To get started, select VST Transit from the VST Cloud menu (which also contains the VST Connect sub–menu that’s been relocated from the Project menu). In order to use VST Transit you’ll need to have a full 8.5 licence associated with your MySteinberg account - VST Transit is not available if you’re running a trial version, which is a shame. This doesn’t sound like much to me, especially on the traffic side, so it’s no surprise that Steinberg intend to offer premium accounts with increased storage and traffic, although these had yet to be announced at the time of writing. To whet your appetite for this new way of working, VST Transit comes with 500GB of free storage and 1GB free traffic (the amount of data you send to and from Steinberg’s servers) per month. The big new feature in Cubase 8.5 is VST Transit, which allows you to upload and download project data to and from the cloud, and is intended to make collaboration easier than ever before. Most apply to both Cubase Pro and Cubase Artist, and in this review, references to ‘Cubase’ will include both unless otherwise stated.

That’s not to say there aren’t any big new features - far from it - but this release is more about refinement, offering a large number of workflow improvements. December 2015 was the occasion for one of the latter, so it’s to be expected that it offers fewer big new features than those introduced in a full integer version. It doesn’t feel that long since Cubase 8 was launched, but Steinberg seem to be committed to an annual upgrade schedule where major integer releases are alternated with ‘point five’ updates. The latest Cubase update connects Steinberg’s DAW to the cloud, but also brings plenty of improvements for earthbound users.

Cubase pro 8 color schemes