This is completely out of line and makes you look like an arrogant idiot so high on your horse that you think you can paint psychological profiles about other people. I’m not going to bother replying to the idiotic statements that you wrote about me wasting people’s times because I have to force quit Cubase at the end of the day, it’s all a load of BS and to be honest, I’m sick of replying to children like you that obviously twist what I wrote to aggravate me.
I never forced you or anyone else to read or reply to my posts. I like having discussions with other people about topics that interest me, so if I offend anyone saying that macOS is better than Windows, sorry, but that’s just what I call a passionate discussion. But at no time I stated that you are this or that or try to give you some kind of behavioral label.
So I suggest from now on to just ignore any post I make, in fact, most forums have a way to block other users, so I suggest you do just that with me.
To the rest of you, I know I don’t have the gift of being concise, but at the same time, I never put a gun on anyone’s head forcing them to read my posts. So nobody is required to read them, or to finish reading them if they are too long. Simple as that.
We’re all in this together, man. Don’t sweat it if someone doesn’t synchronize with you for whatever reason. As you know, with any forum, you read in to what you want, and you also take what you want. This is actually a good forum IMO with lots of good, helpful people, but we’re all imperfect humans too, and we all fall short of our better selves. Not trying to be patronizing to you with this post BTW. Cheers! Hope you get the info/discussion you seek.
Well, I think these are examples of what makes Windows a “better platform” for you. I don’t have any of those issues at all on MacOS, but then again, I’ve got 4 monitors and use Desktop Swapping extensively so “windowing” is never an issue. Using UAD I have the console open anyway, and would even if the “direct ASIO monitoring” gave me volume and PAN, plus I have and SSL UF8 so I don’t even need the console if I don’t want it (but I want it).
The best platform for the best daw is whatever works best for you. Case in point - I just got through listening to your “Heard” album, and it’s fantastic. Took me all over the place emotionally and it sounds amazing. So if you’re making records like that, then by all means keep what you have. In fact, with that kind of production, if you told me you preferred using a SoundBlaster 16 submerged in an aquarium full of Witch Hazel attached to a Timex Sinclair membrane PC and sacrificed a goat before every song, I’d say “I’m in. Just keep it coming.”
I’m inspired by your music, but I’ll keep on trucking with my Mac and UAD
@Thor.HOG wow… thankyou… that means a lot to me… really does
I’m a great beleiver in … it’s NOT about the tools and also I’ve found that limitations actually benefit artistic endevours at times. Obviously I 'm on a Cubase audio forum so will comment from my own experience of doing this a long time and in doing so ‘try’ to help others. The internet is a strange place though so sometimes my ‘help’ might not come across that way at times, but I genuinely come here to help and give back from 40 years of doing this for a living I also learn a lot from other users too, sometimes nw users who come into it with a clean sheet and discover a great new way of doing something I’ve been doing forever and not changed. So it’s a win/win.
Absolutely, there are tons of great people here. There are many time-saving macros and other things that I use all the time thanks to people here. And I also like having passionate discussions (not arguing) with people here.
Where I draw the line is when someone tries to put some kind of label on me. Like:
I’ve been on the internet since it became accessible to regular people, so around 1996. And I know my people’s skills are not the best, but I always try to keep the discussion at a level that is not personal. I can argue to death that macOS is better than Windows, but I will never say something like “You’re an idiot because you choose Windows over macOS”. Same goes for any other choice, like Cubase vs Logic Pro vs ProTools or whatever.
When people start to create a behavioral or psychological profile of me, that’s when I get pissed off. I’ve had quite a few over the years, and usually I don’t hold back. Simple as that. You want to tell me I’m wrong in some assumptions I made about this or that? All good, because I don’t mind being proven wrong. I prefer being wrong and learning, than being right and not learning. But when people start with “You’re this and that” that’s when they get on my bad side.
I get it, and do what you have to do of course. I just don’t think it’s worth the energy when much of the rest of the discussion is good. I think most people here can filter through the negative exchanges and try to look for the good stuff.
Best thing to do IMO when I feel that someone is profiling me or making assumptions like that (and it happens to everyone at some point), I just try not to assume the worst (there may be a misunderstanding, translation gap, cultural gap, or someone might just be having a bad day), and I try to avoid engaging with them on personal/emotional issues. (Although I’ve failed at my own advice too many times to count! )
But you know that already, I’m just sad to see otherwise good threads take an unnecessary detour. I’ve realized life is too short, and in this case much of the thread is good and helpful, and it might benefit other people in the future, so why not let it go and ignore it?
