Can someone please help me understand what cubase 15 offers that ableton live 12 doesn't?

Steinberg Lounge
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I know comparing DAWs is a really saturated area on forums, but none of the posts I’ve found really seem to help me understand what features there are in cubase 15 that ableton live 12 isn’t capable of. I know there must be reasons why people would elect for cubase over ableton live, so I really want to try to figure out what these are. I thought I’d try cubase 15 out this month, and so far tbh it just feels way more clunky and hard to use than ableton live, everything I’ve made just sounds worse than when I was using ableton, and I have yet to come across anything that I wouldn’t be able to do (and with much more control and ease) in live. In live I feel like I have way more control over midi, automations, how to arrange clips, the fades, comping, and audio clip manipulation. And with a couple of simple work-around here or there, I haven’t found anything that I can do in cubase 15 that I can’t do in live 12 with regards to routing. Not to mention that everything feels way more organized in live, and it’s much easier to see what’s going on in the arrangement. Although I think there is slightly more latency with live when I use external instruments, everything still seems to sound better somehow. I’ve also been getting some midi jitter problems with cubase 15 that I’ve never noticed in live 12: external synths seeming to have inconsistent triggers that never had any audible problems when I’d use live.

The main reason why I wanted to post this is that I hear 2 specific things thrown around a lot about cubase vs ableton that I don’t entirely understand: that cubase is better for ‘detailed editing’ and ‘complex arrangements’. I was hoping maybe someone could help me understand what these actually mean? So far, I haven’t come across any editing that I could do with more detail in cubase, nor any arrangements that were too complex for ableton live. Is there something I’m missing / just don’t have the need for that cubase can offer?

One thing I’ve heard about cubase is that it’s apparently better for adjusting the pitch of audio recordings? For instance, it’s got melodyne integration, and apparently has a much more transparent algorithm for repitching things / pitch correcting recordings? I haven’t had to do any of that since I switched over, so idk if maybe there’s something here?

I guess I just want to figure out if I should just stick with ableton live, or if there may be a payoff if I keep at cubase 15 and get over the learning curve…

The score editor was nice, although not essential for me. (However that seemed not to work properly so I never managed to make use of it when I would have liked to.)

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I have Cubase 13, Nuendo 14 & Ableton Live Suite 12.

My take is.

Ableton

  1. Has a very minimalist design and workflow, so you can fly about very quickly while making music. Cubase can, if your not familiar feel very complex. Think of it like Ableton is a sports car, Cubase a Lorry.

Here are a few things i have noticed that make me use Cubase/Nuendo over Ableton.

  1. You can not make mixer channels disappear in Ableton, so if you have 100 tracks, you will have 100 tracks on the screen. In Cubase you can make any channel appear/disappear and save the views as configurations to taste.

  2. Cubase cpu usage appears better, Ableton seems to constantly have cpu issues, and you need to render to audio to avoid cpu spiking.

  3. Cubase has key commands/macro creation for almost anything within itself, Ableton does not. So you can tailor design all your hotkeys to your own taste in Cubase, you program Cubase to behave the way you want it, not have a set way dictated to you.

  4. Cubase Drum machine is identical to Ableton Drumrack, but Cubase Groove agent SE is superior to both, Ableton does not have an equivalent to Groove agent.

  5. Cubase has the Arranger Track, which lets you divide sections of your tracks in linear regions, and play them back in whatever order you choose and how many times you want.
    Great method for testing out different sections to play in various orders while music creating.

  6. Cubase has 2 video channels that can play up to 8k resolution film footage, and a ruler channel that can show film timecode, and the ability for any channel to configure to TIME base, which is what is used when adding sound fx & foley to film footage (you wouldn’t be adding this using bars and beats / musical base) - Ableton does not have these capabilities.

  7. Cubase has VCA channels, faders that control other faders only, Ableton does not have this functionality.

  8. Cubase has a chord track, Ableton does not have this.

  9. Cubase has Dorico integration and Score Editor (If your into composition where writing scores is necessary). Ableton does not have this.

For me Ableton shines when you need quick music creation on the fly, on a laptop, on a stage, making music while being mobile.

Cubase is built to get lost in, in a dark room, hours upon hours of writing ,editing and tinkering.

Ableton = Music Makers/Sound designers
Cubase = Songwriters/composers/Music makers/ Sound designers/Audio Engineers

But rules are to be broken !

