-Media Production System—From Steinberg

by JD Mars

  Just before the "real millenium" was upon us (i.e., the end of 2000), Steinberg released its long awaited Nuendo audio production program for the Windows operating system. Since then, Nuendo for Mac has been released, as well as updates for both versions. Nuendo is a completely new program, built from the ground up, while drawing from years of Steinberg's audio and MIDI programming experience. It arrives on the heels of a complete rebuild of their well-known Cubase VST.

While the number of programs that are surround sound capable grows, Nuendo was one of the first out of the gate with a fully functional multichannel audio system. Nuendo has been reviewed in the past (check out the Nuendo review on this site), so our focus here will be on the surround sound production aspects of the program. There will be a part two to this review, taking us through an upgrade to Win 2000 (should be fun), adding another 256 M o' RAM to see what bubbles up (or hopefully, bubble down), and making this more of a sojourn through the actual use of the program, rather than just an examination.

Where Cubase VST began with MIDI and integrated audio, Nuendo's integration of MIDI is a bit more subdued. The interface, the transport, are both geared for audio without the trappings of MIDI. The mixer shows audio tracks, not audio and MIDI tracks. When the focus is on one job, one job is the focus (I just made that up). To complete production within the computer, MIDI tracks must become audio tracks, and fully self-contained production is the thing.
Empty template

"Empty" template in Nuendo
(click for larger view).
Templates

List of possible templates (click for larger view).
Nuendo version 1.5 is now available for both Mac and Win 98/NT/ME/2000 on the PC, with a suggested retail of $1,295. Steinberg has come out with a Nuendo Surround Edition, which includes several surround effects plug-ins and other features—check their website, www.nuendo.com for more details. Steinberg offers some audio I/O options, as well as an optional hardware synchronizer.

The Details
 I installed the PC version of Nuendo 1.5 on a PIII 700, with 256M RAM and a 100MHz buss. Nuendo, like Cubase, requires a dongle on the parallel port. I'm using an M-Audio Delta 1010 to output 6 channels of audio, which includes ASIO2 drivers.

A Journey of 1000 Tracks..
 From the File menu, I chose "New Project." I was given the option to choose a number of templates, and chose "Empty" to start this project, though Nuendo offers a number of templates for convenience (see pop-up on right). Then, from the Project menu, I added 24 blank audio tracks, thinking that filling them would be a reasonable benchmark, at least for phase one. Creating the blank tracks increased my CPU usage from 2-3% to 5-6%.

Setting up tracks, enabling them and recording the tracks went very smoothly. I tended to want to work out of the mixer view, even naming my tracks from there. I set the buss output assignment for each channel to surround, bringing up a nifty little representation of the surround panner.

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