Just a few thoughts, no big deal, carry on. Again, not trying to be patronizing to you or tell you something you don’t already know. I’ll restrain myself from other comments on this!
100% agreed! Beautiful, thoughtful compositions, even haunting in a good way, like poignant memories and reflections. Nice productions too. Really good stuff @Norbury_Brook!
Please don’t feel like you have to read this, it’s just a long opinion on things, none of which really matters that much. Like I said, it’s just passionate discussion about topics I like, nothing else.
Generally, no. I was just giving two examples of things that are better in macOS. But here’s how OCR comes in handy for music, even if it’s a small way. Over a year ago I finished watching a movie that had a great score. I wanted to make a mockup of one of the tracks, so when the end credits showed the music score area (as usual behind almost everything else), I took photos of the TV set, I think more than one because it was a large orchestra that named each musician. Probably 3 photos total.
A bit later I went to my Mac, opened the Photos app, which already had the photos. I selected the text and I was able to copy and paste that into Numbers, where I made a nice spreadsheet with the names of the musicians, and I could count the number or violins, violas, cellos, etc, very easily just by clicking and dragging the cells.
So when I did the mockup, I did my best to set it up as close as possible to the original, and also add some instruments that were not so evident but appeared in the credits.
I agree, it’s incredibly stupid that when you click on the green dot to maximize the window, it makes the window full screen, and you have to press Alt while clicking the green dot if you want to maximize it. Even then, sometimes it doesn’t maximize it completely, which I don’t understand.
That’s why I use a little app called Magnet, which I had bought for $1 years ago, and now I think it’s $7, but it makes up for macOS shortcomings. In Magnet, Ctrl+Alt+Enter maximizes any window, and it doesn’t do a half assed job, it really maximizes it, unless the app has some kind of restriction for it, like smaller dialogs that are not meant to be maximized.
Windows has a nice system, especially since 11, to snap windows to maximized, half or quarters screens and other things. Makes it much easier for me in Blender when I want to open a new window to send to the secondary monitor and maximize it. In Windows, I just drag it to the second monitor, move the mouse to the top and it snaps perfectly.
macOS has far better shortcuts from the get go because it was created to be used the way most people use computers these days, left hand on the keyboard and right hand on the mouse, most of the time at least. So typical shortcuts in macOS like copy and paste are in a way that feels natural to your hand. The same shortcuts in Windows make you twist your left hand in weird ways that feel forced and after several hours, it starts getting a bit painful.
I don’t blame Microsoft for it, obviously those shortcuts were created in the time of MS-DOS when the mouse didn’t exist, so it made sense to do Ctrl+C or V but using the right Ctrl key because back then you had both hands on the keyboard.
But that’s one thing I really miss about using Cubase in macOS, my thumb stays on the Cmd key to zoom in and out the song, and if I have to cut a MIDI note, it feels easy to move it just a bit to the left and press the Alt/Option key. In Windows, to zoom in and out, I have to press the Ctrl key, and it just doesn’t feel natural. This wouldn’t matter if I did it just a couple of times every once in a while. But it’s something I do all the time when working on a project, so after doing that like two hundred times, it gets old.
But Apple keyboard layouts are not better just because of this, the Alt A.K.A. Option key in macOS works as another modifier key, so you have three modifier keys, while in Windows you have two. The Windows key is kind of a modifier, but just for Windows tasks, it’s not a key that regular apps normally use. Not a terrible difference, but most people don’t realize that the Option key is very powerful not just as a mouse modifier, but to easily type many characters like the Euro symbol, which in Windows is Alt+ something I don’t remember, but in macOS is just Option+Shift+2.
Finally, current Apple keyboards have 19 function keys, which are super useful in Cubase, especially when you set them up with modifiers like Ctrl, Alt and Cmd, with or without Shift. Especially those higher than F12, I had them setup for all kinds of macros and things that when I moved to Windows I had to start getting creative on how to assign them to just 12 F keys.
And the strangest thing is that I searched for Windows keyboards that have 19 function keys and come up empty. There are thousands of the most fascinating designs out there, but I couldn’t find a single one that had 19 function keys. At best I could buy a separate pad, but my desk space is small enough as it is, so I’ll just have to deal with it.