A great composer could make fantastic work in Ableton and Beatmakers could quickly knock up EDM in Cubase.

Ask yourself are you happy with your final audio output ? Are you making the records you desire ? Using Ableton ?

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I am not really familiar with Live 12, my knowledge of Live’s feature set is somewhat limited.

I think Live 12 has no support for Dolby Atmos, or Binaural Audio.

It also seems to me Cubase has overtaken Ableton when it comes to the Pattern Editor.

How about them Chord Pads? Does Live cover that topic equally well?

Cubase Pro has Audio Alignment built in.

Cubase comes with a GM capable instrument. Does Live have this?

Cubase has something called Direct Offline Processing. It allows to apply destructive audio editing in a non-destructive way.

Live has no Omnivocal.

Does Live have anything like the Project Logical Editor, which allows certain administrative tasks to be automated? Like renaming of tracks, colouring of tracks, changing which tracks are shown based on user’s criteria…

Of course, I have no idea if any of this is important to you. It might just be that Live suits your needs better. It might also be that Cubase does feel odd to you because you are accustomed to working in Live. Changing DAWs is not as easy as changing underwear.

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It has been a long time since I used Live, but after a quick look at the Ableton manual it seems like the Cubase mix console is overall much more sophisticated that the mixer in Ableton, e.g.

  • the Pre Section with pre-gain and filters in each channel without the need to load plugins,
  • the channel strip section where you have all basic mixing processors in one channel, again without the need to load a plugin
  • the visibility agent and side bar where you can specify which channels or type of channels you want to see in the mixer, and to save that as configurations
  • an overall view of insert plugins across all channels (it seems Live still doesn’t have that)
  • QuickLink, where you can replicate your actions on one channel to all other currently selected channels, like bypassing plugins, changing send values, levels, panning, routing etc (relative and absolute), edit parameters across multiple plugin instances in parallel…
  • send panning? post fader inserts? VCA faders? Not sure if those exist in Ableton.
  • Mixer snapshots (OK, to be fair, does anyone use that in Cubase with its limitations?)
  • the global metering section with all current metering standards

It also doesn’t seem like Ableton has a plugin manager like Cubase, where you can create different plugin sets with only the plugins you want, and group/order them in any way you want.

Control Room? I love the Control room, having 4 different monitoring chains where you can have plugins on each one (e.g. a correction plugins for speakers or headphones), and then global slots where you can have metering plugins, all that available globally per default without having to load them on your master channel or similar..

But yeah, whether one needs that is of course very subjective and dependent on the personal workflow.

I liked the simplicity and consistent UI design of Live when I used it, this is something where Cubase definitely leaves something to be desired, but in the end, I just don’t think in patterns and loops musically, so the main selling point of Live was kinda lost on me :slight_smile:

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I think this is the fundamental difference. I came back to music after a few years away, and I started using Maschine, Live and had a dalliance with Fruity Loops.

My background is linear editing and creating, so this pattern thing just felt totally ‘wrong’. I happened to buy a new Steinberg interface, and it was bundled with a copy of Cubase AI.

Tried it and I felt comfortable with it straight away.

I was on Live 8 at the time, so I jumped ship and went all in with Cubase Pro and never looked back.

It’s not to say one is ‘better’ than the other, but there is a fundamental difference in approach that either works for you or doesn’t.

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In addition to that, or as another take, I think

  • Ableton is great for “tinkerers”, people who like to have a bit of randomness in their productions, connect this to that and just see what happens and where it takes you
  • Cubase is great for “engineers”, people who like to have full control over every detail of their production, both musically and it terms of sound

None of them is better of worse, they’re just different.

I have bought and sold Ableton Live a couple of times. I kind of want to like it because it looks nice in theory, but in practice I somehow just don’t gel with it. I also noticed that for example the video content for Cubase from Steinberg or things like featured artists are much more appealing to me than the same from Ableton. But again, that doesn’t mean one is better than the other.

What I want to say is, if you think you should like a DAW but it somehow doesn’t feel right, for whatever reason, don’t fight it. There’s a reason there’s different tools for different people. Ableton is a great piece of software and if you are able to do with it what you want, there is no need to switch away from it.

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Steinberg are clever, a few years ago (Cubase 11, 12 Version) I preferred to write within Ableton, because the DRumRack and Modulation of every parameter.

