You know there is a Marketing devision with every Company. And I'll bet, with a quick phone call, this devision would be more than happy to tell you the exakt date of the first Release. "Without spending "hours and hours online"This Video alone is a promotional goldmine for them. your generation...lol
Thanks Steinberg for creating the best DAW on the planet. If you weren't there, a 9-year-old wouldn't have learnt to make music the easy way. I love you.
Whatever DAW you use, we all have to be thankful to Steinberg. I can't imagine a world without VSTs (even though I used Cubase before VST was a thing). There is no such thing as a perfect DAW. Just go with what's best for you! 😊
@@Coqui-Media Absolutely wrong. If you dont't want iPhone there are many Android phones etc. Someone would find something for Windows sooner or later. This time it was VST from Steiny.
@@choomaque VST was developed by Steinberg Media Technologies in 1996. Steinberg released the VST interface specification and SDK in 1996. They released it at the same time as Steinberg Cubase 3.02, which included the first VST format plugins. ReWire was developed jointly between Propellerhead and Steinberg for use with their Cubase sequencer, released in 1998.
Cubase was also the first sequencer to display songs visually as tracks on the main arrange page with a time line going across the screen. Steinberg's main rival, Emagic, eventually had no choice but to copy the format which would go on to be the standard layout on all DAW's to this day.
great flashback, well done...in 1990 I started working at Keyboard magazine in Cupertino, across the street from Apple. They loaned me Cubase with an E-mu Proteus, I think it was, no directions just right into the fire on my own. After a week or two of very frustrating attempts, I'll never forget the day I finally managed to get my Atari 520, Cubase, a micro MIDI interface box and the Proteus talking...just some stupid drum and synth thing, very quantized, but it changed everything for me and ever since, all these decades later. Thanks for the look back!
I started making music with Cubase in 1989. I had an Atari Mega ST2 and Cubase version 1.1. I have updated Cubase almost every time a new version is released. Currently I have Cubase Pro 12.0.50. It's been really great times over the years with Cubase. There are so many features that I probably don't need half of them, but of course I'm always following what new things are being developed.
might be a dumb question but how did you do updates in those times? Did you have to go to the store and buy the latest Update on a CD-Rom? I'm actually not that young to not know this but somehow i dont :D
@@cal1music65 I remember the first updates came on 3.5" floppy disks for a few years. Of course you had to buy them from a store. Then, sometime around the mid-90s, when PCs took over the industry, came CD-ROMs. I don't remember exactly when the updates started getting it online, but I would think sometime around the turn of the 2000s.
@@uunomomentto402 thanks! yeah i didnt really know that minor updates were a thing before the internet really took over. on the other side that was probably not a bad business model for software companies.
@@cal1music65 I have saved floppy disks from the early days of Cubase and even a dongle that was inserted into the printer port. I sold the Atari back in the day, and I've regretted it. Cubase was sold boxed until version 5 or 6, I remember. After that, only as an internet download.
Cubase on the Atari ST was my first midi sequencer(it wasn't a DAW), the studio i worked at had a Mega ST with a 10mb hard drive running SoundTools(that turned into ProTools) that could record a single 6mins stereo track
I started on pro 24 and now on C12 still own a Atari st and cubase 2 also now I have the pleasure of being on the beta team testing the latest Cubase before release.
Pro 24 was great. I also used Pro 12 for a short while. Big Cubase user on the Atari right up to around 2000, and then I switched to the PC version. However I regret doing this because PC hardware was not really up to the task of replacing my Atari based setup, until at least 2005 and even then ONLY with the assistance of a lot of rackmount synth gear etc. To replace everything with plugins would have to wait until more recently IMHO, with a very powerful computer.
Fabulous! I'm a big Cubase fanboy myself, so I really enjoyed watching this! Brought me back to when I first started with Cubase 4 LE. From 7 I went switched to Artist and 8 was the first Pro version I owned. I never looked back. Over the years, as one does, I checked Garageband, Logic, Live, Studio One and Tracktion (Waveform), but none of them can do what Cubase can do for me. It's probably because Cubase is the one I started with, but I think everything considered, it's the most versatile, creative yet pro DAW out there. Thanks for making this video!
I started with Cubase on the Atari. Before that I was using Notator. I went to the first Club Cubase meeting in Toronto and after seeing a 30minute demo video, I switched immediately to Cubase as editing in Notator was so slow compared to Cubase. Been with Cubase ever since.
Steinberg also invented the ASIO driver standard so that you could use the new plugins with low latency. At the time no other low-latency drivers was available so they had to create them to make the new VST-instruments playable!
Although it's worth remembering that ASIO is effectively a hack to bypass the layers of the OS onion on Windows machines due to Microsoft's insistence that everything had to go through their drivers/OS stack. ASIO is not required on the other platforms that Steinberg support(ed)
Not forgetting XG Works by Yamaha, which worked with their DSP based soundcards like SW1000XG and DSP Factory (DS2416). You could connect both soundcards together or have two DSP Factory cards in tandem, giving a huge mixer with everything processed on the card, and a powerful PC was not needed. They released another DAW called SOL2 and that had VST support and builtin virtual XG MIIDI Synth and other FX plugins / vocal pitch correction etc. The SW1000XG could handle 12 audio tracks and all FX and MIDI on the card, using no CPU from the host computer. This was a huge deal in the late 1990s, when most PCs were slow and underpowered.
the dates i could find for the atari ST release were either april 4th 1989 or april 12th 1989 but both have questionable credibility (however it seems like another person in the comments has mentioned april 4th too)
Started using cubase when they dropped the dongle and haven’t looked back but I had no idea they innovated so much. Really enjoying this series on Daws 🎉
I've been with Cubase since v1 on Atari. Before it could handle audio, I synced it to an eight track Fostex R8 reel-to-reel tape recorder with a special sync box. The sync signal stole one track, but having seven audio tracks felt like a lot back then. It worked well but it was a bit frustrating to wait for the tape to fast forward or rewind to the right place. I skipped the Cubase Audio era on Mac and went to Cubase VST on Windows when it was released. From then on, I've upgraded continuously and today I run Cubase Pro 12 on Windows. I have briefly tried other DAWs but the only one I can seriously consider switching to is Studio One, or perhaps Luna, but then I'd have to change to Mac.