That being said, in the PC world you can have the best keyboard and mouse combination, the Logitech K270, for just 25 bucks, when the Apple keyboard is a grossly overpriced piece of crap that lasts a year and then the keys stop working, or the battery has to be charged once a week. It’s slightly better than the atrocious Apple Magic Mouse, which is amazing for scrolling and nothing else.
This is above my level I think, but you obviously know your stuff, so I take for granted you’re right.
Again, I’m not a Windows hater or an Apple Kool Aid drinker. I think Windows is great for many things, otherwise there’s no chance I would have spent thousands in a machine. And macOS is generally better but it has some shortcomings, some of which are important to me.
I mentioned in this forum the other day in another thread that one thing I was happy about to work in Windows is mouse handling. I don’t know what it is about macOS, but no matter what I’m doing in it, I never feel like I’m in control of the mouse pointer. At times it feels really annoying, especially when you’re trying to do something precise in any creative app, like Blender, Resolve or even Cubase, the mouse pointer has to feel like an extension of your hand.
But in macOS it never does, no matter what mouse I use, if it’s Bluetooth, RF with a USB receiver, or cabled. I tried everything, including buying a few mouse control apps that change the speed algorithm. Still feels weird.
Then on PC I just use my Logitech K270 as it comes, no Logitech app to configure it (they used to have good apps and in recent years they screwed the pooch on that), just as it comes and that’s it. Both keyboard and mouse are smooth as they come, and the mouse especially is perfection. It’s like I want to place the pointer at one specific area and I move it there just fine. With macOS it feels like I’m fighting the mouse, even with the same exact mouse!
And while I’m not a gamer, and rather old to be one, I must confess it’s a nice thing to have occasionally, especially when it comes to F1 racing.
That’s good advice for someone who can afford it, but if I had to have a machine only for Cubase, then another machine only for DaVinci Resolve and Fusion Studio, then another one for gaming, that would be a crazy budget. I wouldn’t have the one for gaming, but in my short experience with new games, they seem to be pretty harmless these days. They install to their own path which you select for the host app, and when you uninstall them, they don’t leave crap all over the place.
Games aside, I’m a videographer, so another reason to build a PC was that I could get a card from Blackmagic that costs just $195 and allows me to edit video up to 4K HDR, actually sending HDR metadata to the TV set, something that under macOS is not possible because unless you buy a Mac Pro (overpriced and almost pointless nowadays), you can’t install PCIe cards.
However, this was a machine built primarily for Cubase because orchestral libraries need an insane amount of RAM and storage space. I’m not going to go deep into the entrails of the C:\ drive to find the libraries I got there, but in the other three NVMe drives, libraries are in a folder called Vlibs. My original plan was to have just three 4 TB drives, one as a C:\ and the other two for libraries. And I could’ve, but filling them up to the top, and no space for footage or anything else. So reluctantly I had to add a fourth drive:
In fact, I named the fourth drive “Too Much” because I thought, “Another drive? Goddamnit, this is too much!”
Thing is, the machine is pretty stable. I’ve been going back and forth with Fabio, who saw my NFO file and Cubase dumps, and told me that the Nvidia driver could be causing some issues, and Opus as well. That day Nvidia released a new Studio Driver, so I installed it, also updated Opus, and the problem with the hanging didn’t come up again.
I think Soundtoys’ Tremolator might be causing some issues because that weird crash that was related to a kernel DLL and didn’t actually crash anything because I was able to keep working just fine, came up again, but not with the same dialog, yesterday when I loaded Tremolator and I was adjusting something in it that caused Cubase to hang for like a minute and then come back to life just fine, but warning me that it was unstable. So I closed it just in case and reopened it just fine.
Thing is, conflicts won’t always happen in Cubase just because you have games installed or other apps. You may not even have a lot of virtual instruments and FX plugins, but you may have some that are causing problems, and you may have a machine with just Cubase and those plugins and be screwed anyway.
Now, as for junk apps, I fully agree. All the programs I have installed in my PC serve a purpose, I don’t install things just for the sake of it.
Well, to a certain extent. I did that one year because when I install a new major version, I do it the right way, not just download the new major version and go through the motions. Well, to be honest I do that with my Macbook Air, but I don’t use it for anything serious.
