I’m a Cubase user since Atari ST and currently on the latest 13 PRO version on my Win-11 PC.
I’m thinking about purchasing a tabletop e-Drum and since I have experienced poor sound quality on them, I was thinking about triggering good drums (like EZ, Superior Drummer, Groove Agent, Steven Slate etc.) from the e-drum via Midi.
I have quickly downloaded and installed the Cubasis LE free version on my Android phone and it works. I have simply connected my Nektar 88+ Masterkeyboard, opened the demo song in Cubasis on the phone and selected the drum channel. I was able to play the drums (and also ohter VST instruments like piano or organ) on the phone using the Nektar. Latencie was quite acceptable. With just the drums switched on, the latency was 4ms (total 16 ms). My phone is a Huawei P40 Lite with EMUI OS on it. I also have a new Huawei tablet with Harmony OS on it and I expect, that Cubasis will run on that too.
The LE version is very limmitted and there is no way to test, if Cubasis can also load Halion Sonic SE, Groove Agent 5 SE or third party VSTs on Android phone or tablet.
Does Cubasis come with at least Groove Agent SE or some other decent drum kits? My plan is to use it with the tabletop drums for rehearsing at home and maybe for gigs with VERY limited space (4-man-band). If I purchase Cubasis, I want to open it on my phone or my tablet, connect the phone to the midi out of the tabletop drumset, and load only a drumset in to Cubasis. The output (phone or tablet 1/8 inch audio earphone jack) goes in to the small FOH mixer.
Since we plan to play cover songs from the 70-ties till the 90-ties, super HiFi quality in not mandatory but the sounds of cheaper e-drumsets are too poor.
Does Cubasis come with a 30 day money back or so if the whole concept does not work for me? The free demo version is too limited to try evaluate that.
I don’t need to do any recordings with it - just play the drumsounds with a drum app, that processes midi and variable velocity.
Please share your advice and experience.
Thanks and best regards
Bernd
Cubasis is our mobile music creation app for iOS, Android and Chrome OS. The overall performance of Cubasis for Android is strongly related to the Android device in use.
To learn more about the features included in Cubasis, please take a look at our Cubasis comparison chart. Here, it might be good to know, that the Android platform does not offer the same features as iOS/iPadOS, resulting in the app version feature differences.
Technically, it is not possible to use desktop effects or instruments plug-ins with a mobile app. But we’ve released a series of superb sounding HALion-based instruments for Cubasis, which are available via in-app purchases.
Hello Lars,
Thanks for your explanation. I spent many hours last night (till 3 AM) to learn about what is different in Cubasis compared to Cubase. So your answer confirms what I already learned last night. I understand that due to memory limitations on mobile devices, the app cannot be so generous with CPU performance and RAM use.
So we have to live with what comes with the app itself and what is available as in-app purchases.
After all, the purchase price for Cubasis is very moderate and the app has a lot of useful features. I will have to test how low I can drive the latency in the settings before crackles occur. I’m hopeful that with a single virtual drum loaded in to the (purchased) version of Cubasis without recording or doing playback or too many effects on the instance, will keep latency at an operable level. I’m aware that most of the Cubasis users use it for other purposes than using it as a midi triggered sample player when rehearsing or playing live with the band.
I had hoped that I would find some stand alone drum samplers for Android (like there are for the PC version) but the ones I found mostly could not be triggered by external midi and they did not have velocity layers - since they were meant to be operated by finger tapping on the mobile device screen.
I will give it a try and eventually come back on this forum (or create a video on YouTube) to share my - hopefully positive - experience, once I also purchased that tabletop e-drumset (hoping for a Black Friday discount).
no, I have a smartphone and a tablet, both from Huawei.
Phone is P40 with EMUI os
Tablet has MELODY os.
… I know, I know, that is not very PRO but when I bought them, the VST or Cubasis plans had not been born yet.
Both are compatible to Android - but not 100%
But I will eventually not follow this path anymore. I decided that - if - I buy a e-drum kit, it will be a more expensive one from Roland, where I will no longer need the connection to Cubasis since it will come with good sounds.
Should a future drummer in the band have iOS devices, I would still welcome, if have some good advice on this.