Started using Cubasis for Windows in 1998…. Then bought Cubase 5 VST32…… have been updating every couple of years ever since….. on Cubase 12 Pro on Windows 11 and Cubasis 3.4 on my iPad Pro
That was awesome dude! Massive Cubase fanboy here. Been using it since the early days. Also used Steinberg software on the C64 in the 80’s and am now using Cubase 12 Pro on my desktop and Cubasis 3 on the iPad M1
Ahh I remember using Cubase SX2 back in the day! Little blue dongle needed re-seating all the time, that startup screen was EVERYTHING back in about 2005. Proper nostalgia.
Great video. Ive used cabase sense sx3. Having experience with it before protools, once i started getting pt certificates I realized that cubase was overall better and still cant understand why pt was the “studio standard.” Great info, love vsts.
for real! i hated that I had to have pro tools just for other people. Cubase for me, and PT just caz people need to brag that their studio has it. so glad that is over
Been with it since pro12 on Atari st. Now running 10.5 on a second hand Dell7010. Still learning how to use 10.5, it's pretty amazing. The plugin architecture is now taken for granted but it keeps the program eternally fresh with possibilities.
Amazing to see Cubase 1.0. I worked with it on an Atari st40 in 1991 with a Roland sc55. There are ‘midi hits’ written on this system like ‘You’ by Ten Sharp, a European single hit.
Really enjoyed this. Fairly new in comparison but would you consider doing an entire history on Mixcraft Pro? Also Cakewalk Bandlab has been around for a long time too in various forms and could be quite interesting to research and provide an entire history on 😀
Great video, bravo! Pro 24 was the beginning of my exploration in sequencing and 'till now, even if I've used other daws, Cubase remains the basic one in my joy and job.
Pretty cool history for this. Didn’t know it went back as far as it did, or that it was connected with vst, nice stuff. I’d love to see you do one on reaper. Its certainly newer than the others, but I’m still just as curious about it
Thank you that was great, My first DAW was Cubase 10 , now in 12 pro. In the 90s - 2000 i had a pre production studio with a MPC 950 then a mpc 2000xl with the steinberg Midex 3 midi splitter 1 in 3 out to control audio racks like the triton rack. Music production only then tracked to ADAT or 24 track tape in an larger studio.. Now am in the box for the most part....
I have been working on Cubase 5 from the start of my music production career. That time I had a Windows 7 pc. After Upgrading to windows 10 I faced challenges of running 32bit plugins in a 64bit os. So now I have upgraded to Nuendo 12. N.B. I have used both Cubase and Nuendo simultaneously in my career since 2018.
i joined steinberg with cubase vst32 and they are still my main daw. this is the daw you can turn too when its not possible in a lesser daw.. literal God of DAWs
cubase 1.0.1 was my first daw 30 years ago. great memories and great records. thank you to remind me how old am i lol (47).today still working and love cubase (12 pro).
Not forgetting the Interactive Phrase Synthesiser in the Atari 2.0 version, which created pieces of music from just a few notes entered by the user. That came up with some beautiful chord sequences for me, but Steinberg removed this feature not long after.
Minor correction: Cubase was not the first time "producers were able to chop up samples"; this was already possible on the Amiga two years prior in the Noisetracker v2.0 tracker program. Of course, it was also possible using dedicated sampling hardware before then, but when talking about home-computer level music production, I think the Amiga bears mention, especially as Amiga trackers were actually used to produce hit songs during that time (and as late as 2007 with Calvin Harris' album, "I Created Disco").
Sorry, I didn't word it right in my script. I meant it was the first time it was possible *in cubase*, not the first time ever in terms of audio software. Thanks for the correction!
@@afunnylookingsquash Although a video on music trackers wouldn't be a bad idea and there's a LOT of ground to cover, specially with Renoise since it's the only modern DAW I know and use that still occupies tracker notation
sorry to break your Amiga bubble, but NoiseTracker 2.0 was not the first production software for home computers to "chop up samples". For example Steinbergs Avalon from 1989 did it on Atari ST with a sampler (like AKAI S900 for example), but at the professional level. And there was also a Mac software/hardware to do so. Amiga poor audio quality limited by old architecture was not suited for "production" at all. Yes Im aware that some underground artist used Amiga trackers to produce music, but this was a niche genre like Drum n Base, where the quality and size of sample was not the deciding factor.
@@madigorfkgoogle9349 Sure, that's why I specifically mentioned it in my comment. Are you trying to reignite the Amiga vs ST wars? Also, the Amiga's 4-channel 8 bit audio was by no means neither "old" nor "poor quality" for the time, especially when compared the Atari ST's (and practically every other home PC at the time) complete lack of any PCM channels at all.
My second DAW was Cubase VST 24 4.0 for Macintosh in 1998. My first DAW was OSC’s DECK II in 1995. Before Steinberg created the VST format there was the Adobe Premiere plugin format. DECK II was able to use Premier plugins.
I still have (tucked away in a cupboard) an Atari 1024 and fully working legit copy of Pro 24. A few years ago I accessed all my old work (from floppy discs) and was able to transfer everything to Cubase over midi. These days I still use Cubase 12 loads despite being an OAP. Great company!! 😀
A great overview! Cubase was my first encounter with midi, on a Atari 1040ST, which I got for free from my boss. It was collecting dust in a closed, it was the first computer at my firm to use a kind of AutoCad. It had midi in and out, and I got Cubase from a friend. It had an external HD of...... 20MB, as big as a shoebox. Since 2002 I am a Mac and GarageBand fan! A lot has happened! If you can see what is possible on a humble iPad nowadays it is almost unbelievable!
