The immersive audio standard is upon us, Studio One better catch up.

 

REAPER can pretty much do anything Cubase can but not OOTB. For orchestral / MIDI stuff scripts like Midi Editor Magic and Reaticulate are crucial IMO, as is setting up the preferences and configuration to suit. Other scripts like Heda Track Inspector, Lil Chordbox, Key Sequences are also vital to me... I guess Cubase is better set up to just work, but given the amount of time you invest in learning and using a DAW, a focus on intuitive gratification is misguided IMO. But Reaper's MIDI defaults are definitely shit.

There's also OTR - Orchestral Template for Reaper - but I haven't used it. It's gone open source now I believe... a prerolled config of REAPER set up especially for orchestral composers.

 

To me, Studio One should improve the interface. It still can't beat the Cubase's interface.

 

Cubase is amazing for most genres (even though I primarily use Ableton make techno/tech house type of music). I use, and have used Cubase, for a number of years, but mainly for more live or orchestral type of stuff.

Steinberg normally have a 40% (ish) off sale in the spring and during the summer of each year (normally around March and August). New releases come out around November/December generally, and used to be a whole version update one year, then a .5 version the following year, and so on. This was until last year when it went from Cubase 11 to Cubase 12 (instead of the expected Cubase 11.5). Therefore, they may now be into whole version updates annually and skipping the .5 releases. Though the whole version updates do have more feature updates, the .5 updates were also fairly significant in most cases, so it's more just a naming convention change rather than changing the type of features updated, if that makes sense.

Each annual update is normally around the £85 (UK pound sterling) to update, so probably in the 100-120 range when talking about US dollars or Euros. If you let it skip, and update every 2 years, for example, the update costs from if coming from an older version typically, which is more around the £145 range (from memory), which would probably be the 170-190 US dollars or Euros range. If you update, the license on your eLicenser simply gets updated and this is normally pretty smooth.

However, with Steinberg's costs for each update, after I paid about £400-450 initially, I decided that having given them in the £1k ball park over time, I would switch to the R2R version to try, which has proven to be just as reliable and stable and has therefore resulted in me selling my license and using the R2R version.

Hopefully this gives you the info you need to make an informed choice!

 

Cubase pushes you to do a professional job, more tedious and complicated, but certainly directs you towards a methodical and slow processing. I think Cubase is not for fun but more for work. I also have Ableton live and use both, but 99% of the time I want to improvise and have fun looking for inspiration, I choose Ableton

 

Please don't mark this as off thread because I want to see i others are experiencing the same thing.

I can say this I have a 10700k Running at stock speed water cooled. Cubase with a few tracks stress my cpu where as reaper it is just smooth sailing.
Is anyone else experiencing this? Cubase 12 is better than Cubase 8 was but it still eats up more CPU cycles than reaper does at least for me.

 

Any thoughts on this?

 

@Bunford, thank you for the info
At the moment (sale), the prices in € for me are:
Competitive Crossgrade (since I own the other DAWs): 579.00 -40% 347.40 -> Competitive Crossgrade -> 215.40
The next update (I plan updating regularly, as I do with other SW, when on sale): 99.99 -40% -> 59.99

So the reality is at best ~€500/5-6 years

So, it's another sale to be expected around august? Can you then wait and activate Cubase 13 in Dec?

Absolutely NOT off-topic. As the OP, I certainly want to know all about performance/stability/bug status.

 

^
Since you have the option to "try before you buy from the sister site", work with this version & make some complete projects first
Then when the next major official update happens for Cubase,see if any new features will enhance your productions & workflow
If so buy it on the next available sale,cheers !

 

Ignoring that by virtue of using Studio One on Mac you will need a second computer to duplicate this workflow on PC (while the renderer is included in Cubendo for both platforms), relying on headphones alone for this is a workable alternative to the having a physical speaker array.
This limitation is sufficient for the largely singer/songwriter userbase of Studio One, but becomes unreliable to deliver atmos mixes for playback on a wider range of consumer devices, including both speaker arrays and headphones.
I don't doubt Studio One will include multi-channel output in the foreseeable future, frankly they're going to have to if they ever want to be considered seriously by a wider professional audience.

