I’ve been auditioning tunes at the (various incarnations of) the Cubase Forum for 15 years now, and I must say the quality of tunes, in all respects – composition, performance, and recording – have reached a zenith, IMO. In previous times, you had to wade through a lot of crap, frankly, to get to the one or two good pieces people had created. Not so any more; now almost every tune is worthy. I’m not sure what to attribute this phenomenon to. Maybe the wannabe’s were never that serious about their music or recordings (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and moved on to other things, while the committed guys kept at it 
Word!
When reading /browsing this site,
I always open a 2nd window in the browser
so I can hear all the latest postings while
I am reading the various sub forums.
Nice stuff guys.
How 'bout a forum contest??? 
Winner receives a copy of every current (software) product made by Steinberg.
Yeah! Right! Sure!
{‘-’}
Oh! Back in the day we DID have a forum contest, that was several years in the running, called “The Mike E. Awards.” As you might expect, a dude named Mike E. (as in Elliott)* informally started it. Sadly, Mike, was an experienced Nashville guitarist and engineer, and who had moved to Minneapolis to teach at MusicTech (very reputable school) was struck down by cancer. But someone picked up the ball the following year (Tones, IIRC) and continued the awards in Mike’s honor. It was meant to be all in good fun, but as such things go, it kind of degenerated into a fair amount of gainsaying, jealousy, and acrimony… which would have made Mike E. the consummate gentleman PUKE. Anyway, much like the Grammy’s et.al. we had a number of categories, like, “Best Song,” “Best Recording/Engineering,” “Best Lyrics” etc. OnkelGrusom who still frequents these parts used to clean up 
*after Mike passed away, I would call his widow every once in awhile… but eventually I stopped doing that, don’t know why. Just one of those things.
I would say we don’t need a competition over here… the contests were before my time, but I can imagine they got acrimonious. But I agree we’ve been getting a lot of quality here, and we’ve also been getting a lot of quality help here, don’t know if that is part of why. The atmosphere is pretty good.
Wondering what happened to a couple of contributors who disappeared recently and whose stuff I always looked forward to. I guess they come and they go, don’t they. Bluebob, Freddie Holmes, Dave S… of course Jet gave us a warning. But great to get regular new material from some of the real credible musicians here.
I have to agree. The general standard is much higher these days. Even the novice’s are entering into the world of music production at a much higher level than I recall when I first walked into these Steinberg forums (and elsewhere)… 11 years ago 
. I think it may in part have something to do with the increased and widespread dissemination of information over the WEB… ?
I think it’s due to the buggy software that Steinberg is releasing only to get our money. 
Nice topic .
Only been around since the start of this forum so I haven’t got all that much to compare to, but I agree that there’s a lot of quality songs being created here.
If Steinberg would host a lil competition with some giveaways that’d be awesome. How about a Nuage system?
Nice post Mr twilightsong, I reckon this forum has helped me get to a much better level of writing/production (though still a long way to go) and there seems to me (as early21 say’s) to be a good “atmosphere” if you can say that about an online forum, seems to populated by a lot of good people who know stuff and behave in a very adult pragmatic fashion…long may it be like that…Kevin
Agreed, the level of songs posted here has risen amazingly. I would not like to see awards return as that would just fuel a clique mentality that this section has moved away from. Things are good as they are.
I used to appreciate Mike E’s contributions as a guitarist myself. However he did take an exceedingly dim view of hip hop for a guy who continued to create rather than rest on the past.
Some of the absolute best stuff I’ve heard at both this and the other two previous forums was from guys that showed up, posted a tune, and were never heard from again. I can still hear a couple of them in my mind… “Tag und Nacht”… another one called “When I Go Dancing”.
Then there were guys who frequented the old forum who I still have some contact with but who I guess have grown up and moved on from this place Some of them made really good music. “Lorraine” anyone?
My all-time favorite poster – with respect to Sherz, Onkel, and Pearldivers, was Mobius (Darren Prescott)… the guy was not prolific, but man, three of his songs are not only among my favorites made by forum members, but among my favorites period
I’ll agree. My two favorites from him were Lay Your Heart Down and Blue Haitian Skies. Those are staples on my iPod.
Don’t forget: he won the Steinberg contest one year for song production skills and got a free trip to the offices in Germany.