Nice to see the history of Cubase! Started myself with Cubase SX 2, but because I didn't understand it, and there where no TH-cam tutorials like todays, I switched back to Fruity Loops. With SX 4 I gave it another chance and since then I'm hooked. Now on 9.5 and the update to 12 is already in the pocked. Just waiting on my new laptop to install this one.
I got Cubase 10.5 AI with my Steinberg interface. I previously started music recording back in about 2003 using a little known software ntrack studio 5 which was great and very simple to use. I am now using Cubase Elements 11 which is ample for my needs as a home studio musician and very stable on my old win 10 laptop. 👍👍👍
Used Cubase on an Atari St back in the 90's, moved to Pro Tools Le on a PC in the 2000's and finally discovered Studio One a couple of years ago and have never looked back. 😎
I tried Nuendo after FL, Ableton, Studio One and bitwig. Guys, it’s endgame. You can control entire harmony of your project by using chord track. It did not crashes as Ableton does. Everything is logical and works as expected. The more I use it, the more I get blown away by its capabilities. You can press one button to insert your performance into timeline, without setting it up first, or finding if in context menus, it’s just here, recording everything that you do. No more worries about loosing your idea. Assigning hardware MIDI keyboard buttons to software playback buttons? It’s possible. Cubase is fast, reliable, and packed with features
Cubase Audio was developed to take advantage of the onboard DSP in the Atari Falcon. The early Mac port was pretty marginal in performance because it lacked the same hardware.
I wasn't aware of the long history of Cubase, and Steinberg has been owned by Yamaha since 2005. My first DAW was Logic (I think a SE--not totally pro version) on Windows - in 2000 or so. Then... they were about to discontinue offering Logic for Windows and that's when I heard of Steinberg - they were offering an insanely cheap crossover offer for the full version of SX 1. Later I upgraded to SX 3, then 6, then 11, then 12. Haven't used any other DAW since then. Part of it is budget, but mainly I'm just so used to it, and love it.
Hello there, just found this feed, you ask so I looked it up. I'm Brice was a beta tester for Steinberg Cubase 1&2 on Atari (Mega ST) and the also for Cubase 1 PC. Also had the pleasure to briefly meet and talk to Karl Steinberg, in there office in the middle of Hamburg (they move about 15 year ago to there actual office). Did some of the show furniture in the mid 90 for there US music show. So to your question, Cubase Atari launched 1989, I joint the beta program in the 90 as I was using Unitor at that time after I was "converted" to Cubase :-) The PC version came out in April 1990. Left music about 15 year ago and got back to music (remix) 5 year ago and tried for 1 or 2 year with Ableton, although a great program for certain I switch back to Cubase 10 and was able to do my remix in hours, which I was not able to do it with Ableton 9 and 10. Happy camper again went back to my roots !!! happy music making (with any DAW or tape machine, yes I'm 61, so I know tape machine)
As someone who's used many versions of Cubase since I was a teenager (ver. 4/5 to Artist 6.5 for a very long time, and just now finally updated to 12 - which is incredible), this was such a trip. Loved seeing the super old versions - you can really chart some of the UI decisions they made back then to subtle elements in today's Cubase. Exactly what I was looking for the other day: a way to recap the history and especially this past decade before diving into the latest version. Steinberg's contributions to the audio production industry can't be understated, and you've summarized it amazingly here. So many nice parallels to their impact on gaming hardware, too. 🙂
Hard to remember that long ago, but I think I had Cubase 1 on a PC. PC was problematic, so I bought a Mac to run cubase (pre audio versions). I ran that with a Foster R8 8-track reel which had a SMPT thing on it.. basically you could run timecode out of midi into it and the reel to tell would chase and sync. Like you'd select a position or go to a locator, the real would start spinning to locate, then play, then cubase would play. It was flawless! Recorded some fun, good stuff with that setup. Since have upgraded basically every step of the way (wonder how much I've put into that product over time). When I finally got to the audio versions, I sort of gave up because everything sounded like crap to me. Enter UA plugins in early 2000's and it seemed there was hope for DAW's being able to produce something which sounded decent. Anyway, still using Cubase (current version), through I've tried and still use sometimes other things like logic for whatever, but Cubase is kind of home to me. BTW, the logical editor was pretty much complete even way back at version 1. Sort of a mathematical way to look at midi and do something with it. I should get a cubase plaque or something! Cool video, thanks.
Let’s not forget another long story DAW is direct Cubase competitor, named Notator, that was renamed later into Logic, bought by Apple. Also, on a side note: most famous DAW developers are German. Cubase, Logic Pro, Ableton live, Bitwig, Studio One, you name it…
Cubase Audio first appeared on the Atari Falcon, a version of the ST platform with a built in Motorola 56001 DSP, which allowed for four channel direct to disk audio, with much better performance than the equivalent Mac. But hey, let's not make the Mac look bad. :)
I had Cubase Audio Falcon and it gave up to 16 tracks of lossless audio, with effects and MIDI. You could also speed up or slow down the audio, without changing the pitch. I began on Cubase v2.0 on the Atari STE which was rock solid dependable and did everything I needed, including mix automation of MIDI enabled audio devices / multitracks.
@@EgoShredder indeed, yes, 16 tracks. thanks for reminding me. :) I had only gotten such functionality from a Synclavier 9600 TS (tapeless-studio) with the Maxtracks DtoD (direct-to-disk) option, a setup that cost over $400,000 ...
@@tschak909 Yep prices were insanely high back then, and only the wealthiest studio had such gear. The 1990s progressed so quickly that within a few years, everyone could afford high end facilities. In 2023 it could be argued that people are too spoilt for choice, and few if any challenges and obstacles remain to push creativity. Music has been very stagnant and regurgitated for more than 20 years now IMHO.
Great video! Minor correction, though: Cubase 12 was not the first version to offer a 30 day trial. I started with Cubase 7 and got a 30 day trial at the time -- you just had to have an eLicenser to activate the trial license.
I started on Pro24 for the ST. It was buggy and annoying. When Qbit was announced it was a revolution, there was a pirate of Cubase 1.0 going around -blew my mind. When 2.0 cam out I quit my job and became a professional programmer. Never looked back but have worked in Mac Logic since 98.
