Cubase is a digital audio workstation (DAW) developed by Steinberg for music and MIDI recording, arranging and editing.

Cubase can be used to edit and sequence audio signals coming from an external sound source and MIDI, and can host VST instruments and effects.

Cubase 6 included VSTs such as HALion Sonic SE, Groove Agent ONE, LoopMash 2 and VST Amp Rack.

The number of audio tracks allowed in Cubase Pro is unlimited, Artist: 64, Elements: 48, AI: 32, LE: 16.

It added Virtual Studio Technology (VST) support, a standard for audio plug-ins, which led to a plethora of third-party effects, both freeware and commercial.

Cubase VST was only for Macintosh and Windows; Atari support had been effectively dropped by this time, despite such hardware still being a mainstay in many studios.

Cubase VST was offering a tremendous amount of power to the home user, but computer hardware took some time to catch up.

By the time it did, VST's audio editing ability was found to be lacking, when compared with competitors such as Pro Tools DAE and Digital Performer MAS.

Cubase SX also featured real-time time-stretching and adjustment of audio tempo, much like Sonic Foundry's ground-breaking ACID.

In January 2003, Steinberg was acquired by Pinnacle Systems, within which it operated as an independent company before being sold to Yamaha Corporation in December, 2004.

[5] In 2016, Cubasis 2 was released as a free update with new features such as real-time time-stretching, pitch-shifting for changing the key, a "channel strip" effects suite, and new plug-ins and sounds.

SX 1.0 allows importing of Cubase VST projects and saving them in the new *.cpr format, however the conversion isn't perfectly accurate.

Many plug-ins, particularly those which run on DSP Cards such as UAD-1 or Powercore, cannot process their audio within a 1-sample time period and thus introduce extra latency into the system.