not just about hyping drums: the supplied presets provide plenty of starting points for both corrective and creative use with a wide range of sound sources.
Before we unleash UltraShaper on our drum bus, I’ll share two quick observations. First, don’t assume that UltraShaper is simply a reworking of some of Cubase’s existing stock plug‑ins. I don’t think that’s the case and, in any case, UltraShaper is rather more than the sum of its parts. Second, note that UltraShaper has plenty of scope to do ‘subtle’, and it isn’t just for drums; it can do a perfectly good turn on vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, bass or synths, and has potential applications for both individual tracks and group busses, or even your stereo mix bus. Steinberg really have brought us something of a dynamics Swiss Army knife!
Park It On The Bus
For my first exploration, I simply inserted UltraShaper on my drum bus. Whether you’re dealing with acoustic drums or electronic drums (I’ve used both in the Audio Examples that accompany this workshop on the SOS website: https://sosm.ag/cubase-0526), you can start pretty easily by dialling in UltraShaper’s more conventional compressor controls: threshold, ratio, attack and release. These will do exactly what you might expect for any kind of conventional compression task.
Even used for such standard tasks, UltraShaper has a couple of nice touches up its sleeve. First, it has a real‑time waveform and gain‑reduction display that provides excellent visual feedback as you adjust the controls. Optionally, you can also show the compression curve beside this.
Perhaps more significant, though, is the Auto Gain control, which is pretty clever. While it’s not quite a ‘set and forget’ option (it interacts with some of the other control options), it’s pretty easy to set it so that when you bypass UltraShaper, the processed and unprocessed sounds can be closely level matched, even as you make adjustments elsewhere. This makes it far easier to judge exactly what your threshold and ratio settings are doing to the character of the audio, and reduces the risk of significant volume differences clouding your processing...
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