It may have been a very different story without the Atari ST. It was a capable home computer but built to a price and didn't have the graphic capability of it's main rival the Commodore Amiga. A last minute decision to include MIDI ports had far reaching consequences for music production. Of far greater importance than the physical ports was how MIDI was implemented in the computer with one description saying the Atari ST handled MIDI like monkeys swinging between trees. It could play and record multiple MIDI instruments in real time with no to hardly any latency. I had a friend with an Amiga I was jealous of the graphics, he was envious of the ST's MIDI capability. Cubase may not have enjoyed it's early success if the ST had not been around. The only other computer that was capable at the time was the Macintosh and it was frightfully expensive
It's hard to explain to modern day musicians how completely and utterly fragmented music composition software was, 40 years ago. Cubase represented a clean break from pattern based sequencing (which we first got on keypads via the MC-8, and via interactive display on Fairlight CMI Series II Page R), into something that could be used to score complex compositions, without needing to resort to a music composition language (Fairlight had MCL, and Synclavier had a musical event language which could decompile something played into the memory recorder). In a nutshell, programs like Cubase brought what us professionals had been using on much more expensive dedicated systems, onto a microcomputer that we could have at home and at the studio, and that was liberating; especially once direct-to-disk recording became feasible in the mid 1990s on micros. Cubase also had the complex MIDI transformation modes, which could be used to do _VERY_ complex real time transformations of MIDI data. I used it, for example, to breathe additional life into algorithmic sequences written in the "M" sequencer ("M" was an early algorithmic sequencer), to change their timings, make them feel more human.
yup, major player indeed. so important to what daws look like today. Only beaten in age by pro tools (then sound designer) by 1 year. I loved Cubase through the 90s and early 00s they pioneered so much we take for granted beyond vst. Audio editing handles, delay compensation, 32bit float audio! I have Steinberg to thank for my music career.
I don't remember living in the piano roll view much in Cubase on my Atari ST. It powered multi track midi production of connected to more than one synth, or the legendary Korg M1 for example. Looked more like a modern DAW in midi multi track mode.
Round about 1994, I realised you could build a PC music studio with the right combination of software and hardware. So I set about building one. It used a program called Software Audio Workshop (SAW) synced to Cakewalk midi via a SMPTE-generating card (this was the code that synced audio to visuals in movies). So I had 127 sounds onboard my Turtle Beach sound card that I could play and record via midi, combined with four tracks of digital audio. This was my home-made DAW. To record your stuff without the aid of a studio was a big deal then. Then Cubase VST arrived and instantly offered what I was trying to achieve. Of course, everything is up to a professional standard now, so it's difficult to describe how game-changing that was. Needless to say, I dumped my SAW and SMPTE and embraced the new DAW. A few years later, there was Reason and I began to dump hardware too.
1:30 fun fact: one of the reason why Steinberg changed the name Cubit to Cubase is also because in French Cubit in slang means Ass-Dick (Cul-Bite). It was at the last moment before the announcement and after the first contact with distributors and resellers that they came aware of that fact and then. Hanged it to Cubase.
Join the squash discord: discord.gg/gpbTJJBRQG
You know there is a Marketing devision with every Company. And I'll bet, with a quick phone call, this devision would be more than happy to tell you the exakt date of the first Release. "Without spending "hours and hours online"This Video alone is a promotional goldmine for them.
your generation...lol
🥰
Thanks Steinberg for creating the best DAW on the planet. If you weren't there, a 9-year-old wouldn't have learnt to make music the easy way. I love you.
Thank you for enriching all musicians' lives with the beautiful audio software standards you guys have pioneered over the years!
🙏
The de facto DAW. Best one I've ever used.
Whatever DAW you use, we all have to be thankful to Steinberg. I can't imagine a world without VSTs (even though I used Cubase before VST was a thing). There is no such thing as a perfect DAW. Just go with what's best for you! 😊
Well said. I remember midi only Cubase, and when audio came in it melted my mind. Seems so obvious now.
True
If VST didn't exist there would be something else.
@Sam Smith If vst hasn't been invented, we'd all have been forced to use core audio on the highly inflated apple platform!
@@Coqui-Media Absolutely wrong. If you dont't want iPhone there are many Android phones etc. Someone would find something for Windows sooner or later. This time it was VST from Steiny.
The fact that steinberg created the VST technology which totally changed the music industry is just astonishing.
In fact VST technology was created by Propellerhead (which main product is Reason DAW) and then ownership was transfered to Steinberg
I seriously thought this. Especially when you consider that Propellerhead wouldn't support or use VST till a few years ago.
Unless you're talking about ReWire.
@@choomaque VST was developed by Steinberg Media Technologies in 1996. Steinberg released the VST interface specification and SDK in 1996. They released it at the same time as Steinberg Cubase 3.02, which included the first VST format plugins.
ReWire was developed jointly between Propellerhead and Steinberg for use with their Cubase sequencer, released in 1998.
The original guys who started Propellerhead, were also part of the Steinberg Cubase team, before they went their own way, probably with Rebirth?
Cubase was also the first sequencer to display songs visually as tracks on the main arrange page with a time line going across the screen. Steinberg's main rival, Emagic, eventually had no choice but to copy the format which would go on to be the standard layout on all DAW's to this day.
Don’t leave out the name of the program emagic turned into.
Don’t leave out the name of the program emagic turned into.
The Emagic program was called Notator and what it changed into was Logic.
great flashback, well done...in 1990 I started working at Keyboard magazine in Cupertino, across the street from Apple. They loaned me Cubase with an E-mu Proteus, I think it was, no directions just right into the fire on my own. After a week or two of very frustrating attempts, I'll never forget the day I finally managed to get my Atari 520, Cubase, a micro MIDI interface box and the Proteus talking...just some stupid drum and synth thing, very quantized, but it changed everything for me and ever since, all these decades later. Thanks for the look back!
