Topic: Cubase 7 Coming in December

Steinberg has announced that the latest edition of their flagship DAW will be released on Dec. 5, 2012. That will be Cubase 7 for those of you who wisely don’t bother to keep track anymore of what Cubase is up to these days. No solid word on the pricing, but you can be certain that they will intend to separate you from somewhere between $500 and $600 US for the full-featured version.

Normally, I open a thread such as this one simply as a brief news post. In this case, I posted this Cubase news to say something more. As anyone can see from reviewing the new features to be included with Cubase 7, it becomes plainly obvious that DAWs have essentially reached their end-stage in development. All of the added features and HaLion offerings and, this time, some packaged third-party stuff are really nothing but PUFF. They don’t add anything to the basic critical functioning that any user needs to do all of the common functions we require in a DAW.

After your DAW design has added those heavier features such as time-stretching and a harmonizer-pitch-correction-note-magician such as Melodyne’s editor or the several now like it, there is nowhere left to go — at least until someone invents some as-yet unknown technology. You can add all the samples and plugins and FX that you want; you can even add the ability to upload directly to SoundCloud, but all of this kind of puff are simply items we users can pick up or find anywhere else. Personally, I would rather make my own choices, as bundling has always annoyed me. Note the tasteful additional offerings Fritz has for us with Podium — the unique reverb, a nice EQ. Now, compare that to the loads of puff crap that comes along with some of these other DAWs, all in the last couple of years. Reason will gladly nickel and dime you to death buying each of the rack units you’ll want, since your plugins of the same name won’t work if you pick up Reason. You must buy them again.

Finally, this pertains to what I have been saying about Zynewave’s Podium from the first. Our lists for Feature Requests have been reasonable and to the core of what is really needed to bring Podium into perhaps the Top Ten of all DAWs. Perhaps 10 or 12 features need adding to Podium. And my point has always been that, if added, then THAT’S IT. Leave the puff for these other turkeys who want $400-$600 out of you.