But in my Mac Studio, I backup, boot from the new installer in a USB stick, wipe the internal drive completely, and then install the new macOS, then the apps, and so on. But probably that’s the reason why macOS has always been really solid for me.
I agree it’s not a good idea to jump to install the new macOS the day it comes out. Usually it’s a good idea to give it a few months, an wait at least for the first .1 version. Meaning, 15.1, not 15.0.1 or 0. whatever. I did that with Sonoma and didn’t have any problems. In fact, I usually spend the first week of the year doing that.
You know, I keep reading things like these and have for years. But I can’t remember a single time that a macOS update broke anything for me. I’m not saying that it is not true, but the things is that it just never happened to me.
The thing to me is that if you go the Windows PC route, you need to be a computer geek and build your own system, and know how to troubleshoot it, or at least know how to look for the right info online on the things that you’re not an expert in.
Because Macs are machines built by one company that also makes the software that makes them run. With Windows PCs, if you buy a brand PC, most likely it’s going to be a piece of crap. I had two Dells, one was a very expensive one, the other was the series below that. Both were pieces of junk, and obviously they were designed not with sturdiness in mind, but with one goal; to be assembled at the factory as fast as possible. The second one I bought because I couldn’t afford much better, had a 250 Watt PSU that failed one week after the one year warranty, and Dell didn’t replace it because of that, when it was obviously a power supply that was far less than what that machine needed.
Then over the years I saw Lenovos, other Dells, Compaqs and other brands that I had a chance to use or open, and they all sucked. I never saw a brand PC that I felt was really well designed. Of course there are, but grossly overpriced. Whereas if you know how to build them and test them, you can get the best components, and any PC case that you can buy separately is going to be far better than any Dell or Lenovo piece of junk out there. I bought a Phanteks for this machine and it’s excellent.
So when you do your homework, find out what are the best components out there, and that they were tested against each other, then you can have a great machine.
with regards to being a computer geek… and building your own systems… well…as things are now in the industry in 2025 , gone are the days really where you have a tape op, and engineer and a producer running sessions. It’s now generally one person. So YOU have to be all of those.
Being an engineer in 2025 means being computer savy. The computer is the heart of you ‘studio’ and if you want to be your own engineer then it serves you to learn about this stuff. BUilding your own machine is probabaly the best way to do this… and it means if it goes wrong you can fix it. … not everyone lives in a City near an Apple store …
There seems to be a mind set now where people expect things to A: just work… and B: not have to spend any time learning skills to make things work properly.
If i gave you a stradavarious Violin , you’d have to put 10,000 hours in to be able to make music on it… I’ve done 10,000 hours or more on the technical side of computing etc over the years so I can run my studio efficiently for my clients. I also have to keep up with things as well so spend hours everyweek keeping my chops in as an engineer/producer.
This is on top of my daily practice as a musician.. It’s a hell of a lot of work and at times I feel like I"m plate spinning. But if you don’t put in the time you’ll never learn/Get better.
Anyway… just my Morning coffe thoughts on this matter.
I wasn’t suggesting you should go without your VSTs. I was suggesting systematic problem solving steps to find out IF the problem is from a VST. When there’s a technical problem, I think it’s important to start by figuring out where the problem is originating from. Otherwise, I would typically end up wasting more time and effort on non-solutions than finding actual solutions.
If a plugin is causing the issues, that doesn’t mean you need to scrap that plugin. It means you might need to find a work around that prevents that plugin from reproducing the problem, or just keep putting up with the problem, depending on the opportunity cost.
I’ve had plugin issues before that I couldn’t fully diagnose, but sometimes by identifying the problematic plugin and doing something like freezing the track with the “unload plugins” option enabled, it can stop the symptom from happening. It’s easy to unfreeze a track for additional editing as needed, then refreeze it before quitting Cubase, and that can be a better alternative than putting up with behaviors like having Cubase hang when quitting.
I’ve also had plugins that work fine most of the time, but maybe they cause stability issues when I do something like using extreme automation jumps at a high rate. Even that doesn’t mean I have to abandon my idea. I can still often get the track doing what I want, bounce it, disable/hide the original track, and then keep going with my editing. There are many ways to use your VSTs as needed while mitigating symptoms they might be causing, but first you need to know what’s causing the symptoms.
wow… thankyou… that means a lot to me… really does 
)