CUBASE NOTES

Cubase SX for Mac OS X

Published in SOS October 2002
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Technique : Cubase Notes

The 'Heaven And Hell' demo song, loaded from the Windows Cubase SX CD-ROM, with an added A1 VST Instrument.

This months Cubase Notes brings you exclusive coverage about the Mac OS X version of Cubase SX, and offers more advice on working with Hitpoints.

For Mac Cubase users currently awaiting the Mac OS X version of Cubase SX, the only news so far has been that it will be released at the end of the year, as reported last month. However, beta testing is now under way and in this month's Cubase Notes we'll be taking a first look at the beta version, finding out how well it works, and whether it brings Mac OS X closer to being a serious platform for music production.

I've been testing the Cubase SX beta on an 800MHz G4 iMac, and although my copy of Jaguar hasn't arrived yet, everything seemed fine running OS 10.1.2 using just the built-in stereo output. For MIDI, I connected an M Audio Keystation 61 USB keyboard and downloaded the beta OS X drivers from M Audio's web site. When I ran Cubase SX, the Keystation was recognised straight away and was automatically assigned as the default MIDI input and output ports in Device Setup.

VST plug-ins stored in OS X's VST plug-ins folder are recognised by Cubase SX and work just like VST plug-ins in OS 9.

The operation of Cubase SX under Mac OS X is, perhaps unsurprisingly, pretty much identical to the operation of Cubase SX under Windows XP. The graphics are the same, the menus are arranged in exactly the same way (with the exception that commands like Preferences and Quit appear in the Cubase SX Application menu, which is unique to Mac OS X applications), and the function keys open and close the same windows. I also tried loading the 'Heaven And Hell' demo song from the Cubase SX CD-ROM, which was prepared on the Windows version, and this loaded absolutely fine, other than the fact that some of the plug-ins used weren't available in the beta.

Much has been made of the fact that VST plug-ins need to be recompiled under OS X, but the beta included OS X versions of most instrument and effects plug-ins included with the Windows version of SX. I tried out A1, the bundled virtual Waldorf synth, and was able to play this instrument in real time via the USB MIDI keyboard with a low enough latency that there was no apparent delay — impressive! I have no idea what the exact latency was, since there was no indication, but it must have been less than 12ms for the A1 instrument to appear that responsive.

As Mac OS X users already know, many applications come in the form of packages, which are effectively folders containing all the support files required, allowing an application to be represented by a single icon. The bundled VST plug-ins with the SX beta were included inside such a package, but the OS X versions of mda's plug-ins I'd installed in the Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST folder were automatically recognised and worked just fine.

I had already been playing around with the OS X version of Propellerhead's Reason 2, and Cubase SX automatically added a Reason entry to the Devices menu, exactly as it does in the Windows version. Selecting this item opens the familiar Cubase Rewire window, allowing you to enable the Rewire channels you want to activate. Despite the fact my iMac only has 256MB of memory, I decided to try this feature out and enabled the Reason left and right Mix channels in SX.

After loading Reason, everything worked first time. Pressing play started the default song playing, but with the audio being routed through the Cubase SX mixer, and all of Reason's devices were available as MIDI outputs to the MIDI tracks in the SX Project window. As with VST Instruments, it was also possible to play Reason's instruments in real time via the USB MIDI keyboard with no apparent latency problems.

While none of this is new technology — running Reason via Rewire in either OS 9 with Cubase VST or Windows XP with Cubase SX has been possible for some time — there seemed something particularly exciting about seeing all of this work in OS X. And it worked really well — playing the 'Realization' demo song through Cubase showed about 50 percent CPU usage in the performance meter.

I'm initially impressed with the combination of OS X and Cubase SX, and I think Mac Cubase users definitely have something to look forward to. While I'll confess that I was sceptical about how the OS X version would perform in comparison to the Windows version, these reservations seemed unfounded: Cubase SX felt very responsive and seemed perfectly at home running on OS X. There were a few audio dropouts when switching windows, adding tracks and so on, but given that I was running a standard pre-Jaguar version OS X and a beta version of Cubase after all, this isn't really something to criticise.

As a footnote, I must stress that everything I've written is based upon a beta version of Cubase SX intended for testing purposes only, so many aspects of the application are likely to change before the final release. I'd also like to thank SX Product Manager Lars Baumann at Steinberg for letting me spill the beans.

Cubase SX/SL 1.03     Hot on the heels of the 1.02 update reported in last month's Cubase Notes comes version 1.03, which most significantly offers support for the Mackie Control base unit — support for the Mackie Control XT units should follow shortly. Although a full review will appear in a future SOS, after having a brief time to play with Mackie Control and Cubase SX in my system, it seems the combination works very well, aside from a few quirks like the fact that SX uses the I/O and Sends Assignments buttons as the page up and down buttons! In addition to Mackie Control support, there's the usual handful of bug fixes, and many of the timing problems associated with sending and receiving MIDI clock data experienced by some users seem to have been resolved. I was particularly pleased to find that the problem I experienced creating audio slices with an event placed at bar one (as mentioned in last month's Cubase Notes) has also been dealt with. Check out the support section of www.steinberg.net for a full list of changes and to download your copy of the SX/SL 1.03 update.

Mind The Gap     The Auto Fades window allows you to set automatic fade-ins, fade-outs and crossfades for overlapping audio events on an audio track. In last month's column we looked at how to generate Hitpoints in audio events and create audio slices, enabling you to change the tempo of audio loops. If you've been trying out this technique with your own material, you might have noticed that setting the tempo too far away from the original can introduce unwanted audible side-effects where the loop has been sliced up. If the Project's tempo is set lower than the original tempo of the loop, you'll notice that gaps start to appear between the audio events. You can overcome this to a degree by selecting the audio part containing the loop on the Project window and selecting Audio / Close Gaps. This time-stretches each audio event to the exact length required so the gaps between audio events are perfectly filled. If you later increase the tempo of the song again, these time-stretched events will render the loop unplayable and you'll have to start again. When the tempo is set higher than the loop's original tempo, the Auto Fades feature can often eliminate any clicks and pops you start to hear where slices overlap. Select the track containing the loop on the Project window and click the Audio Fades Settings button at the top right of the Inspector. In the Auto Fades window, activate Auto Crossfades, leave the Length value as the default 30ms (changing later if required), disable Use Project Settings and click OK. Any overlaps will now be automatically crossfaded and the loop should sound much smoother than before. Although we've been looking at Hitpoints in the context of manipulating loops, you can apply these features to solve other problems as well. For example, Hitpoints can also be used to solve the timing problems on multitracked drum or other single-line instrument tracks (such as a bass guitar). Once you've created the audio slices, as described last month, simply open the part in the Audio Edtior, select Edit / Select / All to select all the audio events, and select MIDI / Over Quantise. You might need to change the Quantise parameter to the appropriate resolution first, but this procedure will effectively allow you to quantise audio by moving audio events so the 'S' snap flag of each audio event falls exactly on the beat.