Some more C4 impressions...

Now that I’ve had a few days with Cubase 4, I’m ready to offer up some considered opinions. In no particular order:

1. They took out Quadrafuzz. ZOMGWTF? And DirectX plugs are gone. This is a minor annoyance, but really, they’re DirectX, so who the fuck cares?

2. The new synths pretty much suck ass. Note to Steinberg: go buy a copy of Logic, look at all the included synths, and rip them off. Seriously. The new synths actually suck _more_ than the old synths, IMO. I think someone from Native Instruments consulted on the note priority of the polyphonic ones, because it’s just as odd as their stuff. Maybe I’m in the minority, but when I play a four-note chord, I kind of have a hard-on for all four notes playing. Or at least the same three playing consistently.

3. Stability and CPU usage in general is down quite a bit. There are notable exceptions; the amp simulator plugin rocks my CPU to the tune of 30% or more. That’s a little bit unnecessary, I think. But in general, it feels firmer.

4. I feel like they reworked the audio engine a bit. I can’t honestly give any empirical evidence in this regard, but it sounds _tighter_ to me, and the summing is a little bit less murky. I A/B’d the same project in Nuendo 3 and Cubase 4, and the summed result definitely sounded a bit clearer and tighter in C4. This is purely subjective, of course.

5. I like the preset browser for the VST3 plugs. I also like the new export window, and most of the other bells and whistles that comprise the majority of the upgrade. I still haven’t tried the Studio Manager thingy, so I can’t speak to that.

In general, I feel that C4 is a step in the right direction. No major problems to report, and it seems happy in Vista.