I started making music with Cubase in 1989. I had an Atari Mega ST2 and Cubase version 1.1. I have updated Cubase almost every time a new version is released. Currently I have Cubase Pro 12.0.50. It's been really great times over the years with Cubase. There are so many features that I probably don't need half of them, but of course I'm always following what new things are being developed.
Same goes for me. Atari 1024st and Pro-24. Aaaaannnnd. I still have both the Atari and a Pro-24 Boot 3.5 floppy.
might be a dumb question but how did you do updates in those times? Did you have to go to the store and buy the latest Update on a CD-Rom? I'm actually not that young to not know this but somehow i dont :D
@@cal1music65 I remember the first updates came on 3.5" floppy disks for a few years. Of course you had to buy them from a store. Then, sometime around the mid-90s, when PCs took over the industry, came CD-ROMs. I don't remember exactly when the updates started getting it online, but I would think sometime around the turn of the 2000s.
@@uunomomentto402 thanks! yeah i didnt really know that minor updates were a thing before the internet really took over. on the other side that was probably not a bad business model for software companies.
@@cal1music65 I have saved floppy disks from the early days of Cubase and even a dongle that was inserted into the printer port. I sold the Atari back in the day, and I've regretted it. Cubase was sold boxed until version 5 or 6, I remember. After that, only as an internet download.
Cubase on the Atari ST was my first midi sequencer(it wasn't a DAW), the studio i worked at had a Mega ST with a 10mb hard drive running SoundTools(that turned into ProTools) that could record a single 6mins stereo track
I started using Cubase on an Atari ST in 1991 when I was living in Vienna. I use Pro 12 now.
I started on pro 24 and now on C12 still own a Atari st and cubase 2 also now I have the pleasure of being on the beta team testing the latest Cubase before release.
Pro 24 was great. I also used Pro 12 for a short while. Big Cubase user on the Atari right up to around 2000, and then I switched to the PC version. However I regret doing this because PC hardware was not really up to the task of replacing my Atari based setup, until at least 2005 and even then ONLY with the assistance of a lot of rackmount synth gear etc. To replace everything with plugins would have to wait until more recently IMHO, with a very powerful computer.
Fabulous! I'm a big Cubase fanboy myself, so I really enjoyed watching this! Brought me back to when I first started with Cubase 4 LE. From 7 I went switched to Artist and 8 was the first Pro version I owned. I never looked back. Over the years, as one does, I checked Garageband, Logic, Live, Studio One and Tracktion (Waveform), but none of them can do what Cubase can do for me. It's probably because Cubase is the one I started with, but I think everything considered, it's the most versatile, creative yet pro DAW out there. Thanks for making this video!
Cubase was the first ever program with different windows to toggle between if I'm not mistaking.
I started with Cubase on the Atari. Before that I was using Notator. I went to the first Club Cubase meeting in Toronto and after seeing a 30minute demo video, I switched immediately to Cubase as editing in Notator was so slow compared to Cubase. Been with Cubase ever since.
Steinberg also invented the ASIO driver standard so that you could use the new plugins with low latency.
At the time no other low-latency drivers was available so they had to create them to make the new VST-instruments playable!
Although it's worth remembering that ASIO is effectively a hack to bypass the layers of the OS onion on Windows machines due to Microsoft's insistence that everything had to go through their drivers/OS stack. ASIO is not required on the other platforms that Steinberg support(ed)
@@mattparker8747 Not entirely true. ASIO also existed in Mac OS prior to X.
Jag kände på mig att jag skulle hitta dig här Henke 😄
Alongside Cubase, there was also Voyetra and Cakewalk (the latter now owned by Bandlab)
Not forgetting XG Works by Yamaha, which worked with their DSP based soundcards like SW1000XG and DSP Factory (DS2416). You could connect both soundcards together or have two DSP Factory cards in tandem, giving a huge mixer with everything processed on the card, and a powerful PC was not needed. They released another DAW called SOL2 and that had VST support and builtin virtual XG MIIDI Synth and other FX plugins / vocal pitch correction etc. The SW1000XG could handle 12 audio tracks and all FX and MIDI on the card, using no CPU from the host computer. This was a huge deal in the late 1990s, when most PCs were slow and underpowered.
the dates i could find for the atari ST release were either april 4th 1989 or april 12th 1989 but both have questionable credibility (however it seems like another person in the comments has mentioned april 4th too)
Started using cubase when they dropped the dongle and haven’t looked back but I had no idea they innovated so much. Really enjoying this series on Daws 🎉
I've been with Cubase since v1 on Atari. Before it could handle audio, I synced it to an eight track Fostex R8 reel-to-reel tape recorder with a special sync box. The sync signal stole one track, but having seven audio tracks felt like a lot back then. It worked well but it was a bit frustrating to wait for the tape to fast forward or rewind to the right place. I skipped the Cubase Audio era on Mac and went to Cubase VST on Windows when it was released. From then on, I've upgraded continuously and today I run Cubase Pro 12 on Windows. I have briefly tried other DAWs but the only one I can seriously consider switching to is Studio One, or perhaps Luna, but then I'd have to change to Mac.
I start using it back when SX and still the king of DAWs to this day,,, 12pro user and beyond.
Started using Cubasis for Windows in 1998…. Then bought Cubase 5 VST32…… have been updating every couple of years ever since….. on Cubase 12 Pro on Windows 11 and Cubasis 3.4 on my iPad Pro
I've been using Steinberg since Pro 24. Great history video, THANKS!
videos like this for NLE's and plugins would be cool!
what is an NLE?
That was awesome dude! Massive Cubase fanboy here. Been using it since the early days. Also used Steinberg software on the C64 in the 80’s and am now using Cubase 12 Pro on my desktop and Cubasis 3 on the iPad M1
Super nice video! Really brings back some memories from the SX days 😎
Honestly. this Chanel has just become my go to for these kind of videos.
Great video. Cubase has been a part of every record I have made in the past 30 years. I still use it daily!
