Steinberg have flirted with the idea of producing hardware for their music production software a few times in the past, often rebranding existing hardware to give the impression of assured compatibility. When Yamaha acquired Steinberg back in 2004 we assumed that rebranded Yamaha hardware would start to appear – but actually that wasn't the case. Instead they took their time to create something special, something that would bring the hardware and software closer together in more than appearance – “Advanced Integration”. Here's what Steinberg have to say about it:

“The shipping of MR816 CSX, MR816 X and CC121 is a landmark event for Steinberg,” comments Stefan Schreiber, Steinberg’s Marketing Manager for Hardware. “Utilizing new integrative technologies, these new products combine with Cubase to form an extremely powerful production environment with peerless integration between hardware and software, one that offers not only myriad workflow advantages but also outstanding sonic characteristics,” Schreiber continues.

So what does that actually mean? Well we cracked open a copy of the new Cubase version 5 and plugged in an MR816CSX to see what all the fuss was about.

Ins and Outs

The MR816 is a good looking silver and black 1U rack unit with a bunch of silver knobs on the front and nice blue and green lights. You've got 8 analogue inputs, mic or line using Yamaha “D-Pre” class A preamps with only one doubling up for a high impedance instrument input and 8 balanced outputs. The first two inputs are mirrored on the front along with 8 gain knobs with peak lights, phantom and pad switches. Two very handy headphone sockets sit on the far right, each with it's own volume control and rounding off the analogue I/O is a pair of insert points on the back allowing you to plumb in existed hardware compressors or effects units. On the digital side you have S/PDIF and ADAT giving you another 8 channels along with Word Clock to ensure the unit locks to other digital gear.

On the right side of the front of the unit are two large control knobs that can be used to access the four main hardware features: Phones, Master, REV-X and Morph. The first two are self explanatory then second two we'll look at later.

MR Editor

Steinberg talk a lot about the way the functionality of the CSX is completely integrated into Cubase and how there's no need for a separate mixer or control panel for the interface, so it came as a surprise to find one. The MR Editor doesn't look like much, it has the traditional Yamaha lo-fi look which appears very dated but once you start mousing around you find it's actually a very elegant piece of software that gives full control over the hardware routing, monitoring and REV-X effect.

The Editor is there for when you are using software other than Cubase so that you don't lose out on the extra functionality. When you load Cubase the Editor stops working and informs you rather abruptly that the firewire port is in use by another application.

Cubase 5

With each new generation of software, users are looking for a couple of killer features to make the upgrade worthwhile and for this update Steinberg have put the most effort into the range of included tools and plug-ins. That's not to say that there haven't been improvements elsewhere, it's just that they're not so obvious. Something that is obvious is the tweaking of the graphical user interface. Cubase has long had an eye pleasing and intuitive layout, the mixer in particular is graphically superior to pretty much anything else out there. Version 5 hasn't changed the look very much at all but it's somehow clearer, more refined and neater which is enough to raise a smile when you first load it up.

New Plug-ins

There are three new and important plug-in features in Cubase 5, beats and loops, pitch correction and a convolution reverb.

Beats and Loops

Loopmash - powerful tool for the slicing and instant re-assembling of any kind of rhythmic audio
material. It's probably the most interesting thing i've played with in ages. Basically you take a loop, any loop, and it slices it up  - nothing amazing there – but then you add another loop and it starts to replace the slices in the first with occasional ones from the second. Add more loops and suddenly your original loops has been “mashed” together with all the others creating all sorts of unexpected sounds and rhythms. You have these intensity sliders called “Similarity Gain” that dictate how often that loop gets into the mix and you can have up to 8 loops per scene and 12 scenes each assigned a pad for quick changing. It's pretty darn groovy.

Groove Agent ONE and Beat Designer – When loading up Grove Agent ONE I assumed that it would be a cut down version of the Groove Agent plug-in that has various styles of drumming and kits from across the ages, but no. This is a simple but well designed drum pad player where you can load up various kits and play the pads and tweak the sounds. What's clever is that Cubase has introduced a step drum sequencer designed to be run with Groove Agent ONE but because it's a MIDI plug-in it's not restricted to it (genius). You can create a ton of patterns and either dump them to a track or you can trigger them in “Jump” mode directly from a keyboard. There's nothing spectacular here but it's a really useful addition.

Pitch Correction

One of the holy grails of the pop industry is the ability to tune vocal performances. It started many years ago with Antares' Autotune but in recent times the technology has been pushed by the likes of Celemony's Melodyne to enable the editing of the pitch and harmonic content of audio far past simple pitch correction. Steinberg address both these areas separately in Cubase 5.

Pitch Shift/Pitch Correct – A good vocal tuning plug-in that's easy to use, intuitive, seems to make sense and does what it says on the tin. Insert it as a plug-in onto you vocal or other monophonic track and you can set the speed and sensitivity, scale and formant changes and off it goes, in real time. You can abuse it into all sorts of weird sounds and even change the scale and notes it's aiming for over MIDI but for simple tuning it's fabulous.

