What the hell is up with Steinberg?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bigus Dickus
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Bigus Dickus

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I've never had a "information gathering" attempt be as fruitless as was just the case for Cubase. After half an hour on their site, I didn't get answers to any of my questions.

Which were: Price for Cubase SX? Does it do 88.2 kHz sampling? Does it support DX plugins (I know it does VST)?

Looked around, product information was very "PR-ish" and not very useful. I noticed that Cubase VST does 16-bit/48 kHz. Ok, so what about the others? I looked for some "contact us" address, and found that email questions were limited to registered users. Big help there. :rolleyes: Same for phone support. Same for discussion forums. Went to FAQ, didn't even have a product category for Cubase SX. Knowledge base pulled up no hits for Cubase SX.

OK, so I want to at least know the price, to see if it's in my budget, hoping I'll find out the answers to some of my questions here. Is it in their online store? No. So I go to the distribution information. All country choices were European. I don't live in Europe... what's up with that? Do they even sell this software in the US? Retailers... same story.

Geez. That was one horrible web-navigating experience. With each new page loaded I actually felt less informed. :D

OK, so what's the lowdown then? Where can you purchase this software, and where can I find more detailed information on plugin support, sampling/bitrate formats, etc.?
 
Yes, Cubase is sold in America, at almost all major music shops that deal with recording software. If you don't have a place near you that sells it you can mail order it from musicians friend, and samash, as well as other online shops.

SX's SMRP is $799.99, but you can find it at most places for much cheaper. Musicians Friend currently has it for $579.99 and I think I saw it on sale at Guitar Center for as low as $559.99. Cubase SL is a bit cheaper, VST still cheaper than that, all the way down to Cubasis which runs in the neighborhood of $75

It supports all VST and Dx plug-in's.

It supports sample rates at least up to and including 96kHz. 88.2 is one that is supported.

Cubase's forum (www.cubase.net) is NOT restricted to only registered users, you are free to go there. The reason Steinberg does not answer questions from non registered users is because they are too small of a company to handle questions like these, that can be answered by their dealers or on their forum. The reason they do not list prices on their website is because they do not deal to the public in their products. Each dealer is free to set their own prices. You probably missed the area that lists the dealers in America, but it is there. Anyhow, like I said, you can probably call up any music or software dealer in your area that deals in recording software, and find it.

It's a great program. If you have other questions feel free to post them.
 
Cool, thanks for the quick reply. Yeah, I think their site layout is just a bit odd... very difficult to find the information you are looking for.

The email and phone support said "registered users only." The forums said the same thing, but I guess they were talking about registered for the forum. :D

Anyway, you answered a very important question.

If I was to follow up, I'd ask what you lose by moving from Cubase SX to Cubase SL. Sometimes the "PR" talk on the websites makes it difficult to really identify what is missing.

I've seen some full versions going on ebay for ~$450. Not too bad.

Right now I'm very interested in both Cubase and Cool Edit Pro. The price on the latter is better, but I've never used both, so I'm not sure what all I'd be giving up. VST support for one it seems. I've emailed CEP about 88.2 option, hopefully they'll answer back. Hmm... maybe I'll just ask in the CEP forum...? :) Nah, I asked a general question in the Computer Recording forum - I'll give that time first.
 
For prices I typically just go to musiciansfriend.com or samash.com. This is just to get a ballpark figure. You can ALWAYS bargain it down once you're in the store (I worked at guitar center before). Anyway, here's a link:

Cubase SX

As far as your other questions are concerned.... it supports "up to" 96K...but I"m not sure if it'll let you select 88.2; as you've mentioned, Cubase VST does though. My guess would be that SX does as well.
 
I'll be honest I have never used SL and I am not any more familiar with it other than it is considered SX "light". I don't think we have many SL users here so you may want to cubase.net and search their forums. You can do that even without registering and search on "SL" and it will undoubtedly pull up threads comparing the two, it's such a new product a lot of the threads there about SL are like that.

I'll admit I'm not a real big fan of Steinberg's new layout, but I am getting used to it.
 
Just to back you up, big guy, I find the Cubase site a bit wonky, too. I had a devil of a time trying to dig up some good, solid specs on what the program could do. I eventually found a PDF that did the trick, but I can't remember where.

For the record, I find Digidesign's website to be almost as useless. It took me forever to piece togther a decent picture of their product line and decided what I wanted from them.

Most be a web design epidemic in audio program companies...

Take care,
Chris
 
The big dif bet SX and SL is the automation. With SX you can automate EVERYTHING. Every parameter on every plug. That means the 6dB boost at 13k and the threshold on your renComp and the delay Hz on your flange plug. This is pretty profound once you get used to that degree of control. The extra $200 for SX is well worth it.
 
Cool, thanks for the info and the link.

One other thing - does cubase use a hardware dongle, or just software registration? It looks like I'm going to be doing tracking and mixing on two different machines, so that's something I'll have to consider.
 
Hardware dongle- it's a USB key these days, instead of a parallel port kluge, so it is very easily portable. Just don't lose it!
 
Hmm... suck. My tracking machine is, well, in a different room than my mixing machine. I guess I could move the dongle everytime, but that can be a nuisance. Oh well... still checking out the software, looks pretty snazzy.
 
The hot setup is to put the USB key in a hub right up on the desktop (or get a monitor with a built in USB hub, or whatever). Then, moving the key is just pulling it out of the hub, and popping it into the hub on the other machine. This is generally *much* easier than crawling around on the floor to get to the parallel port, or having a parallel cable with the dongle dongling off the end... It would support your machines-in-separate-rooms case very well.

You'll need easy access to the key in any case, whether you move it or not, as it has to be removed from the machine each time a new update comes in from Steinberg. SX/SL are still under very active development, so new versions are coming out fairly often.
 
OKay I'm lost...

I'm trying to follow this whole "dongle" conversation but I'm completely oblivious! What is a "dongle?"
 
Dongles are hardware "keys" that have to be physically interfaced with the machine in order for some specific software to work. In the past, it was a little box type of thing that plugged into the parallel port of your computer. Now, it seems there are smaller less troublesome USB keys.

Hmm... I've got a USB KVM switch (keyboard, video, mouse) on the way that has a built in USB switching hub. I wonder if I could simply leave the dongle in the USB port on the hub/switch, and the KVM take care of connecting it to the appropriate computer. That would be nice. Didn't think about USB hubs as a solution.

In any case, the Cubase demo is doing some weird stuff. I'll start another thread about that.
 
JuSumPilgrim said:
The big dif bet SX and SL is the automation. With SX you can automate EVERYTHING. Every parameter on every plug. That means the 6dB boost at 13k and the threshold on your renComp and the delay Hz on your flange plug. This is pretty profound once you get used to that degree of control. The extra $200 for SX is well worth it.
Click to expand...

you're shitting me? how does this work??
 
Actually Im wrong. You can do it in SL too but you can only draw the lines. You cant do the other types of automation.

On any audio track click on the + sign in the lower left hand corner. You can add as many automated tracks as you want. Click in the volume box and go down to where it says *more*--scroll down that list until you see the parameters of whatever plug you have in the insert. Its all there. For a 6 band EQ for instance youll have each band labeled..1-6..enable ....for freq adjustement itll say freq, where you can change the freq boost/cut at dif points on the track or gradually. The possibilities are endless.
 
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