I still dabble with Cubase on an Atari ST, and Cubase Audio on an Atari Falcon. I have some of my songs recorded on a 1GB SCSI JAZ disk 😂
Ahh I remember using Cubase SX2 back in the day! Little blue dongle needed re-seating all the time, that startup screen was EVERYTHING back in about 2005. Proper nostalgia.
I like this video series, maybe you could make a video about LMMS Linux Multimedia Studio. Greetings from Germany
Great video. Ive used cabase sense sx3. Having experience with it before protools, once i started getting pt certificates I realized that cubase was overall better and still cant understand why pt was the “studio standard.” Great info, love vsts.
for real! i hated that I had to have pro tools just for other people. Cubase for me, and PT just caz people need to brag that their studio has it. so glad that is over
Been using Cubase for like 30 years. Love it. It’s just great.
Been with it since pro12 on Atari st. Now running 10.5 on a second hand Dell7010. Still learning how to use 10.5, it's pretty amazing. The plugin architecture is now taken for granted but it keeps the program eternally fresh with possibilities.
Amazing to see Cubase 1.0. I worked with it on an Atari st40 in 1991 with a Roland sc55. There are ‘midi hits’ written on this system like ‘You’ by Ten Sharp, a European single hit.
Really enjoyed this. Fairly new in comparison but would you consider doing an entire history on Mixcraft Pro? Also Cakewalk Bandlab has been around for a long time too in various forms and could be quite interesting to research and provide an entire history on 😀
Thanks for making this video. I jumped in at Cubase SX, haven't looked back since
Great video, bravo! Pro 24 was the beginning of my exploration in sequencing and 'till now, even if I've used other daws, Cubase remains the basic one in my joy and job.
Great video. I've been using full versions cubase since the C64 days, then Cubase SX, Cubase 4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11 and now 12.
Pretty cool history for this. Didn’t know it went back as far as it did, or that it was connected with vst, nice stuff.
I’d love to see you do one on reaper. Its certainly newer than the others, but I’m still just as curious about it
Bro mad props on this video, your research on these kind of videos are insane!
nice video I give like. big fan of these, is pro tools next?
that's a possibility
Thanks for good video. I loved Atari Cubase.
Thank you that was great, My first DAW was Cubase 10 , now in 12 pro. In the 90s - 2000 i had a pre production studio with a MPC 950 then a mpc 2000xl with the steinberg Midex 3 midi splitter 1 in 3 out to control audio racks like the triton rack. Music production only then tracked to ADAT or 24 track tape in an larger studio.. Now am in the box for the most part....
I have been working on Cubase 5 from the start of my music production career. That time I had a Windows 7 pc. After Upgrading to windows 10 I faced challenges of running 32bit plugins in a 64bit os. So now I have upgraded to Nuendo 12.
N.B.
I have used both Cubase and Nuendo simultaneously in my career since 2018.
i joined steinberg with cubase vst32 and they are still my main daw. this is the daw you can turn too when its not possible in a lesser daw.. literal God of DAWs
cubase 1.0.1 was my first daw 30 years ago. great memories and great records. thank you to remind me how old am i lol (47).today still working and love cubase (12 pro).
i can tell you (if you want) how things goes back then.
Cubase Audio Falcon was the earliest most advanced version by far. Even had Steinberg made hardware for digital clock and outputs
Great recap, I went straight from cubase on Atari in 1990 to cubase 11.5, so cool to see how it developed!
When you realize that Ableton's live looks like Cubase when it first came out 😄
Man i like your videos theyre wery well made!
No mention of Chord Track.
, Chord Pad or Chord Assistant? The Logical Editor? Live Transform of MIDI input to snap to chords and scales?
Not forgetting the Interactive Phrase Synthesiser in the Atari 2.0 version, which created pieces of music from just a few notes entered by the user. That came up with some beautiful chord sequences for me, but Steinberg removed this feature not long after.
Minor correction: Cubase was not the first time "producers were able to chop up samples"; this was already possible on the Amiga two years prior in the Noisetracker v2.0 tracker program. Of course, it was also possible using dedicated sampling hardware before then, but when talking about home-computer level music production, I think the Amiga bears mention, especially as Amiga trackers were actually used to produce hit songs during that time (and as late as 2007 with Calvin Harris' album, "I Created Disco").
Sorry, I didn't word it right in my script. I meant it was the first time it was possible *in cubase*, not the first time ever in terms of audio software. Thanks for the correction!
@@afunnylookingsquash No worries, I figured that was probably your intent, but it was also a lovely chance to mention an extra music history nugget!
@@afunnylookingsquash Although a video on music trackers wouldn't be a bad idea and there's a LOT of ground to cover, specially with Renoise since it's the only modern DAW I know and use that still occupies tracker notation
sorry to break your Amiga bubble, but NoiseTracker 2.0 was not the first production software for home computers to "chop up samples". For example Steinbergs Avalon from 1989 did it on Atari ST with a sampler (like AKAI S900 for example), but at the professional level. And there was also a Mac software/hardware to do so. Amiga poor audio quality limited by old architecture was not suited for "production" at all. Yes Im aware that some underground artist used Amiga trackers to produce music, but this was a niche genre like Drum n Base, where the quality and size of sample was not the deciding factor.
@@madigorfkgoogle9349 Sure, that's why I specifically mentioned it in my comment. Are you trying to reignite the Amiga vs ST wars? Also, the Amiga's 4-channel 8 bit audio was by no means neither "old" nor "poor quality" for the time, especially when compared the Atari ST's (and practically every other home PC at the time) complete lack of any PCM channels at all.
My second DAW was Cubase VST 24 4.0 for Macintosh in 1998. My first DAW was OSC’s DECK II in 1995.
Before Steinberg created the VST format there was the Adobe Premiere plugin format. DECK II was able to use Premier plugins.
