I can see how much you enjoy it and how meticulous you are wanting to be to get it sounding the way you hear it. This is a great thing for anyone doing their own engineering. You are setting a benchmark for yourself. It is always good practice that if I change something in a preset or reshape it to suit the music I am trying to get sounding the way I want it, that when I like it, I always save the preset using a meaningful name. It completely removes trying to recreate something from an initialised plugin.

When you get a chance, google "setting up your own macros in Cubase" - There are some cool tutes online - Cubase should have a single macro of keyboard shortcut switches to turn all inserts off and it can, but you have to assign it to keys. It's not a simple thing but worth learning because it can automate nearly everything to keyboard shortcuts if you want to go that far. For all the crap people sometimes give Cubase, their own youtube channel is actually very good and has loads of useful tutorials too. None for version 5 though unfortunately, but there will be several useful generic things you may find.

Steinberg started to ramp up their inter-DAW compatibility and exporting after version 5. So over ten years later it is pretty good and up with the others and exceeding in places. As for plugins as I mentioned, saving your presets will save you time if you ever have to rebuild a project or "What did I use on that other project??" - Because you saved it
In Cubase 5, the best way is to turn all inserts off, export the audio unprocessed and reimport into a new session. Never change sample rates while the project is open. The results are destructive and you may end up with an unusable project.
There is one exception - when the new project has no audio in it whatsoever and you change your mind before you import anything.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Oct 19, 2021

Headroom at 32 bit float & 64 bit float is heavily influenced by coding from input to output. Pro Tools & Reaper have greater range than Studio One in this regard. Although the audio engine has seen some improvement in S1, I still find it easy to max out headroom with normal track counts & processing. This is of course on PC. Have no idea how S1 performs on a recent Mac.

 

DAWS do sound a bit different from each other. Even clean digital EQs are not identical.

 

Whatever.

 

Last edited: Oct 19, 2021

One guy once told me he was convinced Macs sound better than PCs..

He said just playing the same Wav file with the Same Audio Interface he could hear a difference..

I told him it's Impossible,
Casio calculators give the same result than Texas Instruments calculators..
(unless there's a bug, which exist..)

But still he sweared for it

He "invited" me to have a listen someday,
but then Covid came so I never saw him ever since.. but he was so convinced!


Ofc not the same exact thing as saying DAWs sound different,
there's some factors that could make a difference like:
Internal/DSP processing/bit depth which we were commenting before..
Or the classic Pan Law..

But all conditions/values being equal there shouldn't be a difference,
and this has been proven many times with renders of identical stems that completely phase-null, etc..


There's things which will Always sound different tho,
like Reverbs, modulation and distortion effects and what not.

And also some DAWs can apply envelope changes differently over time,
like exactly on time VS right at the next frame after the envelope point, etc..

But ruling those out, the result should be a Perfect, or Near perfect Null most of the time..
(IOW not a hearable/significant difference, like what.. a whisper at -80db or less?)

There's many DAWs out there, so who knows what they're doing,
but comparing the major ones ProTools, Cubase, Logic, Reaper.. the results in raw stem rendering tend to be identical

 

Last edited: Oct 19, 2021

There was a time when MIDI on a PC was completely done via the serial port 16550 UART (pre-Parallel) and Macintosh had its own built-in DSP chip on-board. Then, it was noticeable but not now.
Graphically and musically at that short period in time, he would have been right.
Nowadays it is six is one-half-dozen or the other, or, as you said, no difference.

 

@BaSsDuDe Thanks a lot for your input ! You're right, I'm gonna save the presets when a project is done from now on. I already lost datas on important projects I cared a lot for, heartbreaking...

I'll stop doing researches on Cubase tho, I'm gonna stick with S1 until sister site gifts us a full working C pro, and I don't think it'll come soon. I'm too used to C to fully enjoy something else, but the need for a 64 bits DAW is now greater. Adapt and overcome !

I'm not sure I fully understood your first paragraph, but yeah I absolutely want to get the same sound in S1 as in C because I'm on a pretty good way. I spend my time comparing my track sounds to a reference to sculpt the color of them, so I'm a bit used to it.

 

You are welcome.

Studio One is great. The developers are ex Steinberg / Cubase which explains why it is so well streamlined. They also have a good understanding of vst's which Steinberg invented. You have picked a DAW which suits you best and that is exactly how it should be for any of us.
The first paragraph basically says you want it to be right without exception and that's a great thing, never lose that.
I am glad I was of some assistance.