Steinberg's Software Suite

Steinberg's Software Suite Steinberg Soft & Hardware, based in Hamburg, Germany are well-known for their popular Cubase VST MIDI + Audio software which offers a complete recording, editing and mixing environment for both MIDI and audio. Cubase started out on the Atari computer and has since migrated to the Mac and the PC. Steinberg now offer most of their software in both Mac and PC versions, and not only sell software which they write in-house, but also distribute software written by third-parties. I recently received an enormous box of evaluation software from Steinberg, full of the latest releases, and, for the first time, I fully realised just what a powerful suite of software is actually available from this one company. After discussing this with Cheryl Sim, the idea was born of writing about the whole suite of software and explaining some of the neat things that you can use it for - and the different areas of music and audio production to which it can be applied. First of all, let's take a look at what is happening with Cubase. I will assume that most readers will have some familiarity with this software, or will at least be familiar with similar sequencing software from other manfacturers, so I will not cover the full range of features here. Suffice it to say that Cubase VST has everything you need to prepare music scores, record and edit MIDI and audio data, and mix your project ready for CD-mastering, broadcast or whatever. Currently the Mac software is at version 4.x and is now being bundled with TC Native Reverb from TC Electronics, while the PC versions are lagging behind at versions 3.x. I have Cubase VST 24/3.6 and Cubase VST 3.7 on my PC, for example. The version 3.7 update to Cubase VST for the PC, which just arrived, includes some long-anticipated features including Virtual Studio Instruments, Hardware Mixer control capabilities, and built in dynamic effects including compressors, limiters, and gates. It also features Steinberg's ASIO 2.0 technology for sample-accurate sync. Brand new to Cubase VST 3.7 for PC, and coming soon for the Mac with version 4.1, are Virtual Studio Instruments. Not only does Cubase VST have racks of plug-in effects, but now there is a rack of Virtual Studio Instruments. These Virtual Studio Instruments are 100% software-based and can be anything at all - ranging from analogue synths to samplers or whatever. They work with Cubase MIDI parts just like any other synths do. One of the great things about Virtual Studio Instruments is that they can have access to all of the VST effects in real time. Cubase VST 3.7 comes with just one Virtual Synthesizer called Neon, but Steinberg and third party developers will be releasing many more virtual instruments in the near future. Any problems? Well, Cubase VST does not currently provide support for Pro Tools TDM systems - which is a BIG problem for many professional users. The good news is that full support for TDM from within VST is now expected around the end of October this year. Another problem for professional users working with the Windows NT platform is that NT is unstable for MIDI, so current versions of Cubase cannot be installed on NT - they only work with Windows 98/95. According to Steinberg, the audio part of VST does work OK on NT, but there are just too many problems with the MIDI so the installer software now refuses to install it on NT. So how does Cubase VST compare with the competition? In my opinion, it now competes extremely well with Logic Audio, Digital Performer and others. The userinterface was looking very dated just a few versions back, but has now been improved greatly. And the technical features are constantly being enhanced and

added to with each new version. And when the long-awaited Pro Tools TDM compatibility arrives this could help put Cubase right back at the top of the MIDI + Audio sequencing market! OK, so let's take a look at the other products Steinberg offer to complement Cubase. On the PC, Steinberg offer their WaveLab audio processing and editing software. This now supports 24-bit audio and is basically a stereo (or mono) audio file editor which you can use to edit and process your final mixes before burning these to CD - which you can do directly from within WaveLab. On the Mac, Steinberg offer Time Bandit software for time-stretching audio files, but version 2.5 is likely to be the last stand-alone version of this. All its features have now been incorporated into Wavelab and Nuendo. Nuendo is Steinberg's forthcoming high-end multitrack audio editing package for Windows NT - one to watch out for later this year! Also on the Mac, the soon-to-be-released Prosoniq Time Factory will effectively replace Time Bandit - providing more advanced features. For anyone programming dance music, or needing to create drum loops, Steinberg offer two totally-indispensible software packages - ReBirth and ReCycle. An interactive tutorial CD-ROM is also available called "Creating Dance Music". This shows you exactly how to put all the pieces together in creating a song with Cubase VST, ReBirth, ReCycle and the entire VST System. Regardless of the type of music you are working with, this is a great way to get a jump start on using these Steinberg products. The intriguingly named Propellerhead Software developed the ReBirth RB338 software which Steinberg distribute. This is actually an amazing simulation of three of the most popular MIDI instruments originally made by Roland in Japan, but no longer available. These are the TB303, which lets you sequence its built-in analogue bass or lead sounds, the TR808 analogue drum-machine, and the TR909 hybrid analogue/digital drum-machine. The hardware versions of these have been changing hands for lots of money in recent years as they have become very widely used in Dance music and other popular genres. Now you can get these as software for your Mac or PC and ReBirth can be totally integrated with Cubase VST - with its timing perfectly in sync and with up to 18 of its individual audio outputs (each carrying a different synthesized or drum sound) routed into VST for processing and mixing. Dance, rock, techno, pop, drum'n'bass, house - no matter what kind of music you do, drum loops and breakbeats are superb building blocks and great sources of inspiration. And there are thousands of sample CDs out there to suit all tastes. The problem is, when you find that perfect drum loop, it's at the wrong tempo. Or you really wanted to use a different snare sound. And you probably want to put together variations and fills. ReCycle lets you do all this and more.you can change the tempo of a groove without altering its pitch, and vice versa, change the timing of the groove itself - even quantizing it - make pitched grooves like guitar riffs fit songs in other keys, remove and/or replace any sound inside the groove without altering its feel, and create variations and fills from a single loop. You can also apply the feel of the groove to other loops and MIDI recordings. ReCycle is actually a specialised audio editor which lets you prepare audio loops for playback from popular samplers in a way that allows the playback tempo of the loop to be varied in step with the tempo of your sequencer. The way it achieves this is rather clever. Instead of using timestretching or pitchshifting to make the loop fit the

