Cubase Sx Experiences, any reviews anywhere at all? Options

Cubase SX for OSX has been out for over two weeks now, so I believe. And yet I can't find any reviews of it, and no one seems to be mentioning it...

The silence is deafening. So, has anyone got it? Has anyone seen a review of the OSX version?

I was excited about the release, but there is no demo, and I can't find anyone who has anything to say about the product based on actual experience... I'm not sure that I want to buy something based on such a lack of information.

Any links at all to a review would be welcomed - no, I don't mean the official blurb, I mean a really thorough review of it.

cheers all

[D-plex]

I just received my upgrade to Cubase SX yesterday. Here are my very first (i.e. not particularly in-depth) impressions...

First, my machine config:
400MHz G4
576MB RAM
OSX v. 10.2.1

I purchased my upgrade directly from Steinberg. Installation went without a hitch; previous proof of ownership (such as inserting my Cubase 5 CD or entering my old serial number)was not required. A USB dongle is included, and required to launch the application after installation. I have it plugged into a USB hub, and it works fine there.

The Cubase SX interface has, superficially, a much different look than 5. Steinberg seems to have backed away from the metal-ish interface design of 5 in favor of a less literal, bolder appearance. It has some of the “powdery” look of Win XP, in my opinion. In general though, things are laid out much the same as they were in 5.

Without trying to optimize my system at all (turn off haxies, menubar add-ons, etc.) I imported a Cubase 5 song file that I had been working on recently. All of the instrumentation had been created in Reason to be played in Cubase via Rewire. There were also 12 vocal tracks I had recorded into Cubase, different takes so that I could pick and choose the best bits to assemble into a single vocal performance.

After I helped SX find the audio files, I hit play. There was no sound, but I noticed that SX has left all twelve audio tracks on, so I turned all but one of them off. SX played the track just fine, including the effects I had set when I was working on the track in 5. After some experimenting I found I could play six audio tracks at the same time before maxing out the CPU. A bit disappointing, actually, but I really haven’t tweaked the settings much, so better performance may be possible. It could just be that my G4 400 is showing its age.

Having proven that it could play the audio I had previously recorded, my next step was to try playing Reason through Rewire. The Rewire panel (accessible via the “Devices” menu) looks exactly as it did in 5. I turned on the first two channels to get a left/right mix of everything Reason was playing.

It worked. Reason played back through the mixer, the vocal track played on top of it. But...

Everytime I hit stop the sound sort of “crumbles” or distorts as it fades out. This may not be a problem when actually recording, because of course you wouldn’t stop the song while doing so, but it does make me uneasy. Perhaps it’s a sign that buffers need adjusting.

An even bigger problem is Reason playback. Although it sounds fine initially, playing reason via Rewire seems to cause the CPU to spike at seemingly random times, creating audible glitches. The song will be cooking along nicely, using 25% to 60% of the CPU, then WHAMMO! the CPU meter jams at maximum for a brief moment, creating a click or pop in the sound. This has been a much discussed bug on the Mac cubase.net forums, and I have not yet seen anyone discover a solution.

Because I use Reason extensively, this is disappointing news for me. I was hoping to be productive with Cubase SX immediately, but I get the feeling I may have to wait for an update before I can use Reason and Cubase together in OSX. Complicating things is not knowing if it is Cubase or OSX responsible for the problems. I will continue to explore Cubase SX and if I learn anything of value I will share it here.