Hi there.

I think about wheter to buy Cubase 9 or switch to another DAW.
Thing is, I am kind of a perfectionist and always want every possibility available.
So, altough I may not use some feature atm, I want to be able to do so in the future.
I am open minded about switching DAW, but think I might be missing out on workflow/tools by not staying with Cubase.
So what are some of the features that only cubase offers and you cant get with any other DAW and vice versa?
And what features can be replaced with 3d party Software? Like you might use Melodyne to get "Vari Audio", some Scoring Software for the Score Sheet, Chtulu Vst to replace "Chord Pads" and so on....

 

• Cube has options. a LOOOOOOOOTA options. FOr controlling many small aspects. u'd b hard pressed 2 find another DAW that offers the same amount of fine-grained control
• C can do surround up to 6ch (5.1, 6.0hex, etc), if you're into that or can expand in the future to surround. (Nuendo has up to 14ch surround)
• C has a very good MIDI editor
• You may find you're missing a few minor/specialist builtin plugs if u switch

1. Start hunting 3d pty equivalent VSTs now, incase u switch
2. Consider older versions, or alternate editions of C

 

depends what do you expect of a DAW, if it's virtual music production, recording, mixing etc..
here's what I settled for after a decade or so:
Cockos Reaper DAW 5
- of all available DAWs, Reaper offers best multiplatform usability, which let me slowly transition from Windows to Mac being able to move projects around without practically any issues
- unlike most DAWs, it doesn't include almost any instruments and "bloatware" plugins and features, code optimization and performance handling is impressive, entire installer has roughly 10MBs
- fully-working trial and TONS of tutorials plus huge community means it's pretty much easiest to learn
- very reliable for recording
Fabfilter Total Bundle
- yes it is only 14 plugins and fairly expensive at first sight, but one can do practically everything with those, can easily match 400's of Waves plugins
- very transparent uncoloured processing, graphical representation, convenient sidechain and modulation options, hats off!
Celemony Melodyne Studio 4
- since musicians tend not to perform flawlessly, it's really handy to have a serious "correction" tool, and Melodyne remains unmatched (although I'm fine using Reaper built-in stretch markers for rythm/timing adjustments)
- various modes and reliable trouble-free results

 

I'm actually working with Cubase 5/ unstable version of 6.5 Artist ..... what about (new for me) Chord Pads, Vari Audio, Sample Track, Expression Control, TrackVersions, Track Edit groups
Worth to stay with Cubase?
Also, the Sheet Editor....my theoretical Knowledge is not good enough yet, but I want to get into scoring, worth it?
Or is it outdated to write Scores with Score Sheet when you have a Midi Editor/Pianoroll anyways?

 

latest Cubase Pro 9 is very good feature-wise, but imo lacks performance swiftness/snappiness, and considering Reaper costs 60 bucks then why would anyone spend 450 euros on Cubase Pro 9...

 

Cubase is a lifetime challenge, it takes years to be perfect and fast.
Carefully READ and watch this, and u get a clue of what i mean:
https://ask.audio/academy?nleloc=/play/2368/absolute-beginner-s-guide/6
https://ask.audio/articles/understanding-audio-channel-signal-flow-in-cubase-8
https://ask.audio/articles/creating-macros-in-cubase

If you dont understand what u do, you get lost forever inside Cubase.
Its not for the guys who never read the fuckin manual.

 

Take a good look at S1 - It is really close to cubase now. I use more and more s1 for songwriting, tracking, editing and mixing. For years i used reaper for tracking Pro tools/cubase for editing and mixing. You can definatly tell that some cubase developers that now work for presonus started "cubasereloaded - now we know how to program a DAW" with s1
Here is a nice series of 9 videos i think. The guy compares in deep s1 and cubase for his common real world workflow....
It is really interesting. It is in german. But english subtitles ...

I forgot something. My personal favourite feature of S1 which no other daw i use and have used has (or iam not aware of)
is : Extended FX Chains And Multi Instruments

 

Last edited by a moderator: Aug 16, 2017

I'm going to be the boring one again and just remind you that at the end of the day, they are only tools.

