Steinberg Releases Cubasis 3 DAW For Android, Music App Breakthrough?

Steinberg Cubasis 3 mobile DAW is now available for Android, does this make finally the music app breakthrough of the platform?

Steinberg caused a surprise today. Cubasis 3, their well-known mobile DAW for iOS, is now also available for Android. Yes, exactly the platform that is less exciting for music apps. According to the developers, the app is compatible with the majority of smartphone and tablet users.

Cubasis 3 offers great new features and enhancements for quick and easy results in recording and producing music. Group Tracks combine multiple tracks so that they can be processed and mixed as though they were a single track. The Cubasis mixer takes advantage of the display’s real estate, including useful zoom modes and an accurate level metering for every track. Users can add up to eight inserts and eight send effects included in Cubasis.

Alexander Gross, Cubasis lead developer, commented:

“Developing a creativity tool that is used by people all around the world for bringing their musical ideas into reality is a big pleasure as well as a responsibility. As lead developer of Cubasis, I’m proud that the team’s exceptional effort for creating a cross-platform codebase finally sees the light of day with the release on Android.”

“This is a huge milestone in the evolution of Cubasis. We’ve been developing new features for Cubasis on the iOS platform at an extremely fast pace, and it just felt right to bring the powerful tools in Cubasis to the Android community of musicians as well,” said Marketing Manager Lars Slowak.

Features Of Cubasis 3

• MIDI resolution dramatically improved with 960 pulses per quarter note.
• 75 new effects presets.
• Undo reinvented with History List.
• Redesigned instruments and effects.
• Updated audio, MIDI, and automation editors.
• Improved MediaBay for creating folders, moving files, and sharing music.
• Presets for scaling the user interface let Cubasis fit perfectly on any device.
• Plus many other great additions, new in Cubasis 3.

Will That Change The Music App Market On Android?

First of all, you have to congratulate Steinberg that they take the courage and the risk to publish Cubasis 3 as an Android app. As you know, the mobile Google platform is less attractive for music apps. This is mainly because it is behind iOS: no app communication (AudioBus, IAA …), no plug-in format (AUv3), often problems with audio drivers, or many apps do not have the same quality as on iOS.

Especially in the audio driver area, there have been problems with music apps in the recent past because many Android smartphones/tablets use their own audio drivers, which can be very good but also very bad. There is no common audio architecture/standard as with iOS (CoreAudio & CoreMIDI) that works the same on all devices.

Will The Cubasis 3 release change the music app market on Android? I don’t think so, because the operating system is still not perfectly designed for it and plugin standards are simply missing. Steinberg should already have published a kind of mobile VST standard for Android with which developers can work, but also with which musicians can use other instruments in Cubasis 3. As long as that is, the app is unfortunately very limited. Sorry, Steinberg, Cubasis 3 is an amazing DAW, great work but not the platform.