VariAudio – The more intense pitch and harmonic editing can be found in the sample edit window. Double click your vocal in the project window and then select “Pitch & Warp” from the VariAudio menu and it will analyse the audio and overlay the pitch information ready for editing. You can move individual notes up and down in pitch and also stretch them out or shrink them to change the timing and placement of the performance. You can edit the vibrato, the start and end pitch, move it all about into as much of a mess as you desire. It's a very powerful tool.

REVerance

It's a convolution reverb that can apply real room characteristics to audio. It works by recording the reverb in a real space, say a church, cathedral or concert hall and then analysing that information to produce an “impulse” or a fingerprint that can then be applied to recorded audio as if the audio was actually in the same space. It's very clever, very convincing and very CPU intensive. The result is a high quality reverb with a very realistic sound and a bunch of impulses taken from all sorts of interesting places.

But is it worth it?

Cubase 5 confidently builds on the long line of history that goes before it. It brings in some good high-end professional tools as well as some good creative ideas in terms of plug-ins. It's difficult to know really how to further improve the interface or work flow, I wonder at what point they'll run out of ideas. Everyone has their little criticisms or issues that they would like to see fixed in the next version but certainly in terms of creativity Cubase 4 and 5 have really stretched the concept of what a DAW is supposed to offer. Although, apart from the plug-ins already mentioned, there's little to dazzle the Cubase 4 user but there's plenty of tweaks, adjustments and reorganisation under the hood to give Cubase 5 a fresh and yet mature feel.

Advanced Integration

Let's now look at Cubase and the MR816CSX in action and see how it all comes together.

On Inputs

The purpose of the DSP driven channel strip in the CSX is for input monitoring and recording and this is where things get very clever. The audio input channels in Cubase get the option to display “hardware” in the section above the fader. This houses the CSX effects and routing, directly on the mixer without having to insert anything or load up an effect – nice. So then you've got your input, routed through your Sweet Spot Morphing Channel Strip, and then, if you have Direct Monitoring enabled, you can monitor through the REV-X reverb. You choose to either monitor the channel strip or record it by moving the insert point.

So, select an audio track, plug your guitar in and press the “Quick Connect” button next to the input and it automatically assigns that input to the selected track (nice feature) and you've got the channel strip and reverb instantly ready to go for recording. It's easy, sounds fabulous and makes complete sense.

Sweet Spot Morphing

This name confused me for quite a time until I realised that it's just marketing talk to make something sound interesting. It's a channel strip consisting of an EQ and a compressor that has a special “morph” knob which changes a number of parameters at once and so simply and quickly adjusts the sound without having to fiddle about. The two knobs on the front of the CSX become “drive” and “morph” and it works, it sounds great, nothing could be simpler – just don't let the phrase “Sweet Spot” upset you. Behind the morphing is a fully featured compressor and EQ that's been preset by a whole host of talented engineers, but it's also completely editable in its own window like a regular plug-in.

REV-X

The reverb sounds like a hardware reverb, it has a real quality to it. The interface lets it down a bit, it's functional but looks like a freeware plug-in. You also can't change the reverb type from the interface, you have to open another window to do that globally which is a shame. You can't record the track with the REV-X on it, it's just for monitoring. And there's only really one – although each input has the REV-X on it they are all routing to the same one so what you tweak on one channel is tweaked on the rest, the only individual control is the send amount. It's not that I was expecting an individual hardware reverb available for each channel it's just that the mixer layout gives that impression and so creates a bit of unnecessary disappointment by fooling my expectations.

On Outputs

The MR816CSX also has an output or “External Effects” mode which allows it to process audio tracks on playback like any other plug-in. This neatly highlights the limitation of hardware based DSP in that the number of effects you can run are completely finite and limited, whereas with software based effects we've been spoiled because we can run as many as we like, CPU power permitting, and make adjustments to our project to free up more room for more effects if we start running out. Switching to External mode means that the effects are no longer available on your inputs. That's not a major deal because you're now mixing on playback rather than recording but it might be annoying if you wanted to do further recording and found some of your mix effects were bypassed when you switched the DSP back to inputs. Another limitation is that to use the effects on playback the MR816CSX uses the digital I/O to route audio to and from the effects bus which means that you can't use the digital I/O for your audio playback at the same time – it's all a matter of compromise and the majority of users would be largely unaffected.

Due to the finite size of the DSP you have to choose what configuration of effects you want to use. There are 8 channels available and so you can opt for 8 mono channel strips or 4 stereo ones, 6 mono and a REV-X or 3 stereo and a REV-X. Although it doesn't sound like much it's not very far from the original Powercore or UAD-1 and, as with those DSP cards, the quality of what you get is fantastic.

Summary

There's no doubt in my mind that Steinberg has achieved a new level of hardware integration with Cubase 5 and Advanced Integration. It makes the whole business of putting together a professional DAW much easier and compatible. The integration is seamless, doesn't interrupt the workflow, the controls on the unit are useful and intuitive, the DSP effects are excellent and dead easy to use even by the novice, and it all combines into a comprehensive package. Price wise it is more expensive than similar interfaces like the Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 but it does come with a high quality effects processor that's fully integrated into Cubase plus the assurance of continued support and compatibility with your core recording software, and that can make all the difference.