One can go about life by living many different ways. Viewing life thru different lenses or point of perspective. Your best friend view the world one way and your parents view it in a different view. You your self look at it in another way aswell. Each of us have a unique perspective that we view life happening, or happening to us.
A few simple ways of viewing the world that goes like this : The grass is always greener on the other side. The cup is half empty, If it ain't broke don't fix it. "It was always better in the good old days" etc. etc. etc


For the record, i'm still using my old cubase5 still but i use Live as well. Each has its strength and weakness. I play/use them when they fit the best and i can use them by strength.

 

reliefsan, I know, and Im trying to get away from perfectionist views and just use the DAWs as tools, but I still kinda want all the best tools and all the best possibilites.
So I guess my Question kinda is:
"Can I use another DAW like Studio One or similar, that may lack some features of Cubase, but replace those features with 3d party Vsts (like Melodyne for "Variaudio") and get an at least an equal, at best, even better (cause of more modern, flexible Approach of eg. Studio One) DAW with almost the same extent as Cubase ?

 

Last edited: Aug 16, 2017

Cubase is my primary DAW. I also use Ableton and Reason for Colabs.... I have used Cubase since C5 came out. The Weakest points of Cubase would be the internal Synths and VST Connect. In my personal opinion I would upgrade and not switch DAWS. It will take more time for you to learn the ins and outs of a new DAW instead of learning the just new features of Cubase 9. One of the most over looked features in cubase are the Midi effects. These have not really changed since Cubase 5, But Ableton exploits thier Midi Effects.... Which is why its so popular...

I use several 3rd party plugins, but I find that Cubase built-in plugin are very good. There latest addition is "Frequency" which is a clone of Fab-Filter Pro-Q2 and a multi-band transient designer.

You can not get better midi editing than Cubase. Its very obvious to anyone that has tried it, even once....
Halion SE is nice, It's basically a Yahama Motif Rompler. But, if your like myself you probably own Kontakt and got your hands on some Yamaha, Korg and Roland keyboard banks...

Groove Agent SE is very underrated. It is a very powerful drum machine. It is very similar drum machine like NI Battery. But in C9 you can import midi into the pattern editor.. So It resembles NI Maschine, without the ability to use 3rd party VST plugins within Groove agent. 128 pads per kit. with up to 4 Kits performing in one VST instance. Also. There is drag and drop capability on the Pads.

But most importantly is the Cubase workflow. Ableton and Reason both have messy GUI's. It's easy to get lost using layered Racks in Ableton. It's easy to get lost with the Reason Racks and cabling. Cubase is Very clean. Inspector is always on the left. There are separate windows for the arranger, mixer, Piano Roll and Media Bay.

But in the end.... Work with whatever generates the best results for you.

 

This is my take on the issue from testing and reading.


Pro Tools
- If you plan to work or collaborate in/with professional studios as an engineer/mixer now or in the future.

Cubase
- If you want the most advanced MIDI features and future proof projects.
- If you don't mind dongles.

Studio one
- If you can't afford cubase, and dont want dongles.
- Ok Audio and MIDI
- No ability to draw preFX volume envelope is a real bummer in my opinion.

Reaper
- If you are a hacker type of personality and like to fix your own workflow.
- WARNING! If you are a procrastinator, then you can get lost in customising and theming hell.
- Some features that are standard in other DAWs have to be added with third party scripts, and might be buggy or become unsupported if the third party programmer stops developing that feature, so might not be future proof.
- Helpful online community
- Good if you have to do something in a non standard way, because of easy and powerful macros and actions. This also makes reaper very useful as a complement even if you use another DAW.
- Good if you use Nebula
- Quick external editor workflow if you use izotope RX
- If you like item based workflow. (very,very useful)
- If you like the ripple mode in reaper (very, very useful)
- Clunky/ugly MIDI compared to the others, but workable for most. As with everything else in reaper you can improve with custom actions and scripts, but you will waste valuable time doing so.

Logic
- If you are sure you will never switch to PC. Lots of bugs so you will have to update both Logic and OSX continually witch will force you to buy new apple hardware in the long run.
-Poor audio editing.
-Good for quick songwriting with built in drummer, instruments and the text pane to the right for lyrics.

