Instrument Tracks appear as MIDI tracks in the Project Window and audio tracks in the mixer, and their Track Inspector shows a combination of MIDI and audio-related panels.The de-clutter means that some of the familiar icons that used to dot the Track List are absent. Even track names tend to fade into the background, and although you can adjust global preferences for Saturation, Contrast and Brightness, the options range from sepulchral to merely gloomy. On the down side, though, it's pretty dark, and at any sort of distance, it's really difficult to see parameters on non-selected tracks in the Track List. It does this pretty well, managing to present all the same information as before in a less busy fashion. The first thing you notice on booting the program is its new look, the result of a much-needed effort to make the interface cleaner and less cluttered. Because of some issues with older plug-ins, as we'll see, it's a good idea to keep safety copies of your Projects in the old format. Older Projects remain SX3-compatible until you save them from within Cubase 4 after that, they can't be loaded in older versions of the program. All my existing SX Project files adopted the new Cubase 4 icon, and Cubase 4 even remembered SX3 's Recent Projects and learned my Key Commands, Macros and template Projects. I installed the full Cubase 4 side-by-side with SX3 on my Windows laptop, and the process was fairly painless. Apparently, VST3 also paves the way for a future 64-bit version of Cubase, but for the time being, it's still a 32-bit application. For more on running Cubase 4 on an Intel Mac, see Mark Wherry's Mac Pro review elsewhere in this issue. The name change accompanies the most thorough overhaul the sequencer has received since its launch: Steinberg have made fundamental changes to the program, introducing a new version 3 of the VST standard and a radical new approach to choosing plug-in and instrument settings, as well as innumerable smaller improvements.īoth Cubase 4 and VST3 support Intel Macs for the first time, and it's heartening to see that Steinberg retain a strong commitment to cross-platform compatibility. As of this upgrade cycle, Cubase SX becomes plain old Cubase, while the more affordable SL version becomes Cubase Studio.
Nevertheless, Cubase SX is officially no more. Over that time it has developed into a mature, feature-rich application, and the last major release added some unique and innovative features, such as the Play Order track. It's hard to believe that Cubase SX has been around for more than four years. The new version of Cubase is all about big ideas, including a completely new way of working with tracks, plug-ins and virtual instruments.
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