 

That depends on quite a lot. My pc is old, air-cooled, and I know its limits, yet I can still run large projects with current plugins and VIs. To compare apples to apples, Cubase v8 vs v12 vs Reaper, there a several things you have to equalize:

First off, Cubase was having well-known multi-core/thread affinity issues that were resolved between v11 and v12, so in that regard it might be best we leave 8 out of the conversation. In conjunction with this improvement, if you use Kontakt, it is recommended you turn off multicore processing within Kontakt if enabled as it conflicts with how Cubase handles parallel processing.

Secondly, be sure you have identical processing bit depth numbers in both, 64-bit float processing in Cubase at low latency values is not to be taken lightly. Also, the way ASIO-Guard works and the performance numbers observed when its on and actively working (across all three of its non-numerical settings) can confuse some as to what they should expect. Similarly, Reaper has Anticipative FX processing although its functionality can be dialed in numerically, and it's not straightforward how analogous those values are compared to ASIO-Guard's "low, normal, high" settings.

Additionally, performance metering in Reaper is a bit more extensive option wise, but its default configuration can be misleading. The default meter in Reaper will show average CPU usage, but switching this readout to realtime (RT) and also setting it to display CPU Peaks tells a much different story, one that was, for an identical project that I opened in both DAWS, mirrored in Cubase.

I won't get into the min/maxing details of operating system optimization, which can make a small but measurable difference to overall performance and stability, but is irrelevant in my case because I honestly don't employ any of it.
I won't badmouth Reaper because I do see its benefits, and I recognize its use among both prosumers and particularly professionals (it's a stellar sound design/fx/foley platform) due to how it trivializes repetitive actions that can be scripted. I've said it before, in a less capitalistic society, Reaper would have replaced Pro Tools as the industry standard by now. Reaper ostensibly has less overhead compared to Cubase but only in terms of memory-footprint. I just haven't observed a CPU benefit to using Reaper when evenly compared to Cubase, but I have heard the difference in performance is significantly better when compared to FLS.

 

I use S1 for guitar,. I'm a closet guitarist and only do covers for friends and fam. I just like to play when I can.

 

Nobody really knows anymore. Steinberg changed everything with the release of 12. New versions used to come out in the fall with a paid .5 release in between as well. The .5 releases are gone, and Cubase is no longer following the old release schedule so the usual sales aren't happening anymore. Some of the sales might still line up for instruments and whatnot, but who knows when they will decide to do it for Cubase anymore, especially since no one has any clue of when the next version or even the updates are coming out nowadays. The reason we had the big instrument sale last month was for the release of Halion 7, which was intended to be released last year, but didn't make it..

To answer your last question, so far that is still the case. You can hold onto a download code for as long as you want to. Whenever you decide to actually register it, you get whatever the latest version is out at the time. This works across the board with just about all of Steinberg's stuff whether its Cubase, Dorico, Halion, Groove Agent, Absolute, etc..

 

Interesting points. I have seen the performance improvement in my daily use of Reaper versus Cubase. A 10700 k is in no way an old CPU I also have 32 gig of ram. True about Reapers Real time perf meter i do know about that and also PC is clean and tweaked for Audio. I just think Cubase has more over head than Reaper to me that is. Agian I am not saying Cubase it bad either I am just stating what I see in my daily use.

 

Thanx, @Slavestate. I also quickly checked Steinberg forum and the vibe is indeed:

Asking just for the sake of it - would you grab it now, if you were in my place? ;)

I just didn't have enough time to evaluate it and the general rule was always: Do NOT buy something, just because it's on sale and you might need it. Which is I think a good advice in general. I just bumped into this project working with a (must say - great) composer that only uses the comp for Finale, no VSTis, no mixing, no shit.. just a lot of spectacular harmony, couterpoint, crazy modulation, orchestration, form etc. wizardry. And, most importantly, good music. I was asked to help with parts to see how some particular instruments would fit.. and the conductor was thrilled about getting an "informative" mockup (lazy b.., lol). Like said, I managed to do it with Reaper and Finale for the final score and parts ofc. But at the end, I was like - this would be a job for Cubase, knowing the program from the past..