I still have (tucked away in a cupboard) an Atari 1024 and fully working legit copy of Pro 24. A few years ago I accessed all my old work (from floppy discs) and was able to transfer everything to Cubase over midi. These days I still use Cubase 12 loads despite being an OAP. Great company!! 😀
Would love a history of Renoise (a tracker based daw) video, there's hardly any info on very old versions of this program
A great overview! Cubase was my first encounter with midi, on a Atari 1040ST, which I got for free from my boss. It was collecting dust in a closed, it was the first computer at my firm to use a kind of AutoCad. It had midi in and out, and I got Cubase from a friend. It had an external HD of...... 20MB, as big as a shoebox. Since 2002 I am a Mac and GarageBand fan! A lot has happened! If you can see what is possible on a humble iPad nowadays it is almost unbelievable!
first piano roll? how about trackers?
Nice to see the history of Cubase! Started myself with Cubase SX 2, but because I didn't understand it, and there where no TH-cam tutorials like todays, I switched back to Fruity Loops. With SX 4 I gave it another chance and since then I'm hooked. Now on 9.5 and the update to 12 is already in the pocked. Just waiting on my new laptop to install this one.
I got Cubase 10.5 AI with my Steinberg interface. I previously started music recording back in about 2003 using a little known software ntrack studio 5 which was great and very simple to use. I am now using Cubase Elements 11 which is ample for my needs as a home studio musician and very stable on my old win 10 laptop. 👍👍👍
It's billed as an entire history of Cubase but it left out VST5 entirely!
This video is good but could do with a revised edition. Thanks for posting.
I remember playing with cubase in the mid 90s on a Mac IIsi. I only had the demo though and used to use mod tracker programs instead.
Used Cubase on an Atari St back in the 90's, moved to Pro Tools Le on a PC in the 2000's and finally discovered Studio One a couple of years ago and have never looked back. 😎
I tried Nuendo after FL, Ableton, Studio One and bitwig. Guys, it’s endgame. You can control entire harmony of your project by using chord track. It did not crashes as Ableton does. Everything is logical and works as expected. The more I use it, the more I get blown away by its capabilities. You can press one button to insert your performance into timeline, without setting it up first, or finding if in context menus, it’s just here, recording everything that you do. No more worries about loosing your idea.
Assigning hardware MIDI keyboard buttons to software playback buttons? It’s possible. Cubase is fast, reliable, and packed with features
the first beats I ever made were on Studio Vision Pro and Cubase VST 4.0 on a Power Mac 5200 back in 1998/1999... still have most of those files also.
Awesome loved the other histories of DAWs you did thanks dude ❤
Cubase Audio was developed to take advantage of the onboard DSP in the Atari Falcon. The early Mac port was pretty marginal in performance because it lacked the same hardware.
I used logic, cubase and cakewalk back then and I was very little when I used it and it blew my mind, watching my uncles work on it was awesome
Great research! Thanks for posting! I had a lot of fun watching this!
I wasn't aware of the long history of Cubase, and Steinberg has been owned by Yamaha since 2005. My first DAW was Logic (I think a SE--not totally pro version) on Windows - in 2000 or so. Then... they were about to discontinue offering Logic for Windows and that's when I heard of Steinberg - they were offering an insanely cheap crossover offer for the full version of SX 1. Later I upgraded to SX 3, then 6, then 11, then 12. Haven't used any other DAW since then. Part of it is budget, but mainly I'm just so used to it, and love it.
These software history videos are great!
Hello there, just found this feed, you ask so I looked it up. I'm Brice was a beta tester for Steinberg Cubase 1&2 on Atari (Mega ST) and the also for Cubase 1 PC. Also had the pleasure to briefly meet and talk to Karl Steinberg, in there office in the middle of Hamburg (they move about 15 year ago to there actual office). Did some of the show furniture in the mid 90 for there US music show.
So to your question, Cubase Atari launched 1989, I joint the beta program in the 90 as I was using Unitor at that time after I was "converted" to Cubase :-)
The PC version came out in April 1990.
Left music about 15 year ago and got back to music (remix) 5 year ago and tried for 1 or 2 year with Ableton, although a great program for certain I switch back to Cubase 10 and was able to do my remix in hours, which I was not able to do it with Ableton 9 and 10. Happy camper again went back to my roots !!! happy music making (with any DAW or tape machine, yes I'm 61, so I know tape machine)
I've been using Cubase since SX 3 😍. Now I'm using Cubase Pro 12 🙏
As someone who's used many versions of Cubase since I was a teenager (ver. 4/5 to Artist 6.5 for a very long time, and just now finally updated to 12 - which is incredible), this was such a trip. Loved seeing the super old versions - you can really chart some of the UI decisions they made back then to subtle elements in today's Cubase. Exactly what I was looking for the other day: a way to recap the history and especially this past decade before diving into the latest version. Steinberg's contributions to the audio production industry can't be understated, and you've summarized it amazingly here. So many nice parallels to their impact on gaming hardware, too. 🙂
how do you find 12? I'm still running 5 with the same story haha
Finally the documentary i was waiting :)
I remember Pro 24 for Atari. You had to pick it up at the US Distributor's house...
Hard to remember that long ago, but I think I had Cubase 1 on a PC. PC was problematic, so I bought a Mac to run cubase (pre audio versions). I ran that with a Foster R8 8-track reel which had a SMPT thing on it.. basically you could run timecode out of midi into it and the reel to tell would chase and sync. Like you'd select a position or go to a locator, the real would start spinning to locate, then play, then cubase would play. It was flawless!
Recorded some fun, good stuff with that setup. Since have upgraded basically every step of the way (wonder how much I've put into that product over time). When I finally got to the audio versions, I sort of gave up because everything sounded like crap to me. Enter UA plugins in early 2000's and it seemed there was hope for DAW's being able to produce something which sounded decent. Anyway, still using Cubase (current version), through I've tried and still use sometimes other things like logic for whatever, but Cubase is kind of home to me.
BTW, the logical editor was pretty much complete even way back at version 1. Sort of a mathematical way to look at midi and do something with it. I should get a cubase plaque or something!
Cool video, thanks.
I started on v5. Although I like different DAWs, I'm way more fluent with Cubase.
I'm now on v13. It rocks!
Let’s not forget another long story DAW is direct Cubase competitor, named Notator, that was renamed later into Logic, bought by Apple.
