See subject. Explanation:
I’m coming back to Cubase as my main DAW after a nightmare of a time with Studio One v4 (v3 is good, if buggy, v4 is a nightmare).
There were three reasons I was thinking of moving to S1. Why?
- Honestly? Better GUI. That’s being rectified now.
- ARA (and now ARA 2), as I have Melodyne Studio.
- Melodyne tempo detection easily accessible via ARA.
I’m sorry, and all due respect to Steinberg and Cubase, but I’ve used both Cubase 9/9.5 tempo detection, and Melodyne Studio’s tempo detection. There is no comparison. The Melodyne detection is -far- more reliable and consistent, in my experience.
By contrast, Cubase’s tempo detection is:
- Often wrong, sometimes dreadfully so.
- Where it needs to be adjusted, the tempo track is quite twitchy about doing so evenly, resulting in this sort of balancing act between hitpoints which is a timesink.
In S1, you let Melodyne detect, you drag the detected track onto the tempo track, boom, you are -done-. No pain.
I’ve done about an equal number of cover songs in both, and keep my reference track in the DAW. If you can make using Melodyne’s tempo detection as simple as S1 did, as long as you’re doing ARA 2 and have to do the tempo syncing -anyway-, it will be pure win. It’s not like you have to take Cubase’s native detection away. Not everyone has Melodyne, and you’re not bundling Elements like other DAWs are.
Why not let us do both/either? Cubase just needs to be able to have its tempo track definition set by Melodyne’s data. Barring that one exception, everything else about Cubase’s tempo handling is fine, or can be lived with. It’s the utterly whacked detection -and- the dodgy tempo editing combined which make Cubase’s native something you want to run away from. Tiny edits…okay. No edits, better. I’ve not had Melodyne be wrong yet. In roughly equal quantity of use, I cannot say the same of Cubase. Usually that first hitpoint is wayyyy out there, even when you perfectly trim away any lead space. And that’s just the beginning of the problems, usually.
Seriously, I’m begging. That is the third leg of a triple crown which will seal me into Cubase. There are no other reasons I can think of to go elsewhere, as of Cubase Pro 10, given what you’ve just added. This is just -really-, really important to me, and should be to anyone who does cover songs, honestly. It’s really not a big ask, considering the amount of tempo integration necessary already to make ARA work properly.
Pretty please?