Steinberg: Decades of Music Innovation
Musicians, composers, post-production specialists, and engineers — look around Sweetwater, and you'll find them everywhere, and one thing we all have in common is that our lives wouldn't be the same without the decades of innovation Steinberg has provided. In fact, if you use a computer as part of your music or audio production workflow, chances are Steinberg has already had a huge impact on the way you work. Actually, Steinberg has been in the computer-based music production field since the mid-'80s — well before computers were popular fixtures in studios. Not only did this put Steinberg ahead of the curve, but it's also allowed them to stay there for decades.
Steinberg's history goes back to 1983 — shortly after the MIDI standard was unveiled at the Winter NAMM Show — when Manfred Rürup and Karl “Charlie” Steinberg found themselves working on a recording session for a German rock band. Rürup was a professional keyboard player; whereas Steinberg was an audio engineer, so although they came at the concept from entirely different angles, they bonded over their shared enthusiasm for the future of computers in music. Within a year, the two formed Steinberg GmbH and released the first multitrack MIDI sequencer software to hit the market, Pro 16.
Cubase Standardizes VST, ASIO, & More
What began as a simple 16-track sequencer program for the Commodore 64 eventually evolved into the powerhouse DAW we know today as Cubase. Along the way, Steinberg pioneered a number of additional groundbreaking advancements in music production technology. For starters, they introduced the widely adopted VST and ASIO protocols, two of the major backbone elements of many modern DAWs.
Even the concept of a modern DAW, which encompasses both multitrack audio recording and sequencing, began with Cubase, which brought the aspects of recording and sequencing together. Recording with 32-bit floating-point processing? That was Steinberg. They also introduced 64-bit processing to the DAW world. In other words, those of us here at Sweetwater who started on Commodore and have stuck with Steinberg have gotten to experience a lot of firsts.
From Nuendo to Dorico
Steinberg's success extends far beyond Cubase, music recording, and sequencing. When they saw the need for the same kind of flexibility Cubase was already offering to film composers in the post-production industry, Steinberg created Nuendo. Not only did Nuendo meet the needs of major film sound designers and ADR specialists, but it vastly exceeded them. For instance, Nuendo made it possible to work directly in the game programming environment via Wwise middleware.
At the same time Nuendo took off, Steinberg's WaveLab established itself as one of the industry standards for mastering. This comprehensive audio-editing software began as a highly streamlined tool, but as mastering engineers adopted it and provided feedback, WaveLab has expanded to include surgically precise editing, advanced sound shaping, and cutting-edge loudness metering. Most recently, Steinberg introduced Dorico, a powerful scoring platform that immediately found favor among many of today's top composers.
Steinberg's Partnership with Yamaha
While Steinberg's hardware certainly developed to a whole new level after Yamaha acquired the company in 2005, their history with developing popular interfaces goes back to the beginning. In fact, they were among the few to push the frontiers of sequencing, when Steinberg released MIDI interfaces for Amiga and Atari computing systems, well before the age of USB connectivity. Today, their partnership with Yamaha has allowed Steinberg to create a range of accessible, professional-quality audio interfaces released under the UR series moniker.
Affordable and straightforward, UR series interfaces feature highly transparent preamps and signal paths, making them excellent all-purpose recording hardware. Some UR series interfaces even include onboard DSP, and all come with bundled software that includes Cubase AI, a basic version of Cubase that's an ideal intro to music production. On top of that, Steinberg offers a must-have control surface for Cubase called the CC121. The CC121 puts all the master console, control room, and channel controls in easy reach, allowing anyone running Cubase to work more efficiently than ever.
Worlds Collide in Nuage
Partnering with Yamaha has provided Steinberg with countless opportunities to grow, but no collaboration between the two forward-thinking companies has been as ambitious or as remarkable as the Nuage studio system. This powerhouse platform was built from the ground up to provide recording engineers and post professionals with an entire infrastructure of hands-on tools to make it easy to keep up with the fast-paced world of professional media production. It's the kind of system that can only happen when purpose-built control hardware, top-tier sonics, and leading software all come together.
Nuage underscores Steinberg's completeness as a foundation of the modern music and audio production industry. That's because, although you can use any DAW with a Nuage system and still enjoy superior control, an amazing front end, and Dante expandability, the whole platform comes alive when you add Cubase or Nuendo to the mix. That's when the seamlessness of the control really comes into focus and the line between software on the screen and hardware at your fingertips disappears. For those of us here at Sweetwater who've adopted Nuage, there's simply nothing else like it. Try it for yourself!
