Steinberg Cubase Artist 6 review

Steinberg Cubase isn’t the most innovative or feature-packed music-production software, but it’s our top recommendation because it’s so refined and well thought out. Rather than presenting lots of exotic features for making exciting new sounds, it focuses more on the nuts and bolts of music production – recording, editing and mixing – letting the inspiration come from the user rather than the software.

Few home users can justify spending £465 on the full version of Cubase, and that’s where Cubase Artist 6 comes in. It’s yet another name change for a cut-price version of Cubase, following Cubase Studio 5 and 4, and Cubase SL3. Sadly, Steinberg has reverted back to the approach adopted for SL3, restricting the numbers of mixer channels and so on rather than simply omitting advanced ancillary features, as Studio 4 and 5 did. The upshot is that Cubase Studio users will need to upgrade to the full Cubase 6 in order to be able to open their existing projects. Thankfully, it’ll only cost them £150 to do so.

For those choosing music-production software for the first time, there’s one key question: does Cubase Artist provide enough to allow them to record music without running into frustrating limitations? Readers can judge for themselves using the comparison chart at tinyurl.com/CubaseArtist, but by and large, we reckon the answer is yes. Restrictions to 64 audio and 128 MIDI tracks, 32 instrument tracks (plus a further 32 via the VST instrument panel), 32 groups and 32 physical inputs and outputs are figures that only the most ambitious projects risk exceeding. Each channel is limited to eight insert effects and eight auxiliary sends, but these limits are inexplicably applied to the flagship version too. It’s frustrating that most of Cubase 6’s best effects plug-ins, such as the REVerence reverb effect, are absent, but Artist’s effects library covers all the bases and includes the new VST Amp Rack. This guitar-oriented plug-in lets users mix and match guitar pedal, amp, cabinet and speaker positions for a versatile range of tones.

Cubase Artist also includes the core editing tools that make the flagship version such a powerful music-production workhorse. Common tasks such as trimming and crossfading audio objects and quantising MIDI performances are performed with the utmost precision and efficiency. More advanced functions such as mix automation and signal routing are elegantly implemented, too. Some of the new features introduced in Cubase 6 are included here, such as the ability to convert drum recordings to MIDI to bolster acoustic recordings with samples. The new Lane Track feature improves on Cubase’s already excellent facilities for recording multiple takes and compiling the best bits together.

Cubase Artist is undoubtedly impressive, but we’re yet to test its main competitor, Cakewalk Sonar X1 Studio – we’ll have a review next month. It also has the rest of the Cubase family to compete with. The flagship Cubase 6 is well worth its high price for those who can afford it, not so much for its unrestricted channel counts but more for its powerful VariAudio pitch editor, advanced audio quantise functions, superior effects bundle and various other powerful features. Cubase Artist users won’t miss what they don’t know, but the PDF manual annoyingly covers both versions and constantly reminds Artist users what they’re missing. This manual is much less easy to navigate than conventional online help, too.

Meanwhile, Cubase Essential 5 is extremely good value at around £115. Cubase Artist 6 offers various refinements over Essential 5, and its 64-bit code means it can access more RAM, but otherwise they’re not that different. Both are limited to 64 audio tracks and include a broadly similar collection of effects and instruments. As such, Cubase Essential comes across as much better value. Just to confuse matters further, it costs just £77 to upgrade from Essential 5 to Artist 6, which works out £36 cheaper than buying Artist outright.

Still, whatever the pros and cons of each version, those who feel that Cubase Artist is the one for them won’t be disappointed by the quality on offer.