Product Reviews

When Steinberg first introduced Nuendo in 2001, it was pitched as a superior audio-production rival to the established Pro Tools. Since then, Steinberg has been sold to first Pinnacle, then Yamaha, and Nuendo's focus has shifted towards post-production work.

Nuendo 4's focus is explicitly post-production, to the extent that certain audio-related functions have been hived off to a separate £200 Nuendo Expansion Kit. Peculiar marketing tactics aside, Nuendo is still an excellent environment for all kinds of audio work, both post-production and traditional recording, editing and mixing.

The new focus means new features aimed specifically at post-production, including 20 new editing commands and tool modifiers for fast event positioning. However, there are also plenty of important improvements that will appeal to every user.

In particular, Nuendo 4 has a new, fully customisable automation system that combines the best aspects of a large mixing console with the flexibility of the digital domain. For example, individual punch-out modes can be set per channel and there are fill commands for writing automation automatically between two points.

Steinberg's MediaBay, from Cubase 4, also appears in Nuendo. MediaBay gives full control over large sample libraries and - if tags have been assigned correctly - lets you browse quickly through collections of files, be they audio, Midi, video, project files or instrument and plug-in presets.

Nuendo also introduces 38 VST 3 plug-ins, all of which are surround-capable, in keeping with Nuendo's advanced surround capabilities (from 5.1 up to 10.2). The new Channel EQ sounds particularly good, while the new

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Post Filter can clean up audio and remove unwanted noise. Side-chaining is also possible with many of the new plug-ins.

Nuendo 4's routing capabilities have been greatly extended: for example, signals can be sent from groups to FX returns and vice versa, and the summed group recorded to an audio track. Track Presets (similar to Logic's Channel Strips) enable you to store snapshots of a track's set-up (audio, Midi or VST) and retrieve it in MediaBay. Multiple tracks can be saved to a single template.

Nuendo 4 works across a Lan or Wan to aid collaborative working - an important consideration for post-production houses - and can update projects to multiple workstations across a network. Nuendo also has comprehensive support for the usual audio and video formats, and supports synchronisation via SMPTE time code, acting as master or slave to external audio and video devices. The integrated Video Engine supports multiple video thumbnail tracks and can output to external monitors.

In playback, Nuendo automatically ensures that the video follows any audio edits made, even when using the Warp to Picture function, which stretches audio in real time. There are also simple menu options to extract or replace audio in a video, while the extracted audio can be split into separate channels on import.

Steinberg is taking the challenge of ousting Pro Tools as the post-production professional's favourite tool very seriously, and has equipped Nuendo well for the fight. However, it has issues to resolve. Stability is one: we experienced numerous crashes, and launching Nuendo often took two or three attempts. On one occasion, it claimed that every third-party VST plug-in we tried had not been authorised, even though we had loaded them in the previous session.

The Steinberg Key USB dongle was also frustratingly picky: Nuendo would launch only when the Key was plugged directly into one of our test Mac's USB ports, which is no good for laptops. Such irritations shouldn't happen with software costing over £1200.

Nuendo 4 is solid and stable enough to work with, if a little hungrier for CPU than previous versions, and holds its own in the high-end audio game. Given a fast Mac and a good chunk of money, Nuendo 4 should serve you well.