Advanced Integration - Cubase 5 and the MR816 CSX
Robin Vincent takes a look at Cubase version 5 with the MR816 CSX to see what all the fuss is about.
Steinberg have flirted with the idea of producing hardware for their music production software a few times in the past, often rebranding existing hardware to give the impression of assured compatibility. When Yamaha acquired Steinberg back in 2004 we assumed that rebranded Yamaha hardware would start to appear - but actually that wasn't the case. Instead they took their time to create something special, something that would bring the hardware and software closer together in more than appearance - "Advanced Integration". Here's what Steinberg have to say about it:
"The shipping of MR816 CSX, MR816 X and CC121 is a landmark event for Steinberg," comments Stefan Schreiber, Steinberg's Marketing Manager for Hardware. "Utilizing new integrative technologies, these new products combine with Cubase to form an extremely powerful production environment with peerless integration between hardware and software, one that offers not only myriad workflow advantages but also outstanding sonic characteristics," Schreiber continues.
So what does that actually mean? Well we cracked open a copy of the new Cubase version 5 and plugged in an MR816CSX to see what all the fuss was about.
Ins and Outs
The MR816 is a good looking silver and black 1U rack unit with a bunch of silver knobs on the front and nice blue and green lights. You've got 8 analogue inputs, mic or line using Yamaha "D-Pre" class A preamps with only one doubling up for a high impedance instrument input and 8 balanced outputs. The first two inputs are mirrored on the front along with 8 gain knobs with peak lights, phantom and pad switches. Two very handy headphone sockets sit on the far right, each with it's own volume control and rounding off the analogue I/O is a pair of insert points on the back allowing you to plumb in existed hardware compressors or effects units. On the digital side you have S/PDIF and ADAT giving you another 8 channels along with Word Clock to ensure the unit locks to other digital gear.
On the right side of the front of the unit are two large control knobs that can be used to access the four main hardware features: Phones, Master, REV-X and Morph. The first two are self explanatory then second two we'll look at later.
MR Editor
Steinberg talk a lot about the way the functionality of the CSX is completely integrated into Cubase and how there's no need for a separate mixer or control panel for the interface, so it came as a surprise to find one. The MR Editor doesn't look like much, it has the traditional Yamaha lo-fi look which is very dated but once you start mousing around you find it's actually a very elegant piece of software that gives full control over the hardware routing, monitoring and REV-X effect.
The Editor is there for when you are using software other than Cubase so that you don't lose out on the extra functionality. When you load Cubase the Editor stops working and informs you rather abruptly that the firewire port is in use by another application.
Steinberg is looking to bring the hardware and software closer together
Cubase 5
With each new generation of software, users are looking for a couple of killer features to make the upgrade worthwhile and for this update Steinberg have put the most effort into the range of included tools and plug-ins. That's not to say that there haven't been improvements elsewhere, it's just that they're not so obvious. Something that is obvious is the tweaking of the graphical user interface. Cubase has long had an eye pleasing and intuitive layout, the mixer in particular is graphically superior to pretty much anything else out there. Version 5 hasn't changed the look very much at all but it's somehow clearer, more refined and neater which is enough to raise a smile when you first load it up.
New Plug-ins
There are three new and important plug-in features in Cubase 5, beats and loops, pitch correction and a convolution reverb.
Beats and Loops
Loopmash - powerful tool for the slicing and instant re-assembling of any kind of rhythmic audio material. It's probably the most interesting thing i've played with in ages. Basically you take a loop, any loop, and it slices it up - nothing amazing there - but then you add another loop and it starts to replace the slices in the first with occasional ones from the second. Add more loops and suddenly your original loops has been "mashed" together with all the others creating all sorts of unexpected sounds and rhythms. You have these intensity sliders called "Similarity Gain" that dictate how often that loop gets into the mix and you can have up to 8 loops per scene and 12 scenes each assigned a pad for quick changing. It's pretty darn groovy.
Groove Agent ONE and Beat Designer - When loading up Grove Agent ONE I assumed that it would be a cut down version of the Groove Agent plug-in that has various styles of drumming and kits from across the ages, but no. This is a simple but well designed drum pad player where you can load up various kits and play the pads and tweak the sounds. What's clever is that Cubase has introduced a step drum sequencer designed to be run with Groove Agent ONE but because it's a MIDI plug-in it's not restricted to it (genius). You can create a ton of patterns and either dump them to a track or you can trigger them in "Jump" mode directly from a keyboard. There's nothing spectacular here but it's a really useful addition.
Pitch Correction
One of he holy grails of the pop industry is the ability to tune vocal performances. It started many years ago with Antares' Autotune but in recent times the technology has been pushed by the likes of Celemony's Melodyne to enable the editing of the pitch and harmonic content of audio far past simple pitch correction. Steinberg address both these areas separately in Cubase 5.
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Author
Robin Vincent runs Rain Recording (UK) out of London and is the CTO of Rain world-wide. In his tenure in the business of PC based audio production he as authored numerous articles, reviews and books on the subject.