But Cubase created DrumMachine, which is a carbon copy of Drumrack and Added modulation of every parameter, Cubase 15 has also now added Abletons, last click parameter option as well, so Automation is quicker in Cubase.

For me I also have Bitwig, which opens Ableton files and also shares DAWprojects with Cubase. So now I just use any Daw and I can transfer between them quickly.

I can write in Ableton, open up and do more work in Bitwig then open the same file and finalize in Cubase.

You should test them all out.

In the end the tracks will all sound different because of the differing workflows, stock tools and processing engines.

Music artists dont record all there songs in the same studios, they go to different places to get different vibes.

Same with DAWs, a track in Bitwig will end up different to a track in Cubase, you have to test them out to get the music you want, dont stay stuck in 1 that never delivers your sound and waste your life never making the music you could have made.

Contemporary popular music: Afrobeat, Drill, Phontek New variants of House music and Techno, K-Pop, these musics need really good drum programming, modulation, great fx. Choose the Daw that gets you closer to this goal or you will struggle.

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Thanks for your reply! I did notice that I think I was able to get a little more out of my cpu in cubase, but I was still definitely getting regular overloads. I also just always felt that maybe something was going on that I wasn’t aware of. Like, sometimes something would sound off and I couldn’t tell if that was just the cpu being overloaded or not…

What about groove agent SE is better than ableton live? Looking it up, I’m now realising that I was actually just using the drum machine in cubase and not groove agent, so I guess I didn’t actually get to play around with that… I did feel like the drum machine was very similar but just not quite as easy to manipulate as ableton (which I’m sure is primarily just because I’ve had a good few years doing this in ableton now, so I’m quite familiar with its setup). I can’t really think of anything else I’d want from ableton’s drum rack, so I’m curious as to what sorts of things you can do with groove agent that you can’t do in ableton’s drum rack? I can’t seem to find anything online rn.

I did notice that cubase manages the arrangement a lot better. I wasn’t able to get my head around the arranger and marker tracks. I guess I don’t really have much use for them, but the idea of an arranger track certainly makes a lot of sense. The other tracks I think I just wouldn’t have a use for, which is probably why it didn’t seem all that significant to be able to add tracks for tempo changes etc.

Now that I think of it, I’m not sure if I actually used an arranger track at all. That’s probably something I should check out. I do find myself awkwardly duplicating and manipulating entire sections when experimenting with arrangements. It would definitely be nice to have that sort of flexibility.

VCA and chord tracks do seem pretty interesting too, although I don’t think I have much use for them.

I guess it does seem like cubase would be a lot better if I had the time to make it my own. Like you say, being able to set macros etc. Atm though, I feel like I make use of so much of ableton’s tools for streamlined workflow that it’s quite hard to move away. I have noticed my creativity generally dwindle since I last used ableton. Maybe I’ll try stick with it for mixing and / or arranging things I make in live and see if I can get over the learning curve a bit… It does feel like I just need to get more of an understanding of how you actually do things in it, but a lot of the time I feel like I’m looking for a feature that I can expect to be in live but just isn’t in cubase - like velocity shaping, for instance, where with a couple of clicks you can modulate the velocity of all notes in a clip. It’s honestly hard to think of things off the top of my head; these were all things that never would have even occurred to me until I realised how much I couldn’t do in cubase…

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Yeah, I guess that last part resonates with me. I guess I really just don’t understand why I seem to feel at home in ableton live and just can’t seem to get along with cubase… Kinda like the opposite to you. I think that I should be able to do anything I need in cubase, but then it just doesn’t seem to work and it feels like I’m constantly fighting the software to try to salvage something good…

On paper, it seems to me that it should be the other way around, but I guess that’s just not what happens in practice, for whatever reason…

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Tbh I couldn’t see any benefit to using the pattern editor. It ended up being more of a pain for me personally as it lacked many convenient functions such as copy / pasting patterns, shaping the velocity of an entire lane at once (for example if you want something like an undulating velocity pattern etc.), being able to see the drum hits as ghost notes when editing another midi event in the arrangement.

I couldn’t really see a benefit to using the pattern editor either. It felt like a fun novelty, but ultimately a lot more restrictive than just using a regular midi clip like I would in live…

I don’t really use chord pads. Tbh I tend not to think in chords when I’m starting a track, and then I tend to like to have a lot more control over the individual notes that I can’t really do if I’m just playing chords idk.

