Annoyed with Cubase

ableton, fl, reason, all these other daws work. cubase is nothing but a headache filled with trouble shooting. fix one problem and deal with another. its hard to make music when you’re effing with the control panel or shitty controller mapping that doesn’t recognize your midi. ■■■■ cubase. that is all.

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Why do you use Cubase at all? If all others work, use them!

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Use them then and leave us with the well worth while headache :grin: :+1:

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If you actually listed the problems you might get some help instead of negative replies. So calm down and let people help you.

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To say “use what’s working” is negative?

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If you can’t figure out that your response was negative then there’s not a lot I can say apart from, “buy a dictionary”.

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@oogafoo, it’s sad you’re so pissed off about Cubase. It is not very good for your body and mental energy. Give us the opportunity to help you.

You speak of

filled with trouble shooting

provide details so that we can give you solutions.

You say

fix one problem

which problem are you talking about?

You say

deal with another

which other…

You say

when you’re effing with the control panel

which control panel are you talking about…

You say

shitty controller mapping that doesn’t recognize your midi

are your controller drivers up to date and properly installed.

Are you using Windows or Mac? What is Cubase version? There are a lot of unknowns for us to help you properly.

As @jimzepellin mentioned, calm down and let us help you by giving as much detail as possible about the issues you’re having. On the other hand, if you don’t feel the need to share your issues, you can follow @st10ss’s recommendation by using whatever works well for you.

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i’m not listing the issues because i’ve spent the last 2 weeks reading through this forum and reddit from the hundreds of other people that have the same issues and don’t feel like reading any more “fixes” that do ■■■■ all.

but keep shilln for this garbage

Sorry you’re having such a bad experience with Cubase. I’ve tried other DAWs but for me, Cubase wins out every time. Seems like you’re definitely not in the Cubase camp but keep making music with whatever DAW you settle on.

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I got a guitar that sounds like trash when I pick it up and try to strum a few chords. It’s all out of tune and the experience is pretty bad!

I handed it to a buddy who can play and knows a lot about guitars. He told me it’s a much better than average guitar, and for many situations (playing blues with a slide) one of the best ever made. He asked what I paid for the thing and the kind of music I hoped to play with it…nodded, and repeated, “The guitar is fine.” He spent 20 seconds twisting at some lugs, and played out a really sweet blues riff. Did a few stress tests to see if it’d keep it tune for a reasonable amount of time, and played some more really nice riffs and rhythms.

After an hour or so of tinkering with my bad sounding guitar and making it sound very polished and professional he handed it back to me. “Nothing wrong with it. You’re obviously a beginner so I’d suggest some different strings that might make it a little easier for ya (he wrote it down on a piece of paper). This guitar was built for blues, so get a slide…and here’s some recommended picks, a list of good books to study and practice with (he wrote those down as well). Oh, and this mic and amp you got here is a dumb choice for attempting the blues with this guitar (wrote down more stuff).”

My point? The guitar wasn’t the problem…particularly if I wanted to play blues. I was the problem…

Any guitar I pick up to this day still sounds pretty bad, and the experience attempting playing it isn’t much fun to me. I’d imagine if I were going to tell a guitar maker how to do it better, I’d first learn to play the thing, and then give very specific specifications on what I want them to add/remove/change/fix.

It’s true…Cubase can sometimes be ‘too much’ for a given user or situation. Sometimes it’s ‘not enough’ on its own to meet an objective (supplement it with an engineer who knows how to use it, and/or with extra tools/software). Sometimes it’s just the wrong software for the wrong machine, or even a less desirable choice for a given situation. It’s also worth understanding that it can do SO MUCH for different needs/situations, that the best settings for one production workflow might be total garbage for another!

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t quite understand the new MIDI remote system yet (it’s brand new and not the best documented thing I’ve seen so far), but the legacy support system is still in place for now while I LEARN how to play the new one. Thus far I’ve not had any major problems getting legacy stuff up and running, and building newer setups on the fly. In contrast, some of the other DAWs I have don’t even give me an OPTION to build and tweak my own stuff. If I happen to have a model of controller that is ‘supported’ by the DAW…then it ‘works’…but I’m forced to ‘someone else’s idea of how it should behave’.

Cubase ‘recognizes’ ALL MIDI events, and will faithfully record/play it back rather precisely.

What are you doing that requires so much ‘effing’? Ask around, and someone who knows how Cubase works just might get you on track. Then again, if the others don’t require ‘effing’ with anything, perhaps they are better attuned instruments for your needs in the first place?

Cubase and Logic are composer workstations that eventually got digital recording bolted on. They are both rather bloated beasts that are very deep and very ‘user configurable’ for lots of different types of projects. They are GREAT tools for song writers and composers in modest studios who typically only try to record/mix a few tracks at a time in one go, and want to mix and mesh virtual sequenced instruments with live performers/instruments. It (and even more-so Nuendo) is loaded with a lot of post production tools that few of the others ever had, or ever will. If you’re wanting Cubase, Nuendo, or Logic to deal with really LARGE projects (loads of CPU intensive virtual instruments and/or effects), then you’ll most certainly want rather high end hardware that is well tuned for low latency situations…the average home PC or laptop probably won’t cut it.

Reaper and Pro Tools are audio trackers that eventually got some composer features bolted on. Beasts for ‘recording’ lots of tracks in one go, and low latency live mixing…but they are very BASIC and not so helpful when it comes to working with virtual instruments. Reaper is pretty freaking cool if you’re into scripting your own ‘extra features’…but if control panels and MIDI is confusing to a user, scripting probably isn’t going to be an option!

