Thank you! I’ll keep reviewing. 
Ableton is used for making DJ- styled music and Cubase is used to make Studio based actual music. Though you can use the either one for any purpose.
That’s my 2 cents.
Actually, that’s not really true. Quite a few electronic music artists who are not DJs use Ableton. Check out Imogen Heap and Laura Escude.
Hi. I’m just curious why you think Cubase is that superior to Ableton that you would stop using it? I’m an Ableton user but my roots are in Logic but after using Ableton over many year I feel that Ableton with it’s recenr updates can do everything that Logic does and much much more. I have always been curious about Cubase as an alternative to Ableton’s arrangement view. Are there specific things that you can mention that would be worth experimenting with Cubase for? Thanks so much.
I am not a heavy Ableton user by any means, I just tinkered with the Lite vers to get an idea of how it works and what all the hype is about. But I am a heavy Cubase Pro user.
I think Ableton is a great product, but I think a lot depends what kinds of music you make, and how you record and which DAW fill fit into your workflow.
In my case, I spend a lot of time getting wav files from other people, load them up in a project and add guitar. So am usually sitting there with guitar in lap plugged in, then one hand is moving back and forther between a BT mouse and keyboard. I record and put down a lot of wave files and I spend a lot of time going over and over the same thing trying to get a feel. i dont chop wave files around. in my case. I also use the chord tracks and market tracks extensivevely. and i use the chord track to export to PDF a chord session track. Cubase is the perfect workflow for me. i am not sure I recall seeing these features i Ableton.
Also, not with the EQ comparson feature, i have started loading up on track and comparing the EQ to the track I am working and using that as a visual aid to adjust tone and prense settings on vAMPS. again, not sure if Abletn has that.
I dont think one DAW is better than another. I think they re all great products. Just posting some things that I use extensively that might not be availalbe in Ableton. I am sure Ableton has features that are not in Cubase and work really well for people who make a lot of electronic music.
Cubase has a lot of great features to offer. You can do insanely deep stuff, and a lot of it makes great sense and opens a lot of possibilities to mix and create sound. Just look at Greg Ondos Cubase tutorials and you will see what awesome stuff you can do in the DAW and how many workflow shortcuts really exist under the surface.
But I should add that I like Ableton more for Beat creation.
If Ableton and Cubase were people, Ableton would have been a cool and hip person and Cubase would’ve been a modern professional person.
Go ahead. Choose the one that suits you the best.
Regards.
i am both. and i use cubase because of the type of music i make, and more importantly, the way I make and capture music into a DAW.
Ableton is lean and rock solid. Cubase is a little bit of a mess when it comes to vestigial functions, quirks and other processes as it is still much wedded to multi track tape workflow. But ableton looses the MIDI feature of Cubase.
I found this helpful.
Hi!
I bought akai ableton and it’s just great! Absolutely love it. I wasn’t a huge fan of the first maschine software, but 2.6 is amazing. Everything is very streamlined to the controller perfectly with every parameter already mapped to the smart strips. I also haven’t even had to use my keyboard since I bought it because of how perfect the keyboard function is with the jam. Just pick your root note, select your scale and every pad is in key. the only knock I have at all is that sampling with the jam isn’t the easiest without a maschine controller but with any version of the maschine (mk2, mikro or studio) you have every little bit of control you could ever need. Really satisfied with this and can’t wait to purchases the studio!
First: Both DAWS are great! Here’s some main pros. Of course this is only my personal list of points and there will be some missing…
CUBASE 11 Pro:
- One of the most feature rich and eleborate DAWs available (bounce in-place, batch export, direct off-line-processing, comping, MPE, expression maps, and so on …) .
- Professional mixer with everything you can dream of (view options, zones, VCA faders, snapshots, routing, track pictures, …)
- Huge amount of high quality stock effect plugins. So you can save a lot of money (dynamic eq, auto tune, many multiband effects, Quadrafuzz, even Abletons “OTT” came with Cubase 11 as Squasher, Magneto II tape saturator, vintage compressors, amp rack, …) . Also all of them have lots of useful and meaningful presets.
- Great stock instruments, presets and samples. HALion SE, Groove Agent SE, Retrologue and Padshop all with many fantastic sounds right out-of-the-box.
- Extensive MIDI editor with surgical editing possibilies.
- VariAudio3 for integrated manual pitch correction of vocals (like Melodyne).
- Many different realtime audi warping algorithms for specific use-cases.
- Chord track, chord pads and chord assistant for easy creating chord progressions.
- Arranger track.
- Super Vision multi view analyzer also included (for loudness metering, stereo field, etc).
- Sampler track with warp and slicing option (btw. Groove Agent can slice samples too).
- Extremely customizable (keybord shortcuts, makros, logical editor, different views, colors, right-click-behaviour, play-head, metronome, …)
- Media Bay (to search and manage sounds by category, rating, character, style, key, etc.)
- Sophisticated plugin-manager.
- Control room.
- Notation/scoring editor.
- Stable and reliable.
- Since version 10 and above super crisp, modern and inspiring look. Also for the plugins. (this is subjective of course)
ABLETON Live 11 Suite:
- Relatively easy to unterstand and learn, however deep in functionality.
- Super fast workflow, especially streamlined for electronic music production.
- Session view to freely create and combine patterns to scenes.
- Session view can be used for live performances or transfered / recorded to arrangement view.
- Great MIDI editor with superb usability and excellent view of automation, modulation and MPE data.
- Very tight integration of Push 2. Native support for many 3rd party hardware controllers.
- Rack-system that lets you build and save complex chains of effects and instruments. Parameters can be mapped to makro controls. These are for instance automatically reflected on the Push 2 hardware for immediate hands-on-access.
- Robust and good sounding use-case-specific realtime audi warping algorithms.
- Stock inserts are viewed as device representations directly accessible in the lower zone.
- Many included effects and instruments. Many are easy to pick-up and super fast in handling. Like drop a sample in simpler, hit slice, done… also since v. 11 more acually usable presets as instrument- or effect racks are provided.
- Sound browing also for presets with instant audio preview because of pre-recorded sound examples. Browsing also from Push 2 possible.
- Freeze including side-chains.
- Since 11 comping and MPE.
- Stable and reliable.
- F11 for full-screen mode.