Karl "Charlie" Steinberg (born 15 April 1952) is a German businessman best known for being the co-founder of

Steinberg Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH (trading as Steinberg; ) is a German musical software and hardware company based in Hamburg. It develops software for writing, recording, arranging and editing music, most notably Cubase, Nuendo, and Dorico. It ...

Media Technologies in 1983 with Manfred Rürup. Their tools helped to make digital audio editing popular, most notably through the

Cubase Cubase is a digital audio workstation (DAW) developed by Steinberg for music and MIDI recording, arranging and editing. The first version, which was originally only a MIDI sequencer and ran on the Atari ST computer, was released in 1989. Cut-do ...

program. He and Rürup also co-founded the now-discontinued online service digitalmusician.net. Steinberg is also a founding member of the Fun and Mercy charity. He lives in Hamburg with his wife and two children.

Musician

In 1978, Charlie Steinberg (bass), Freddy Homann (guitar and vocals) and Hölmlölm Vieth (guitar) of the band Wotan, founded the band Törner Stier Crew together with the musicians Hans-Martin Stier (vocals), Walter Stoever (bass) and Olaf Schräder (drums). Steinberg became the keyboarder of the new band. In 1979 the band won the 1st prize of the Deutsche Phono-Akademie, the forerunner of the

Echo Music Prize Echo Music Prize (stylised as ECHO, ) was an accolade by the , an association of recording companies of Germany to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry. The first ECHO Awards ceremony was held in 1992, and was set up to honor ...

. An appearance on WDR

Rockpalast ''Rockpalast'' (''Rock Palace'') is a German music television show that broadcasts live on German television station Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR). ''Rockpalast'' started on 4 October 1974. Hundreds of rock, heavy metal and jazz bands have perf ...

and many live performances followed in 1980. The Törner Stier Crew released a total of three studio albums until 1983. An English solo album of Steinberg recorded in the mid-eighties remains unpublished. Since 2007 Karl Steinberg has played as a keyboarder with the rock quintet Stier, together with two other members of the Törner Stier Crew. After various live appearances his first EP album produced by Siggi Bemm was released in 2009.

Audio engineer

As an audio engineer and co-producer, Karl Steinberg mixed the albums of various bands of the Neuen Deutschen Welle. At the Wilster studio in 1984, Steinberg recorded Inga Rumpf's ''Liebe. Leiden. Leben.''. During this time, he also worked on projects with Mau Mau, Manfred Rürup,

Modern Modern may refer to: History *Modern history ** Early Modern period ** Late Modern period *** 18th century *** 19th century *** 20th century ** Contemporary history * Moderns, a faction of Freemasonry that existed in the 18th century Philosophy ...

and

Udo Dahmen Udo Dahmen (born 12 July 1951 in Aachen, West Germany) is a drummer, author and CEO of the Popakademie Baden-Württemberg. Life Udo Dahmen studied classical percussion in Aachen and Cologne from 1971 to 1976. In Paris he was trained by Dante ...

. In 1982 Steinberg worked with Frl. Menke in 1982 in the Studio Maschen and in the Loft Studios Brunwey together with Achim Reichel and

Boyzone Boyzone were an Irish boy band created in 1993 by the talent manager Louis Walsh. Before even recording any material, Boyzone made an appearance on RTÉ's ''The Late Late Show (Ireland), The Late Late Show''. Its most successful line-up was co ...

Software developer

Steinberg Research GmbH's first product, a Multitrack Recorder for the Commodore C64, was one of the first

MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface (; MIDI) is an American-Japanese technical standard that describes a communication protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, ...

- Sequencers available on the market in 1983. The MIDI protocol was presented to the public in the same year. The MIDI interfaces distributed with the Multitrack Recorder were self-soldered at the beginning. After the Pro 16 for the C-64 and the Pro 24 for the

Atari ST Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the company's Atari 8-bit computers, 8-bit computers. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985, and was widely available i ...

, the

music software This is a list of software for creating, performing, learning, analyzing, researching, broadcasting and editing music. This article only includes software, not services. For streaming services such as iHeartRadio, Pandora, Prime Music, and Spoti ...

appeared in 1989. In 1996, Steinberg released the

Virtual Studio Technology Virtual Studio Technology (VST) is an audio plug-in software interface that integrates software synthesizers and effects units into digital audio workstations. VST and similar technologies use digital signal processing to simulate traditional rec ...

(VST). Today, VST is the most widely used plug-in standard in the audio sector.

Media Technologies GmbH has been owned by

Yamaha Corporation is a Japanese multinational musical instrument and audio equipment manufacturer. It is one of the constituents of Nikkei 225 and is the world's largest musical instrument manufacturing company. The former motorcycle division was establishe ...

since 2004. With the ''digital musician recorder'' from digitalmusician.net Karl Steinberg and Manfred Rürup developed a free audio recorder that allows you to record polyphonic music in real time via an internet connection. The service was closed down on 30 June 2018.

Awards

* MIPA Lifetime Achievement Award 2009 * Nominated for

Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award The Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award is a special Grammy Award The Grammy Awards, stylized as GRAMMY, and often referred to as The Grammys, are awards presented by The Recording Academy of the United States to recognize outstanding achiev ...

2008"Vom Freak zum Millionär: Charlie Steinberg – der Mann, der Cubase erfand"
Westfälische Nachrichten, Günter Benning, 25. September 2010

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Steinberg, Karl Living people 1952 births People from Coesfeld German keyboardists German company founders 20th-century German businesspeople 21st-century German businesspeople