Submitted by thewhippinpost on Tue, 11/07/2006 - 17:52.
image: Cubase SX 2.0 box.

It doesn't seem all that long ago that we had Cubase SX smash onto the scene, now we must bend our heads around Cubase SX 2.0!

Let's have a look at the latest Steinberg music composition environment to hit us composers, songwriters, and music producers... Just what are they gonna do to our heads with this one!


Cubase SX 2 Music Composition

Cubase SX 2.0 has a clearly-structured Project Window combined with powerful editing tools which support many different methods of music composition.

With features like cycle recording, multiple lane editing, scale-corrected transpose (woo hoo!) or the huge collection of VST effects and instruments, we''re looking at one powerful music workstation. Cubase SX 2.0 is hardware-independent and cross-platform, enabling us to work with other muso's, composers or producers in other studios... across a network if we wanted to!

Note: The latest release of Steinberg's Cubase is available here - This page is old!

Surround Music Production and Mixing

A lot of music workstations supposedly offer "surround compatibility", but whether they're really multi-channel is questionable. Mixing mono or stereo sources through mono or stereo effects into a multi-channel bus isn't exactly "multi-channel".

With Cubase SX 2.0, Steinberg has developed the next generation VST 2.3 audio engine making it the first native music workstation to offer full multi-channel audio paths with up to six channels from the source tracks through the entire mixer, all sends and busses, and into the master outputs. We can go on and say that with the support of Microsoft's new WMA Pro standard, Cubase SX 2.0 offers the latest in multi-channel audio delivery and distribution, even across the internet!

Once you've started thinking in more than two channels, you'll realise just how powerful this system is for multi-channel applications.

Music for Motion Picture

A lot of musicians and producers are now working on music for motion picture, games, or music for corporate multimedia presentations. As well as the standard Cubase SX offerings of:

  • Video thumbnail track.
  • Full-frame video output via FireWire (Mac OSX only).
  • Support for leading digital video formats (including Windows Media and QuickTime)...

Cubase SX 2.0 offers powerful new tempo editing and matching tools - The Time Warp Tool offers a whole new approach to matching music and picture.

  • Import and export of tempo maps.
  • User-definable frame-rates.
  • Support for multiple timelines in the arrange window.

Time Warp Tool: New Mastertrack with timeline editing and tap tempo function

A new tool called "Time Warp" allows the user to edit the tempo track by dragging a timecode or bar position to a specific event or hitpoint, thereby creating a new tempo track entry.

Use Time Warp to create a complex tempo map for free-form audio or MIDI on the fly, or to match MIDI music to picture without complex re-arranging.

All this happens directly from the project page or editor windows. This dramatically expands the tempo editing features of Cubase.


Last but not least, we can crossgrade to Nuendo 2.0 at any time if projects become more demanding and we need full post production features.

Cubase SX 2.0 Music Creation & Production System

The new Cubase SX 2.0 unites the proven and the pioneering into one fascinating new program. Cubase SX 2.0 is the next generation of one of the world's most popular sequencers with a new revised user interface and over 100 new features.

VST Audio Engine

With Cubase SX 2.0 we have a new VST audio engine with 32-bit floating point audio resolution. It also comes with:

  • Freeze function for VSTi's
  • Real multi-channel surround
  • Stacked Recording mode

... and a freely configurable user interface - As Cubase SX is a native application, we can choose which audio and control hardware we wish to work with.

More features to play with:

  • Complete multi-channel audio path.
  • Full latency compensation FX return channels.
  • User-definable Input and Output busses.
  • New 'Freeze' function for VST Instruments.
  • Mixer Part Editing.
  • Transport Bar.

There's obviously a lot more sleepless nights ahead of us whilst we learn the latest new tricks this interface makes possible - but that's what keeps us going let's face it!

I just hope that not too many of us have to consider another investment to upgrade our computers to run it! If there's one criticism I have with Steinberg, it's that their hi-end software always seem to require a maxed-out system to run them.