Steinberg Cubase Artist 6.5 review

PadShop is the inappropriately humdrum name for the other new virtual instrument. It uses granular synthesis, whereby samples are chopped into tiny snippets and scrambled into various shades of oblivion. Steinberg has done a fine job of balancing power against accessibility, and there’s a decent selection of samples included. Sadly, though, users’ own samples can’t be imported.

Granular synthesis is akin to looking at sound through a microscope – it’s sound design at its most navel-gazing. We happily whiled away the hours exploring PadShop’s controls, but failed to come up with anything that sounded like the genesis for a song. The soundtrack to a bleak art-house animation, perhaps, but not a song. The 406 preset sounds provide a vague semblance of normality, though, and Cubase is certainly more interesting for Padshop’s inclusion.

Padshop? They should have called it MangleShred

The two new effects are worth a brief mention. Morph Filter comprises a pair of filters running in parallel, with the ability to crossfade between them. DJ EQ is a simple three-band EQ with DJ-style kill switches. What they lack in precision, the effects gain in hands-on accessibility. VST Amp Rack was a highlight of version 6, and it now comes with a couple of limiter effects and extra presets.