Steinberg announces Cubase 7

Three weeks after Ableton’s announcenment of Live 9, Steinberg also announces Cubase 7. While Live 9 will not come out before the new year, Cubase 7 will already be available from resellers and through the Steinberg Online Shop from December 5, 2012. Which new features can we expect?

The features in Cubase 7:

• Award-winning 32-bit floating-point Steinberg audio engine with up to 192 kHz, 5.1 surround, flexible routing and full automatic delay compensation
• Unlimited audio, instrument and MIDI tracks
• Superb composing, editing and mixing features with unparalleled multitrack editing and quantizing, take comping and automation tools
• All-new MixConsole provides the ultimate mixing experience with unmatched flexibility and integrated EQ/Dynamics channel strip modules for epic pro-console sound
• Comprehensive set of 8 outstanding virtual instruments with over 2,800 sounds, including HALion Sonic SE workstation, Padshop granular synth, Retrologue virtual analog synth, LoopMash 2 and the MPC-style Groove Agent ONE drum machine
• Complete suite of 66 high-end audio and 18 MIDI VST effect processors, including VST Amp Rack guitar tone suite, REVerence convolution reverb, Voxengo CurveEQ and many more
• VariAudio for MIDI-style note editing of monophonic audio tracks and automatic voicing harmonization and auto-tuning effect
• Chord Track for easy chord management and re-harmonizing plus intelligent composing assistance for generating beautiful chord sequences
• VST Expression 2 for unique instrument articulation management and expression control on single-note level
• Professional music notation and score printing
• MediaBay file and preset management system
• Cross-platform 32/64-bit for Windows and Mac OS X

The MixConsole mixer as the biggest feature is a revised virtual console that includes built-in channel strip modules as well as a wide range of customisation options:

New is also the Chord Track residing in the Project window. It detects harmonic structure and provides chord and scale information to MIDI and audio tracks that have been processed with VariAudio. If you make any harmonic changes in the Chord Track, they are then followed by these tracks:

There’s also the Chord Assistant to generate harmonic chord progressions, new sounds for HALion Sonic SE as well as new samples and MIDI loops for Groove Agent One and the Beat Designer Library.

The retail prices are suggested at €599 for Cubase 7 and €299 for Cubase Artist 7, while upgrades from previous versions will also be available.Anyone who’s activated Cubase 6.5 or Cubase Artist 6.5 since October 25 2012 will be eligible for a free upgrade.

You can find out more about Cubase 7 at Steinberg.