Hi,
I realise this kinda isn’t the right place for this but I’m unable to post in the ‘Cubase 5 and earlier’ section, so apologies.
I have Cubase LE5, but obviously as a free package, it has quite a few limitations.
I’m considering investing in Cubase Essentials 5, but what I want to know is whether it’s worth the money- for the £126 they currently ask, will CE5 give me the things that CLE5 doesn’t- the larger HAlion package, the greater range of effects, the ability to create mp3’s without buying the encoder etc?
I realise CE5 will still have its limitations, and I’m not expecting the full works, clearly!
But in a scenario where I want to record things such as a band (guitars, keys, kit etc) to an intermediate level and be able to do some editing etc without having to fork out huge amounts on loads of expansion packs, is it worth it?
I am fairly sure the CE 5 does not include a MP3 encoder, that is only included on the full Cubase, but you can hook LAME to CE5
As for everything else, I think it is more a question of if you feel like you have outgrown LE, if that is the case then definitely, the thing is that it is the first step on the ladder if nothing else, you can upgrade from CE5 to C6 Artist for only 87 quid for instance if you outgrow CE and so on
As for if you will need expansion pack etc or can get by with what is included in CE 5, that is such a personal thing, some people get by with just a basic package, it does include quite a lot of plugins etc after all compared to LE, I on the other hand have a collection of VST’s some dating back to the 90’s that I feel are rudimentary for me so I hardly touch the stuff …
Keep in mind though that CE has a lot of features like instrument and MIDI slots that are missing from LE and are not essential to your work but are really helpful when you have learnt to use them.