Hi, I’ve got a big live concert coming up this Saturday, and after experiencing reliability problems with an Akai MPC Force, I’m switching over to running the latest version of Cubasis on an iPad Pro.
I’ll be streaming up to 8 audio tracks, and two MIDI tracks (to trigger external video/DMX gear). Almost no processing on these tracks (aside from a maximizer on the master bus and perhaps a few individual tracks). No live interactions aside from starting/stopping projects, and loading new ones.
Does anybody have any data/experience on the reliability of Cubasis? I cannot have this crash in the middle of our set!
I would not trust Cubasis with anything live. It’s not very reliable. Also, touchscreen is not very good for this kind of stuff. Cubasis hangs, then all of a sudden you accidentally moved a track to another track and now they’re overlapping. All kinds of stuff like this happens in Cubasis. Use a proper DAW or just get an MPC.
Ugh. I just came from a MPC (Akai MPC Force), and it just wasn’t reliable enough (random crashes in the middle of songs, even after switching to a brand new device).
Can you elaborate on these Cubasis hangs you’ve experienced? It’s been rock solid for me so far.
If Cubasis works rock solid for you, there should be no issues to use it.
Nevertheless it might make sense not recording several hours in one go, in order not to risk anything.
Hope that makes sense.
@Jimmy_two_times I’ve just checked your separate topic where you’ve been stating several issues with Cubasis which not seem to be the normal case. Shared the topic with our engineering.
That’s great news @LSlowak, and that’s been my experience so far. Flawless playback with no issues.
Nothing will be recorded in Cubasis during the live show, it will only be used for playback, so that should hopefully eliminate any risk.
And - I appreciate somebody from Steinberg chiming in! This sort of customer engagement builds brand loyalty that no amount of marketing dollars can buy.
Just to close this out - Cubasis performed flawlessly in front of a sold-out crowd!
I will be recommending it from now on…
I do have one feature request for live use:
It would be great to have a “set list” feature where you can pick a sequence of Cubasis projects, and then have a dedicated full screen mode where these projects are listed in large font with big play, stop and rewind-to-start buttons next to them.
In the current implementation, you have to navigate to the media hub and load the projects, close the hub screen, and then use the transport bar to start playing them. This works, but when you have the stage jitters, it’s too easy to accidentally load the wrong project, or hit the wrong button when you’re trying to perform.
This would have made a huge difference last night, since I accidentally hit a wrong button at one point in the set and had to navigate back to where I needed to.
I’ll be happy to mock this screen up if there’s interest.
Thanks for your feedback! We are glad to read that Cubasis performed as expected during your show!
Would it work for your to create a dedicated folder in the projects folder, which includes all your projects used in the show? To load the different projects would then require just a few taps (Media - Projects - Folder - double tap on the project to load).
The issue is that all that tapping, trying to hit the right project while you’re sweating and moving around on stage is difficult due to the small font size (and I’m using the largest iPad there is).
Plus there is the danger that you accidentally hit the screen somewhere you shouldn’t while the project is playing, doing something catastrophic like, say, accidentally soloing a track just by mistake.
That’s why I think a dedicated “live playback” screen is necessary. BIG fonts, so you increase your chances of hitting the right project (and functionality to queue up the next project in the sequence automatically for playback), and just the bare minimum of UI elements (play, stop, rewind), to prevent some errant tap disrupting your live performance.
It’s really just a simple frontend to existing functionality, so should be really easy to code up
