I’ve owned Cubase for almost ten years now, but here in the last couple of years I’ve gotten serious about using the software. I spent the money and upgraded to Pro 10 for production use at my church. A lot of churches and performers are using Ableton because of the live feature, how it will loop a section until you tell it to move on. Cubase can loop of course, but what it doesn’t move between sections without losing the timing or tempo.
If the verse was measures 2-10 (1) and the chorus was measures 10-18 (2) an the bridge 18-24 (3) if I set up markers using a marker track then I could hit 1 on my number pad and it would loop the verse over and over until we decided we wanted to go to the chorus then I press 2 and I can set parameters that tell the software ok make that transition is 1 bar or 2 bars whatever but the point is that if it made the transition seemless then I could use cubase in a live performance with backing tracks and I wouldn’t have to switch software.
I hope this makes sense, to me from the research that I have done that’s the subtle edge that Ableton has over cubase in the live performance category.