Samplitude/Sequoia
- If you edit a lot of classical recordings
- If you are a mastering engineer
- If you are on PC only
- Item based workflow
- Crossfade editor!

Cheers

 

Largely, I love Cubase for its workflow. Just suits me (I'm on Pro 8). There are a ton of features that are great though. Personally, I enjoy the chord pads, vca faders, contrain delay compensation, control room, and integrated loudness features.

 

Honestly it doesn't matter.

If like how things work in the Cubendo universe you should stay there. If you want a change nose around, but expect to spend a lot of time re-learning how to do some things. No DAW lends itself to a particular genra, and for workflow to be an issue you must use the different features available, such as clip-edits, chord track, score editors(scores are still more efficient than piano rolls) etc....

If it was me making the decision, I would solely base it on how much time I had at the moment.... do I want to spend 6-8 months relearning DAW functionality or 2-3 months learning updated features on a platform I am already somewhat comfortable with, or do I hate the platform I am on so much that 6-8 months is worthwhile investment.

To me it doesn't sound like you are upset with Cubase, it seems you enjoy it and that you revere it as standard bearer. In your mind Cubase is the at the pinnacle of features and functionality and want others to convince you that if you switch you'll loose nothing. Sounds to me like you should stay with Cubase.

Otherwise, when you make the switch, you'll still be longing for Cubase and comparing DawX to Cubase regardless of whether those comparisons are fair or not. At night while DawX is sleeping next to you in bed, you'll reach over and call her Cubase and then yell at her when she cries because you called her an other DAW's name. Blaming her for not being Cubase - then the beatings - the police - the judge... If you still love Cubase why would you replace her.

That is about the only thing that really matters, everything else you can work around,

 

Short answer, yes, but as @mozee talks about, realize you have to commit alot of your effort and time into re-learnig your next DAW. Maybe its the right move for you now, maybe its not. Only you know.

Learning a new DAW can also be very liberating and gives you the feeling of enourmus freedom and new and exciting ideas.
on the flip coin is can be so utterly fustrating and the feelings jsut crushes your will and your idea for a new song just dies right there in that moment. - its all about attitude i guess lol

one way to go about it, is with a clear plan laid out before hand. Say, you want to experiement mixing only with your new DAW, you export stems/track from a older song of yours and import it into the new one and go to work, focused on using the new daw only for mixing.

Or another way could be the opposit, you create a new tune in your new DAW using its ways of doing things, and then bounce it out and mixit in cubase as you normaly would.

im rambling abit.

point beeing.
Your next studio session, Pretext is as "a experiment"
set a purpose (i want to try X feature out, or "mixing" or "create a cool sound efx" cool arp, or whatever)
set a timer, say 1 hour. 2hours. doesnt matter. just a limit
get cracking
when the time is up, you will end up with "sucess/winning" since, if it sounds good. Great!. but IF IT SOUNDS TOTAL SHIT, you can remind your self, HEY It was a experiment gtfo /beertime!

after your WIN, you can think about your session, what you liked, and disliked, what you thought worked well, or what was fustrating to do/solve. Workflow issues or workflow ideas, you never know where your next idea comes from. New ways to do things, or just tryout new ways.

 

You forgot one under Reaper the x86 and 64 vst bridge. Which works pretty well.
Really nice of you to take the time to make this list for people.

 

Thats nice to have, but it aint a "uniqe" feature of the DAW as you could get this functionality in any other DAW by using Jbridge.
(or is the one in reaper any better?)

 

if you want to unique features, you must see Magix Sequoia 14 is best.
Object editor is better than all also realtime not render.
Also, Best Crossfade editor,
and
Clipstore can store sounds with all insert effects (object editor all data) export/import.

but you are MIDI base walking, I did not see the midi editor faster than logic pro.
Because Logic is developing very fast, not just drummer,
64 bit summign engine
selected-Based Processing
MIDI FX modulator Learn parameter
more..

 

maybe ReWire to use more than 1 DAW

 

Cubase also knows it > .MIDI Loops

 

Ableton and Fl studio both have very fast pianorolls

Ableton also has a scalable vector interface, inbuilt tutorial and a useful help window if you cant read manuals

Fl studio is also a bit weird, which makes it unique