Personally, I don't make music that way anymore. So, even if I get into Cubase, I'd still use Ableton.. just like I sometimes use Maschine (instead of my trusted 88 keys) or some much weirder things that inpire..;) I guess, Cubase would eventually replace Reaper in my case.

So.. the result is:
Buy it + buy it, if..: 5
Don't buy it: 6

I'll give it another quick think and maybe flip a coin. ;) Thank you guys for all the valuable information

 

I produce a lot of electric music , sample and synth based.
I have been using Cubase for years, the first version I bought was the five, after that I updated every year. But there were really in each version always things that I absolutely did not like, things that make other daws much faster and simpler.
Finally I used the Cubase 12 version of R2r.
I had with this version absolutely no performance problems or the like.

I have now switched to Studio one for about 4 months and I miss nothing, on the contrary, in Studio one I find myself much better and especially faster to get around, the drag and drop system, the macros, it's all somehow clearer.

 

I tend to try and legally own everything I use, but there's only so much my wallet can handle. I always try and own the DAW I use.. in part because I like to keep current on all updates (which I know is the opposite case for a lot of people).. and in part because that just became my mindset before I stumbled on the very reliable sister site as a source for this stuff.

I used to own Cubase (well, I still do, but some rather old version), but I dropped it for Reaper because I just found their license model, like most DAWs, too rich for my blood. I don't want a watered down "Elements" version, either. I want the full thing.. so paying for upgrades every couple years or whatever it was, and not being sure if it was worth it, for me, made me switch to Reaper (which has tremendous value).

I do recall Cubase being a bit easier to use/understand for MIDI, but i've gotten used to Reaper now. At any rate, to actually answer your question, finally... lol - R2R version, if you really want Cubase. It's just too pricey to keep current on it, imo! (but "pricey" is subjective)

 

LOL that's a tough one, and I'm obviously biased as a Cubase Pro owner.. For that price though, that's a pretty good deal. I got it around the same price a year and a half ago but it was a crossgrade. I started using Cubase back when it first became Cubase VST, but switched over to Logic around 2001.I was already somewhat familiar with Cubase and had been wanting to get back to it so it all was a win win for me. Groove Agent can pretty much take the place of chopping beats exactly like my MPC does, and I ended up buying Halion last month (and already use Wavelab Pro) so now I'm pretty much all in. Moving back from Logic was not that hard at all, and I haven't even opened the app in over a year now.

If you've already got Reaper, you can get Reaper to work the way Cubase does (at least somewhat) but you have to spend all the time customizing it to do what you want. But if you know Cubase can do what you need right out of the box, it might be better to grab it and just learn your new workflow there and get nice and quick with it. They've been on top of the scoring features since the early 80s so you know they're pretty tight in that department.

 

No. There is a grace period, but it is normally not that long and normally only about 6 weeks. Therefore, if Cubase 13 came out 1 December 2023, then likelihood is the grace period would mean if you activate your license after some time in mid-October 2023 then you would be entitled to a free bump up to Cubase 13.

 

Last edited: Apr 1, 2023

This is incorrect. Your purchase date has nothing to do with it. Its all about when you activate it. Most people dont understand what the grace period thing even is. Its when you ACTIVATED a previous version about six weeks before a new version came out, you are eligible for a free upgrade. If you activate it after the new version is out, you get the newer version always.
I had an update from cubase 10, which i activated when cubase 12 came out, and then sold cubase 12. Still have an unupgradeable
cubase 11 license in my dongle (10 was upgraded to 11 in dongle, then to 12 in the new system). I am still using cubase 10 lol.