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Cubasis VST 3.0 is the new low-end version of Steinberg's successful Cubase VST professional audio and Midi recording product, and is supplied with a copy of the Wavelab Lite 2.0 audio editing tool, itself a cut-down version of Wavelab.
This version of Cubasis offers much of the functionality of Cubase VST 5.1 (£229.78 ex. VAT), but at a fraction of the price.
Installation and set-up is a little more complex than in other areas, but this mainly involves ensuring that your sound card is installed properly and setting up an ASIO DirectX or Multimedia driver.
Documentation and online help cover the set-up aspect well. Users with correctly installed sound cards should experience no problems.
Cubasis VST 3.0 offers audio recording to a maximum of 48 tracks and Midi recording to 64 tracks, but only 64 can be used in any one song.
This is one of the differences between Cubasis and Cubase, although this should be more than enough for most users. Midi tracks can be conserved by merging Midi data and it should be remembered that The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's album was recorded on (effectively) only six tracks.
Recording Midi via an external controller such as a keyboard is simple, as is editing or creating Midi events and notes by hand using the mouse and keyboard.
Audio recording is also easy, but one of the limitations of Cubasis is that it records at a maximum sampling rate of only 44.1KHz with 16 bits. While this shouldn't be a problem for most, if you need higher sampling rates/bit depths, you'll need Cubase VST 5.0 or similar.
Recording and playback is controlled by a transport bar that replicates most of the controls of a tape recorder and also displays tempo, time signature, cycle points and so on. Editing an audio track using Wavelab Lite is also quick and simple.
Cubasis VST 3.0 includes the same VST instruments found in Cubase VST 5.0, namely a Universal Sound Module (a Midi-compatible sound module), the Neon (a polyphonic synthesiser), VB-1 (a bass synth) and LM-9 (a drum machine).
It also includes rudimentary CD writing functionality and a CD-Rom containing 600MB of royalty-free samples, sounds, sequences and songs you can use in your own compositions. You also get a copy of AIST's Movie Xone software, which allows you to use Cubasis VST 3.0 to create multimedia presentations.
There's also a huge range of plug-ins available, both DirectX and VST, that you can use with Cubasis. These range from simple effects to processing tools and complete software instruments. Cubasis VST 3.0 also allows you to save your compositions as WAV or MP3 files.
Cubasis VST 3.0 offers more than a taste of high-end products such as Cubase VST 5.1 while imposing only a few restrictions, such as limiting tracks per song.
If you're serious about your bedroom compositions, or need a low-cost, fully-featured product for business use, it's well worth a try.
Price: £59.99 (ex. VAT)
Minimum requirements: Windows 98/98 SE/ME/2000/XP; 133MHz processor; 64MB Ram; Audio MME, DirectX or ASIO compatible sound card.
Contact: Arbiter Pro Audio Group 020 8970 1909
www.steinberg.net
All Audio Recording, Editing & Mixing
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