It does look like VCAs, chord tracks, and arrangement tracks have a lot to offer that you can’t in live though. I don’t think I tend to write anything sophisticated enough to make use of these features though :rofl: - I tend to put a lot more effort into the sound design, mixing, and experimenting than I do into harmonic composition layering and arrangement…

What is that about audio alignment though? I’ve never actually recorded much besides synths (the vast majority of which I tend to program in my DAW - i.e. I record midi, edit it, and then record the synth), and I am wondering if it’d be better to record in cubase than ableton live. I.e. if I’m recording trumpet and vocals that I want to stack on top of each other, I have been lead to believe cubase would be better for this than live, but I’m not entirely sure why atm. I’ve heard that it’s pitch correction algorithm and workflow, as well as it’s melodyne integration can be especially useful. I think I’ve heard of the ‘audio alignment’ too, but I haven’t managed to understand what that actually means in practice. Would it be especially useful if you want to layer like 6+ vocals? Say you want to harmonize, you also want to layer multiple takes of each harmony, and you want to double everything to pan and get width - is this the sort of thing you’re talking about when you mention audio alignment?

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Groove Agent:

Just like DrumRack you can load samples on top of each other, but in Groove agent you can have them triggered by velocity, or random hit or round robin.

So if I can put 5 kick samples on 1 pad, each differing in processing, some dry, some heavily distorted and harder sounding, and give each sample a set velocity region, so when you hit the pad or write in velocities for the kick, it will trigger a desired processed version of that kick.

DrumRack, will only offer samples on top of each other playing at the same time layered.

Groove Agent pads also play patterns, they play one shots but can also play full midi patterns.
So you can put a 16 bar drum roll breakdown on 1 pad as a pattern that utilises 16 1 shot samples across 16 pads.

Drumrack is 1 shots only, no patterns are triggered by pads played.

Groove Agent (full version) has a drum slicer for each pad internally. DrumRack, you will need to load up a simpler or sampler for every pad.

Groove Agent is also 3 Drum agents (engines in 1 module)

  1. Beat Agent (based on an Akai MPC3000, similar to drum racks design)
  2. Acoustic Agent (based on a live drummer, similar to EZ Drummer)
  3. Percussion Agent (A complex percussion engine, for advance percussion grooves)

Groove agent is a sophisticated beat making environment, very complex once you start to dig into it.

In Groove agent all the important parameters are fully capable of being modulated and automated.

Pitch Shifting
Filters
Panning
etc…

Groove Agent full version also works in any DAW, if i ever use ableton i use Groove agent inside it.

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The big difference for me is that Cubase has proper plugin delay compensation, while Live does not. I use Live Suite 12 for having fun and creating music that I bring into Cubase because of this.

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Yes i forgot this, i tested this out.

I ran a Pro Q with 2 seconds of linear phase delay in front of a shaperbox fx vst.

In Ableton it did not sort out the delay post Pro Q3, in Cubase it did !

Cubase Delay system is much more sophisticated.

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It’s always easier to feel in the first DAW you learned, especially when the two have quite different GUI. As someone who work in Cubase and is looking for an alternative to use after work, and also have ans used Live since version 4 (I think) these are the main reasons why I’m not using Live anymore:

  • Proper delay compensation for external instruments: in Live it’s a mess. Apparently they finally fixed it in 12 but I dodn’t try it yet as I’m still at 11 Suite and 12 Lite. Cubase is simply superior in this matter and breeze to use
  • Folder tracks: I have large 300 tracks template with 90% of tracks ready to use but useless at the beginning. With folder tracks I can keep everything tidy
  • Hide tracks: same as above
  • Disable tracks: real disable tracks that are completely releasing all the resources. In 11 it doesn’t work
  • Custom shortcuts and macros: I can’t live without it. Makes me work so much faster than in Live where I have to mousing everything every time all the time with just several shortcuts that are simply stupid and often uncomfortable to do with just one hand. Where Live asks me to press 3 keys, in Cubase I press just one.
  • Midi Editor as a separate window. Easy to switch. Same for the Mixer window. I would need at least 5K 40” monitor to work comfortably with tabbed type of windowed DAW like Live. Otherwise, non stop changin sizes of all the windows. Apparently it’s better in Live but with uncomfortable shortcuts. One day, one day…

Ps. I’m finding patter editor as barely usable too. Midi editor is simply superior and easier to use. They really need to work on it.

