When I heard about Cubase 4 being released I was jittery with excitement regarding all the new features and advanced tools which were promised. After eagerly awaiting its release I went out and purchased the product hot off the shelf.



I have now been using Steinberg's Cubase 4 for over 6 months and have to say it's superb. The new mixer functions alone blow me away, the way the routing is set up is so intuitive that it feels almost too simple, as if you have missed something.

The new VST3 technology is a godsend to anyone with a less than powerful computer. The VST3 plug-ins only use CPU when there is actually audio passing through the device which means, if you have a section of audio on a channel, and you have it running through the Steinberg Cubase 4 VST3 delay, the delay plug-in only uses CPU when the audio is ACTUALLY playing. It's almost as if the plug-ins turn them-selves off to save CPU intelligently, it's like they know they don't need to be on until the audio passes through them. Cubase 4 is great leap forward in technology and has left all other D.A.W`s far behind.

The Media Bay itself is pure genius! This feature permits you to search, categorize and manage any type of media file. This includes audio files, midi, V.S.T plug-ins, track presets, project files and video files. It`s like having a super efficient secretary or PA who knows where everything is in an instant, it's just such a time saver and it's so easy to use it saves you so much time that you can almost work twice as fast as you normally would.

The final section of Cubase 4 which i wish to talk about is a feature not mentioned too often, which is a shame as its a feature i love. The V.S.T Plug-in rack! It's pretty much the same as it always has been, you still open it with F11 and you still insert the V.S.T`s by clicking on the insert section and the plug-in is inserted into the appropriate slot. Now imagine this, you have a small monitor or multiple V.S.T instruments in your rack, your mixer fills up extremely quickly and you have to keep moving your mixers slider to see all the channels (which can be a real pain on a small monitor) you are using. Now, in the V.S.T rack there is a little arrow next to the instrument that you can press which then brings up the multiple outputs for that instrument. This allows you to activate or deactivate any amount of channels for the plug-in which means that instead of having multiple outputs open on your mixer (which you may not use) you have only the ones which are being used open. This is fantastic! It means you recover space and CPU due to your system not having to use extra ram to show unused channels. To me this is an unknown and underutilized function which should be admired and used to its fullest.

Steinberg`s Cubase 4 represents the cutting edge in digital audio workstations and is number 1 in the D.A.W market in my opinion. Please don`t misunderstand me, I am aware of the other D.A.W`s on the market, most notably Logic 8 from Apple which is an awesome application, however, it does have the added problem of being for MAC users only whereas Steinberg`s Cubase 4 is cross platform. The only gripe I will mention is on behalf of the Mac users, the manual is based on PC users so it can be a tad tiresome and difficult for Apple Mac users to get their head round and Steinberg's Technical support leaves a lot to be desired.

In the end, Cubase is a flexible, extremely advanced and highly intuitive D.A.W. (Digital Audio Workstation) application which ticks all the boxes and only continues to improve at a lightning pace and helps keep those of us who love the program happy and productive.