FL was designed more for people who like to work with existing loops and samples. It’s a beast of a good DAW if your thing is gluing together snippets and samples. The other stuff is bolted on, and rather basic.

Reason and Live were meant to be better for people who just want to sit down and play stuff in while recording in a more impromptu fashion. Fun and interesting workflows for folks who like to work ‘by ear’. Punch and poke. The UI and workflow is meant to be more familiar to people who feel more creative by jamming with their favorite instrument, or singing in groups or with some premade tracks in search of ideas and inspiration. They are rather limited in my opinion when it comes to through compositional or post production abilities. The editors and such aren’t much to speak of.

Bitwig targets EDM users. Good luck hooking up lots of legacy gear and getting stuff synced. If you’re all virtual instruments…it’s got some pretty weird and interesting ways to reinvent the wheel and ‘force’ plugins to do things they could already do in their own interfaces anyway. Hmm…I suppose it has advantages, but personally, I’d just open up the synth I wanted to ‘pulse and push’ and do it there (kinda like things they want Bigwig to do with 37 different plugins, can be done in ONE stand alone instance of something like HALion or Falcon…oh well), instead of asking the DAW to try to do it. Oh well…different tools complement different needs and workflows! If you want to wiggle sounds at micro levels, its an interesting DAW.

We could go on and on here…but my point is that the OP isn’t clear about what is ‘not working’, or what the ‘problems’ are.

Is it really the software, or is it the player?

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I’ve been using Cubase since VST 3.x.

I’m sorry, but it’s crap. I’m about to jump ship myself. I have Ableton Suite and though it’s not as deep, it’s far more stable.

I just upgraded to Cubase 13 in one last ditch hope that the CPU spikes would be gone. They are not. It’s been driving me mad ever since 12. It really is always some new damn problem with this program, problems that Steinberg is clearly unable or unwilling to address. They’d rather market new features.

I’m tired of the lame excuses. If Ableton can do it, so can Steinberg–if it was truly a priority.

The audio engine is a steaming pile when it comes to THE BASICS: working reliably and not pulling you out of your zone with a random spike and loud pop, often for absolutely no apparent reason: the CPU meter can be at about 1/4 or less and then, suddenly, POP! There goes my lush reverb tail and I’m yanked instantly back to the reality that I’m working with digital audio and not in a space. The illusion is ruined. Every time.

I’m tired of being my own sysadmin constantly. I should not have to tinker with BIOS settings and spend hours and hours messing with services and drivers and the registry and whatever else the geniuses on the Internet can come up with instead of making music! That is THEIR job! I am not being paid to test their software, that IS. THEIR. JOB.

They are failing at it. Full stop.

Dude CPU spikes isnt always down to softwares like cubase… Cubase will HIGHLIGHT any dpc problems you might have in your system because its an “audio engine”. When you are getting CPU spikes this is oftern down to GPU drivers, NIC drivers, Bad Asio drivers or stuff you go running in the background.

Have you tried installing lantencymon to check what is causing these cpu spikes?

Work with us guy and im sure we’ll all be able to help you work this out. :beer:

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You don’t mention your system , your drivers , your interface , sounds like a rant just to rant to me . The has been absolutely no change here with performance , DPC latency still sits at 55us , you need to check your system

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Live is also much younger. Cubase is one of the oldest DAWs and is bound to have a lot of old, legacy tech that impedes development. I’d guess the audio engine is one of those. This is sometimes referred to as technical debt.

Cubase 13 saw a great overhaul of the interface and workflow, fixing lots of legacy issues. It makes sense to start there. Between that and losing the dongle it seems Steinberg is committed to paying off on the technical debt.

I’m not crazy about the audio engine either but it’s not a show stopper for me. It’s still one of the most fully featured DAWs out there.

I have an i9-13900K, stock clock, 64GB RAM running rock stable at 6400MHz, NVMe M.2 system drive, RME Fireface UFX latest drivers, RTX 4090 latest drivers, etc., etc. It’s an extremely capable system.

LatencyMon is absurdly low and passes all the time, every time. No issues there.

Oh, matter of fact, you know what? No issues with Ableton!

This is a Steinberg problem. It started happening in Cubase 12. There are several threads with many hundreds of replies. Steinberg needs to fix this.

I’m done.

I left with Cubase 10.5 and moved to Studio One for the same reason: I couldn’t concentrate in making music because of all the bugs. I still take a look at the Cubase forum from time to time because I’m nostalgic and still love “the Cubase way” but it saddens me to hear it is still a bag of problems. There is even a feature request for this: Steinberg, please focus on stability and quality. Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to be driving their sales, so I’m a bit hopeless about it :frowning:

IMHO it’s not the user’s job to figure this out. If Ableton works for him and Cubase doesn’t in the same system, that sounds already like a problem to me. By the way, bug reports or system configuration reports should be automatic. This whole thing of telling users to manually send/link hardware configurations and error dumps is ridiculous in 2023.

I’ll never understand why random people come to a forum just to rant and then say “I’m outa here!”.
If Ableton, FL, &tc are so wonderful, go use them, enjoy them!
But spreading bad vibes just because you can’t get a piece of software to work the way you want it to work is just childish.
To quote an earlier post: “I’m done”.

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This incessant whining and posturing from people who don’t even use Cubase is hilarious. These people must have pretty empty lives if they think going on a forum to rant about something so inconsequential is time well spent.

Thanks for the entertainment, little troll. Now I ran out of popcorn. Bye!

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