Cubase 13 - Any word on new update cycle?

Thank God for this forum…I was thinking of getting Nuendo at some point…

I don’t know about that. I only use 5% of the features that are in Cubase Pro. I don’t know that making Nuendo the ultimate Cubase tier would be any different. Looking at:

There are some cool things I’d probably pay to have on my system, even if they aren’t “really needed”:

  • I might want to experiment with Atmos
  • I don’t know what “Field Recorder Audio Import” is, but I have several field recorders.
  • The “Intelligibility Meter” sounds useful, as does the “Loudness curve”
  • Everything under “sound design” looks interesting to me.
  • Foley recording might be something I would use. I’d have to see it, but I do a lot of voiceover, not necessarily Foley work.
  • The collaboration area looks interesting. Nuendo has something different from the VST Transit listed for Cubase. Note that Steinberg is shutting down VST Transit in August, which implies there will be a new mode of collaboration, probably common to both Cubase and Nuendo by then.

The upshot of all of this is that other than the collaboration, it looks like Nuendo is a perfect superset of Cubase Pro. So why not offer them as tiers of the same product? I’m not likely to upgrade to Nuendo because I would fear that path could be abandoned in the future, plus the pricing doesn’t make too much sense while Steinberg is viewing these as separate products.

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Yeah, it’s “Cubase Post”.

What you wrote would make sense if they would be completely different programs.
They’re not, Nuendo is Cubase + post features (as you just said).

If I remember correctly, they did start as pretty different programs and the different name made sense. But more recently they’ve been completely aligned and the name difference is just a leftover.

Nuendo’s competitor is called ProTools Ultimate, Avid seems to have no problem admiting it’s the same software with post features.
While in Steinberg’s world people keep asking: can Nuendo do everything that Cubase does?

And that’s really not true.
There are some nice tools for working / exchanging with video editing software that are very useful for film scoring.

That may be generally true, but if you look at my list of interest areas above, those are not “post” features per se. I think it is more accurate to say “Nuendo is - heck, we don’t know, but some people are willing to pay a lot more for it and that’s worked OK so far.”

From a marketing standpoint I think this is a really bad idea. It confuses the market and leaves a lot of money on the table. I have more confidence that Cubase will continue, and that projects created in Cubase will be safe for a good long time. Nuendo looks like a dead end that eventually goes by the wayside, so I don’t want to commit to that. But I’d certainly be willing to pay for some of those features if I thought the rug would not be pulled from under my feet later.

The fact that Steinberg has been working hard for several years to unify the two products under the covers suggests to me that they do, in fact, intend to unify the product brands at some point. Now seems as good as any.

Can any Nuendo user share information about how compatible the project files are between Cubase and Nuendo?

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They are compatible in the same manner that different Cubase version projects are.

If you want to know more about Nuendo you can use it for 60 days, and all your questions will be answered.

Do you mean they are the same format with the same file extension?

Or do you mean they are different formats, but I can open Nuendo projects in Cubase and I can open Cubase projects in Nuendo?

Or do you mean something else?

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From this video: https://youtu.be/M6ySRKsXrEY?t=523

It looks like Nuendo defaults to *.NPR. Either program can save as CPR or NPR and either program can open CPR or NPR.

they are the same format with a different file extension.

I thought there were some differences in how the VCA’s work, Or is that a thing of the past now too?
i.e. certain project mixer settings in Cubase won’t carry across 100% to Nuendo.

Still true.

There are different features, so the ones that are not in the program opening the file are ignored, according to the doc.

They are the exact same DAWs, I have both, sometimes, I don’t know which one I currently have opened. Yes, Nuendo has the extra features and plugins, but I think Steinberg misses a lot on not making them one DAW with a “regular” version and a “HD” version. Calling Nuendo Cubase Post is not right either, because N has video-games specific features that frankly Cubase could benefit from, if you’re doing music for video games, you’d want to use the Game Connect feature for sure. Also, we are in an era where many composers end up doing sound design as well, or need to have the 2 video tracks that Nuendo allows and maybe use the Sound Randomizer for music use.
In my opinion, and I’ve been talking about it to Steinberg for many years, there should be: Cubase Pro and Cubase Pro HD (or whatever).
Many people people that aren’t in the DAW world have heard of Cubase, when you say you work on Nuendo, they look at you as if it was a new software that just came out.

