Times must be difficult at Steinberg HQ. Once you've packed a sequencer full of features, there's only so much more you can think about adding to it. With this update of Cubase, Steinberg has avoided trying anything too drastic, such as going head-to-head with Sony and Ableton by adding live looping and performance features, and has opted instead to carry on in the same direction as before.
So this is a slightly confusing release because, while there are many changes, the core feature-set hasn't been altered. Although there's been some engineering under the bonnet, it's not obvious on boot-up what it is.
This is a good thing from the point of view of familiarity, but there are also bad points - because some of the more irksome quirks of the interface haven't been changed - such as the fact that if you change the software synthesizer in one of the virtual instrument slots, the MIDI channel assignments disappear.
So, other than a redesigned interface, with a more streamlined look, and a new Control Room feature that makes monitoring on multiple speaker sets easier, the ergonomics are almost identical. To be fair, however, some annoyances have been improved.
Loops now default to the correct number of bars when you load them and set Musical mode. In the mixer, you can now shuffle around the order of insert plug-ins by dragging and dropping - no more leaving empty spaces at the start of the list just in case you feel like dropping in some EQ or compression later.
There have been similar ergonomic changes in the Score Editor, which has had its palettes and menus reorganised, but doesn't offer any new features.
Added features
Two significant new additions are the SoundFrame sound manager that, in turn, is part of the MediaBay database. Databases in sequencers are unlikely things because, almost by definition, most musicians don't have the mindset or the time needed to catalogue and label sounds. So the fact that you can search any of your software or hardware presets by tags may be an underwhelming feature.
MediaBay is slightly more useful because you can preview loops, MIDI files and presets. More useful still is that it's now easier to put together effects and patch presets, and to then reuse them within different projects. You can also now create track presets with effects, mixer and synthesizer settings all predefined for different musical applications.
