Music Tech Pioneers VIII : Manfred Rürup : Steinberg : The Early Years ! Hosted by Vin Curigliano of AAVIM Technology, I am joined by guest co-host Pete Brown of Microsoft and special guest Manfred Rürup, who is the Co-Founder and Ex CEO of Steinberg. We cover Manfred's early history with music and technology , and how that lead to a Professional Recording and Performing Career throughout the 70's and early 80's, before crossing paths with Charlie Steinberg in the early 80's, and founding Steinberg Research. We discuss Manfred's professional music career across multiple bands and performing artists, sharing some adventures that were encountered navigating those heady days of recording and touring during that era, cover some of the albums and music styles explored , gear used, etc, from early Prog Rock, Fusion, Experimental, to German New Wave. We cover the early pioneering days of being one of the first to explore computer based sequencing on less than ideal computer hardware, the evolution of the sequencing packages that paved the way to the innovations that the team visualised and brought to the ground breaking and game changing release of Cubase in 1989, that became the blueprint for the way DAW workflow environments were approached and implemented across most if not all DAW's that followed. We discuss the landmark releases of Cubase, the initial adventures of introducing digital audio to the Cubase sequencing environment, the preliminary excursions using initially 3rd party audio hardware, then moving to the first native version on Atari Falcon, and the eventual evolution of VST ( Virtual Studio Technology ), which launched the native DAW era on Mac and Windows, and created a whole new industry around Plugins and Virtual Instruments. We cover the development of ASIO , that although is well known to be the industry standard and essentially default low latency driver protocol for Windows, we discuss how it was orginally also available on earlier Mac OS versions pre OSX, and share some opinions and Pro's and Cons on that not being embraced on the later platform. We discuss the development of Nuendo and the reasoning behind the move in that direction, the eventual merging of the codebase with Cubase, and Manfreds exodus shortly after the initial Steinberg sale to Pinnacle. We also cover Manfred's creative and business endeavors after leaving Steinberg, muse over the current state of Music Technology, sharing some great insights and behind the scenes stories, and much, much more. Host & Guest Links : AAVIM Technology : www.aavimt.com.au DAWbench : www.dawbench.com Microsoft : www.microsoft.com Pete Brown : https://twitter.com/Pete_Brown Manfred Rürup : https://www.linkedin.com/in/manfred-ruerup-808250/ VO : Andrew Peters : www.andrewpetersvo.com Music Themes : Original DAWbench VI Theme Music composed by Rob John : Independent Music Productions : http://www.indmusicprods.com DAWbench Radio Show ReMix by Erin McKimm : www.erinmckimm.com All Rights Reserved : © AAVIMT 2026
