Cubasis Not Ready For Professional Use Yet

Cubasis
1

Can you come away with a finished track with cubasis? Maybe, if you tolerate a lot of shortcomings:

a) undo stops the project and writes a new project, replacing the “old” one, this is poor programming

b) sometimes undo crashes the app, see above why this is poor programming - you project is gone

c) when you open a project that no longer has a needed plugin, it creates a new project, this is poor programming as an app should never create a new project unless you ask it to as it leads to a file management nightmare

d) projects only show modified time/date and not created time/date - this is poor programming and makes content management a nightmare

e) the new abitrary projects created without you asking takes up lots of persistent memory as they don’t share the same data (the data/audio is copied) - this is poor programming

f) when you take a snapshot of a proect, it copies the data/audio - this is poor programming (see above)

So what happens when you try to use cubasis for serious work, you get you iPad filled up with enormous amounts of data for no good reason and worse, you end up with a file management nightmare and can not tell which project is the one you left off on.

All they have to do is make a Save as… option and point to the same audio/data for projects that use the same data like they have been doing in Cubase for decades (non-destructive editing).

I have been using Cubase for over 20 years and because of the reasons above, Cubase does not use any of the poor programming approaches above used in cubasis.

Again, can you “make” cubasis work for you? Yes. Can you sketch out ideas? Yes. Yes, but for serious work it is simply not there yet and will become an exercise in frustration. I understand cubasis is in a race with Auria, Gadget etc. so they rushed out a lot of features, but none of that matters at the end of the day if basic file management is kludgy at a best. The worst thing that can happen for a DAW creator is that a user will work on a project for weeks and then lose the whole project due to no fault of their own. Cubasis is this disaster waiting to happen - probably has happened already to people. A swimming pool on the roof is no good if the foundation can not support it and it all comes crashing down when you are having a party.

Its really a shame as Steinberg pioneered all of this stuff you see in Ableton, Logic, etc. Auv3 is “borrowed” from Steinberg VST tech. I wonder what Karl thinks of this.

2

Hi glamourati,

Thanks for your message.

Contrary to desktop computers, mobile devices are mostly permanently powered on and automatically switch off, when battery power is completely consumed.
Additionally, customers are used to terminate apps via simple finger gestures, regardless of state savings of their current work.

To prevent users from losing data in these situations, Cubasis automatically saves your work - common to a large number of iOS apps.

However, we are aware that the undo system could be improved regarding stability and speed, it is on our list of future improvements.

To permanently save projects, Cubasis’ snapshot feature allows to create a version of a project in a specific state, which will not be overwritten.
Instead, a copied project with a unique name will be opened, once a snapshot is double tapped.

Cubasis is updated with new features and maintained on a constant basis, and judging the current feedback and ratings, we are happy to see that most of our users seem to be satisfied with the features and overall quality of the app so far.

While we disagree with the headline of your subject, we are sorry to hear that Cubasis does not seem to meet your expectations.
Please get in touch with Apple if you would like to request a refund.

P.S.:
Regarding c), Cubasis doesn’t create a new project if a plug-in cannot be found. Instead, it displays a message informing the user that plug-in(s) cannot be found and opens the project of course. However, there are two situations where Cubasis creates a new project:

  1. If a project file is damaged and cannot be recovered and
  2. If Cubasis crashed while loading a project, it won’t load this project during the next app launch, to prevent situations where Cubasis cannot be launched anymore.

Best wishes,
Lars

3

I can relate to the thread title! There are some crucial features missing besides the mentioned ones. Just to name few:

  • velocity is not taken into account without restart
  • no sub groups
  • no easy user template system (or at least i’m too stupid to handle this snapshot stuff properly)
  • media bay
  • zooming presets
    ymmv
4

Beathawk has both a “Save as…” and “Undo” which work exactly like any desktop app - including Cubase on the desktop, and the project keeps going (doesn’t need to stop and save) when you Undo. Why did you throw out decades of established programming patterns and try to come up with a new model when the established model can easily be done on iOS as proven with UVI’s Beathawk?

Are you aware that Karl Steinberg pioneered this real-time undo? Puzzling that Steinberg would throw away what they pioneered for a kludgy at best solution, leading to many very disappointed users.

P.S.:
Regarding c), Cubasis doesn’t create a new project if a plug-in cannot be found. Instead, it displays a message informing the user that plug-in(s)
cannot be found and opens the project of course. However, there are two situations where Cubasis creates a new project:

Cubasis absolutely does create a new project when you open a SNAPSHOT (a project) where the plugin is no longer available in. Project(1) will be added. Try this yourself and report back what you find.

Again, when you throw out decades of battle tested programming patterns this is what happens. If you implement Save as… you negate needing a “snapshot” feature. Project files are tiny, let people just do MyProject1, MyProject2, etc. so they have the complete chronolgy of their project and can go back to any point, this is a professional feature that lets you go back to your (or the clients) most liked version at any point and allows you experiment with no fear of losing whole projects, which is what is happening now as evidenced by other users posts on this forum.

Be smart, rewrite the code, don’t double down on kludgy because of hubris. File management patterns were solved decades ago, get that right and then go back to the more fun stuff with a solid foundation. You are going to have to do it sooner or later or you product will fail, so why not do it now and then you don’t have to spend labor intensive time helping people who lost their entire projects. Its win/win to get it right.

If you address the other problems in my email, different versions of projects being huge in size by including copies of the audio/data unecessarily insteading of pointing to the same data, etc. you will have a great products. Right now, Cubasis is a self-perpetuating headache. You will get smoked by Beatmaker 3 and other products if you don’t fix this stuff - fast. I have been a DSP programmer for many years, just trying to help the company who pioneered all of this stuff, but is now making big, completely unecessary mistakes.