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It is a rapidly evolving world. I took a little time this afternoon to familiarize myself with N’s “Field Recorder Audio Import” feature. Based on the feature name, I thought this might be involved with actually bringing data in from recorders. That’s not really what the feature does. Bringing the data in is easy. That’s basically just a file system drag and drop.

This N feature helps you organize audio from different takes of the same scene, streamlining the process of identifying takes you might want and moving them to lanes in Nuendo. The feature also helps time-sync the takes.

This is clearly oriented to people working on a movie soundstage. I don’t do that, but I do produce a lot of short videos to promote concerts and shows, and I have often used a manual workflow in Cubase to accomplish some of these same things. Ideally, the audio from my cameras and/or field recorders is good enough that I don’t need to do detailed editing other than maybe some light noise reduction. But if I had Nuendo, I might use a different workflow as I capture the source material. I.E. I might be willing to do multiple takes of some of the dialog, knowing that I could comp these takes in Nuendo later. (I could do all this with Cubase, but it is more streamlined with Nuendo.)

What is that worth to me? Probably not $1000, but it is worth something. I bet there are many Cubase Pro users who would go ahead and step up to “Cubase Pro HD” if the terms were reasonable.

YES!!! totally agree, and let me tell you how I would spend even more without hesitating.

If “Cubase Pro HD” had a multi-tab system with multiple “sequences” per project, all routed to same set of buses but with a way to offset the timecode, basically DP’s chunk features implemented like Reaper does its Subprojects. I work in an industry where we need to make so many different versions , 8 bars from this project, 4 bars from this one…etc. It is a nightmare to work with a DAW that thinks too “linear” these days, Reaper is miles ahead in terms of “non-linear” workflow, that’s why it’s becoming a standard for video games sound design.

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I don’t expect to work on video games. But 5 years ago, I didn’t expect to be producing videos. There are so many technologies emerging so quickly that clients – even non-paying ones, as much of my work is pro bono for 501(c)(3)s – continuously ask for things I had no chance of accomplishing a few years ago. But now, maybe.

I’m sure my experience is not unusual. In this environment, it is a big mistake to try to imagine your customers fitting neatly into well-defined silos.

I don’t think the Steinberg people are stupid. I’m sure they must have noticed these rapid changes. They must have been asking themselves how it can make any sense to have two nearly-identical products, but manage them separately, separate release schedules, separate marketing efforts, separate documentation etc. It will not surprise me to see the next major release of Cubase be the merger point. There is a strong logic to that coming after the new licensing system has been settled.

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Nope, I personally draw the line there. Music is my craft which I did spend decades learning and hopefully perfecting. Not sounds.

Credits look nice on IMDb, but, no.

I think his statement remains true. Many composers do explore sound design more and more.

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I don’t dispute the statement.

Depending on what one means by ‘sound design’.

There is a musical sound design, which has been interweaved with traditional music compositions, and there is ‘sound design’ meaning the literal sense of the phrase (background noises, explosions, etc.). I am referring to the latter.

Okay, but isn’t the video editor capable of doing this work. I am thinking DaVinci Resolve :wink:

I like this statement.
More and more ‘music’ is produced by people who are not musically trained nor talented musicians.
To compensate for this lack of musicality people turn to technology (such as sound design). Cubase has a lot of features aiming at the ‘non-musical trained’ people allowing them to produce some kind of commercial music. (nothing wrong with that).
On the topic of this thread: I guess that the new Cubase features to be expected might be to help this kind of customers or might be workflow improvements we can all benefit from.
Cheers!

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Some companies, Melodyne, for example, seem to have the freedom and ethos to create what pleases them without being driven by financial results.

Most companies have to make judgments to maximize their profits, and I don’t think Yamaha is an exception. If that is the case, then it really comes down to an assessment of how large each segment is, how much disposable income do they have, and do they have a culture of paying for anything.

I haven’t seen any real numbers on this, But I do know quite a few people who are involved in the “paint by number” style of music creation (meaning essentially that they know nothing about formal music theory and operate mostly by dragging and dropping loops others have created.) My impression is that this segment is large but not likely to spend much money. I wonder how true my impressions are.