Steinberg Sequel 2 review

Sequel is a friendly, straightforward music-production tool that meets the demands of serious users.

In our review of version 1 we said that mixing options were fairly restricted, but the available tools were enough to produce high-quality recordings.

Version 2 brings an uninspiring set of improvements. The relative highlight is the ability to assign mixer settings to hardware MIDI controllers using a simple MIDI Learn function. We also like how the Media Bay, which sorts samples and synthesiser presets by metadata, displays the numbers of matches for each metadata value. Track icons make the interface look more appealing, but the Media Bay presets don't have icons already assigned to them. It's now possible to turn the QWERTY keyboard into a basic virtual MIDI keyboard and to render individual channels to disk to free up processing power.

The only new features that add to the software's creative scope are a Free Warp mode for time-stretching sections of audio and an Audio Reverse option. However, Free Warp causes excessive time-stretch artefacts, even for small adjustments, and Audio Reverse suffers from a bug when reversing truncated sections of audio. Both seem out of place in software that specialises in fuss-free recording.

Steinberg has backed itself into a corner with Sequel. The concept of a straightforward, self-contained application is strong, but it seems to have left little scope for further development. Oddly, though, tools to assist with recording and compiling multiple takes are missing, as is support for variable time and key signatures. The lack of support for VST plug-ins may fit Steinberg's vision for Sequel, but adding it would give a generous injection of power. As it stands, Sequel is a competent recording tool that's a pleasure to use, but Mackie Tracktion 3 Project Bundle is also easy to use, and more powerful and versatile.

Author: Ben Pitt