Also, on a side note: most famous DAW developers are German. Cubase, Logic Pro, Ableton live, Bitwig, Studio One, you name it…
i have a video on logic!
I've still got a version of 'Emagic Logic V5 platinum!' for Windows, before they were bought out!
The only other famous DAW that wasn’t German developed is FL Studio, which has its origins in Belgium.
Cubase Audio first appeared on the Atari Falcon, a version of the ST platform with a built in Motorola 56001 DSP, which allowed for four channel direct to disk audio, with much better performance than the equivalent Mac. But hey, let's not make the Mac look bad. :)
I had Cubase Audio Falcon and it gave up to 16 tracks of lossless audio, with effects and MIDI. You could also speed up or slow down the audio, without changing the pitch. I began on Cubase v2.0 on the Atari STE which was rock solid dependable and did everything I needed, including mix automation of MIDI enabled audio devices / multitracks.
@@EgoShredder indeed, yes, 16 tracks. thanks for reminding me. :)
I had only gotten such functionality from a Synclavier 9600 TS (tapeless-studio) with the Maxtracks DtoD (direct-to-disk) option, a setup that cost over $400,000 ...
@@tschak909 Yep prices were insanely high back then, and only the wealthiest studio had such gear. The 1990s progressed so quickly that within a few years, everyone could afford high end facilities. In 2023 it could be argued that people are too spoilt for choice, and few if any challenges and obstacles remain to push creativity. Music has been very stagnant and regurgitated for more than 20 years now IMHO.
I started out on Cakewalk and would love to learn the history of that and Sonar at some point
Great video! Minor correction, though: Cubase 12 was not the first version to offer a 30 day trial. I started with Cubase 7 and got a 30 day trial at the time -- you just had to have an eLicenser to activate the trial license.
I started on Pro24 for the ST. It was buggy and annoying. When Qbit was announced it was a revolution, there was a pirate of Cubase 1.0 going around -blew my mind. When 2.0 cam out I quit my job and became a professional programmer. Never looked back but have worked in Mac Logic since 98.
It may have been a very different story without the Atari ST. It was a capable home computer but built to a price and didn't have the graphic capability of it's main rival the Commodore Amiga. A last minute decision to include MIDI ports had far reaching consequences for music production. Of far greater importance than the physical ports was how MIDI was implemented in the computer with one description saying the Atari ST handled MIDI like monkeys swinging between trees. It could play and record multiple MIDI instruments in real time with no to hardly any latency. I had a friend with an Amiga I was jealous of the graphics, he was envious of the ST's MIDI capability. Cubase may not have enjoyed it's early success if the ST had not been around. The only other computer that was capable at the time was the Macintosh and it was frightfully expensive
In the same way, the story of MT32 sound in games of the era would be very different without the MIDI ports on the ST.
It's hard to explain to modern day musicians how completely and utterly fragmented music composition software was, 40 years ago.
Cubase represented a clean break from pattern based sequencing (which we first got on keypads via the MC-8, and via interactive display on Fairlight CMI Series II Page R), into something that could be used to score complex compositions, without needing to resort to a music composition language (Fairlight had MCL, and Synclavier had a musical event language which could decompile something played into the memory recorder).
In a nutshell, programs like Cubase brought what us professionals had been using on much more expensive dedicated systems, onto a microcomputer that we could have at home and at the studio, and that was liberating; especially once direct-to-disk recording became feasible in the mid 1990s on micros.
Cubase also had the complex MIDI transformation modes, which could be used to do _VERY_ complex real time transformations of MIDI data. I used it, for example, to breathe additional life into algorithmic sequences written in the "M" sequencer ("M" was an early algorithmic sequencer), to change their timings, make them feel more human.
I've had all version from Pro-24 to C12 and the original boxes and discs. Even the Atari Pro-24 boot disk and an Atari 1024st
Time for "The Entire History of REAPER".
yup, major player indeed. so important to what daws look like today. Only beaten in age by pro tools (then sound designer) by 1 year. I loved Cubase through the 90s and early 00s they pioneered so much we take for granted beyond vst. Audio editing handles, delay compensation, 32bit float audio! I have Steinberg to thank for my music career.
I don't remember living in the piano roll view much in Cubase on my Atari ST. It powered multi track midi production of connected to more than one synth, or the legendary Korg M1 for example. Looked more like a modern DAW in midi multi track mode.
Oh and April 4th 1989 for Atari
Round about 1994, I realised you could build a PC music studio with the right combination of software and hardware. So I set about building one.
It used a program called Software Audio Workshop (SAW) synced to Cakewalk midi via a SMPTE-generating card (this was the code that synced audio to visuals in movies).
So I had 127 sounds onboard my Turtle Beach sound card that I could play and record via midi, combined with four tracks of digital audio. This was my home-made DAW. To record your stuff without the aid of a studio was a big deal then.
Then Cubase VST arrived and instantly offered what I was trying to achieve. Of course, everything is up to a professional standard now, so it's difficult to describe how game-changing that was. Needless to say, I dumped my SAW and SMPTE and embraced the new DAW. A few years later, there was Reason and I began to dump hardware too.
128 mixer channels in the late '90's? That's more than FL today! :D
Very ahead of it's time
Love these DAW videos! Thinking about doing one for Reaper?
lol I justed watched your videos about FL and Ableton today! I recently got Cubase so I'm excited to see this one! 😆
I've been watching your last few videos and they're all interesting! You earned a subscription from me!
My heart will always belong to Cubase Score....#forever!
Thanks for this video. Cubase deserves it. Also I think it was released on March 29 or May 29 I don't remember exactly
I had pro24, cubase 1, cubase 2 in the early days.
Thanks man for the history
1:30 fun fact: one of the reason why Steinberg changed the name Cubit to Cubase is also because in French Cubit in slang means Ass-Dick (Cul-Bite). It was at the last moment before the announcement and after the first contact with distributors and resellers that they came aware of that fact and then. Hanged it to Cubase.
History of Reason would be cool.