new tempo, ReCycle lets you cut the loop up into individual beats and send these back as individual files to your sampler for playback from different MIDI note numbers. ReCycle also creates a MIDI sequence containing these note numbers which you can import into Cubase or any MIDI sequencer. Another way to work with ReCycle is to save the results as a 'REX' file which then can be imported into Cubase. The REX file contains both the audio data for the loop, the slice information and the original tempo.with Cubase you simply import the REX file into an audio track and the audio 'slices' will now appear in their correct order and positions and you will be able to change the tempo and manipulate the slices much like when using a sampler. Once the slices are back in your sampler or imported into Cubase as REX files, you can play your keyboard to check what is happening. What was previously one long audio recording is now a series of short snippets (the slices) spread out over the keyboard to allow the accompanying MIDI sequence to play back the slices by triggering the samples in the correct order and timing to match the original recording. Each sample will play in succesion, so, at the original tempo, one slice will end exactly where another starts. If you play the sequence back more slowly, you might expect there to be gaps between the slices which would disrupt the sound - but the Stretch control fills these in. Stretch is used to add an extra tail of audio to each slice, to lengthen it. This tail, derived from the natural decay of the sound, then fills out the gap between the slices when the tempo is lowered. Before ReCycle was developed, the only way to make a loop fit a certain tempo was to either timestretch it using software such as Steinberg's Time Bandit, which could be time-consuming, or to change the playback pitch of the sample so that it played back faster or slower and accept that the timbre of the sound would change. Sometimes the pitch changing method can be creatively desirable, although a bit 'fiddly' to set up. ReCycle will let you do this in conjunction with your sampler with ease - using the Pitch To New Tempo command and just typing in the new tempo. When you send the sample back to your sampler, ReCycle will then cause the sampler to retune the sample by the right amount to match your new tempo. All ReCycle MIDI files are actually timing maps of how the drums were played in the loop. Many sequencers have the ability to load MIDI files and apply their timing to the sequenced parts - the terminology used is Match Quantize or Groove. So, if you use a ReCycle MIDI file as a 'groove template' you can make your sequenced parts play back with the timing of the drum loop! You can always use the MIDI file you get when transmitting slices to your sampler, but you can also create a timing-only file, using the Export Groove MIDI file, import this into, say, a Cubase Arrangement, and use Match Quantize to drag the groove onto a MIDI recording. You can also apply quantization to a sliced-up recording, or you could apply the timing of one loop to that of another using the Match Quantize tool in Cubase to drag one of the Parts on top of the other. Steinberg have recently released two sets of Drum Recordings pre-arranged for use with Cubase and ReCycle entitled VST Drum Sessions - Pop Volume 1 and Soul Dance Volume 1. These are actual recordings of grooves played by professional studio drummers, which have already been sliced up using ReCycle. The REX files give you control over tempo to +/- 30 PM without time stretching or loss in quality and. MIDI track equivalents are also included to allow you to double or exchange audio tracks with MIDI instruments. Each package is supplied on 3 CD discs. Discs 1

and 2 contain 20 song files in VST format for both Mac and Windows, while Disc 3 is an audio disc containing stereo mixdowns of all the songs for quick and easy browsing and selection. The drum sounds are provided with a standardized track order: Kick, Snare, and so forth - making it easy to exchange whole patterns or tracks between songs to create variations. The grooves are pre-arranged as songs, so you not only get a main groove but also an intro and ending, fills, breaks and variations - all the things you would expect from a live drummer. The song structures are also standardized into Intro, Verse A, Chorus A, Verse B, Bridge, Chorus B and Ending so that you can easily edit parts or create new songs and grooves by dragging objects within or betweeen Cubase arrangements. Plug-ins: For sound design, Steinberg distribute a wide range of plug-ins developed by other companies, including the new GRM Tools, Prosoniq Ambisone, Dynasone and VoxCiter - and the Orange Vocoder which has been available for some time now.

Steinberg's Red Valve-It! guitar amp/speaker simulator is still available for older Pro Tools TDM systems. On the downside, Red Valve-It and the other other Steinberg TDM plug-ins have not been updated for use with the latest Pro Tools MIX cards - although most of these are also available for the VST platform.

Also, the Roomulator and Free-D plug-ins for VST have not been too widely accepted, probably because they produce their best results for headphone listening rather than via speakers. On the other hand, the D-Pole VST plug-in provides the kind of filters that you would find in Waldorf's popular analogue synthesizers - ideal for use with dance music. And Spectral Design's Magneto analogue tape simulator, De-Esser and Q-Metric EQ are very useful plug-ins to use within a mix

Spectral Design also makes the DeNoiser and DeClicker plug-ins for Steinberg, which are extremely effective tools for cleaning up old vinyl or cassette recordings.

Finally, for CD-mastering, the new Mastering Edition suite, which includes Loudness Maximizer, Spectralizer, FreeFilter, Compressor, PhaseScope and Spectrograph is highly recommended. Mike Collins 1999