Cubase

Cubase is a MIDI and music sequencer and digital audio editing computer application created by the German firm Steinberg in 1989 with the Atari ST as the main computer platform.

First, Cubase was a MIDI recording and editing tool only. Later, features for recoding raw audio was introduced. Cubase has since been ported to Macintosh and Microsoft Windows-based computing platforms.

Architecture

Steinberg's Cubase was from the start written for it's own operating system called MROS for MIDI Real-time Operating System and ran on top of the Ataris TOS operating system. This still lies at the heart of the Cubase application.

For a long time, MROS did not play well with Microsoft Windows, which was not intended to run real-time applications. Later, and with increasing processing speed on common computers, the problems have been solved.

VST Instruments

With the introduction of Cubase VST 2.0 in 1999 a virtual instrument interface for software synthesizers was introduced into Cubase. It made it possible for third-party software programmers to create and sell virtual instruments for Cubase.

This interface has more or less become a standard for other digital audio editing tools on the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows platforms.