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Few advantages of Cubase:

  • Live is the least performant DAW that I’m aware of (and I’ve tested most of them…) - due to the nature of its audio engine, it uses more CPU than any other DAW; even Bitwig - with its audio-rate polyphonic modulation - it much better; if you start using Max For Live devices they’ll introduce even more performance issues + stability problems,

  • Cubase’s audio part can contain multiple events (i.e. samples) inside, with their own fades, stretch, etc. - in Live, if you want to make a drum loop out of individual drum one-shots, you have to then destructively consolidate it (basically - bounce in place), which means you can’t edit it anymore; and that means you can’t edit audio when it’s in the session view (clip launcher), which is just idiotic,

  • Live has no alias / shared clips - in Live you can loop a clip (like you can in Cubase), but you can’t duplicate it on the other end of the project and have it linked to the original,

  • you can’t easily slice a sample - e.g. a drum loop - with the detection sensitivity that you want; Simpler can do it, but then you only play the sample with MIDI (it’s like Sample Track in Cubase) - if you want to slice a sample on the timeline, you either have to accept the slice markers Live gives you, or adjust them manually,

  • there’s no proper chord track - Live 12 introduced global key & scale awareness, but it forces you to have your whole song in single key & scale, because it’s not automatable; and very curiously it follows whatever clip you’ve selected, so it can wreck havoc if you’re not careful, because many MIDI and audio FX now can follow that information - I have it turned off completely,

  • Live doesn’t have custom keyboard shortcuts, and in 12 they’ve made a lot of stuff more complicated, replacing single key shortcuts with 2-3 key ones,

  • Cubase’s console is just great, with a full channel strip available on each channel: gain, filters, EQ, compressor, gate, saturation, clipper, etc.; it’s so convenient and fast, and easy to overview from the Console!

Why I still use Live, then? I have Move and Push, and I love them - there’s no better way to start the idea going that on the couch, with Move on my lap. Then I can go to Live and just open the project via the Ableton Cloud and continue working on it, with Move as a controller (or without).

It’s just brilliant.

Oh, and I really like Ableton as a company - their ethos & values, the CEO seems like an awesome guy. I know this shouldn’t be important, but it is (to me, at least). I feel confident about their direction & leadership, which I can’t say about most of other DAW developers. I don’t know anything about Steinberg, other than its owned by Yamaha…

Why would you have to move to Cubase from Live, if the latter already does everything you want? Cubase might have some advantages, but if they’re in the areas not important to you, then why bother? The most important factor is the workflow. All DAWs nowadays overlap in 80-90% of functionality, they just do these things slightly differently, with emphasis on different things.

If for whatever reason you’re looking for Live alternative, try Bitwig or Studio One (now Fender Studio Pro) - they’re an evolution on the ideas behind Live and Cubase respectively, but not 1:1 copies.

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In Drum Rack, you can host any instrument device, native or third party. Actually, when you drag a sample onto it, Simpler device is used by default. You can convert Simpler to Sampler and then use as many samples as you want, set up velocity zones, round robins etc. Or you can go further, place an instrument rack on a pad and then use different VSTs with velocity zones assigned, macros etc. And this is all super easy to do.

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Yeah that’s one of the things that Ableton does better actually. It would be nice for example to directly use Backbone in Drum Machine in Cubase.

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Really what is the point of these mine is bigger / better than yours posts.

I like Cubase, it does everything I need. I’m sure there are things that other DAWs do differently maybe better but If I don’t know about them I won’t miss them. Hence I use Cubase but I don’t feel the need to attack other DAWs or try and convert their users.

Now should I use a Mac or PC? :wink:

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vim or emacs?

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In addition to what has already been mentioned, Cubase is (AFAIK) the only DAW with a Control Room section. The Control Room is irreplaceable for me.

It allows you to use multiple sets of monitors and switch between them in software, dim the monitor level by a fixed amount with a single button click, do an easy mono compatibility check, use room correction plugins without placing them across the master, create another solo within a bunch of already soloed tracks (using the listen bus), and adjust the listening level in software and independently of the master. There are many other uses.

The Control Room is like a hardware monitor controller but built directly into the Cubase DAW software.

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