Don't Make Cubase more like Ableton, Make Cubase more like Cubase

Absolutely agree!!!

i agree…ableton lite rewires through cubase for anyone who needs it…personally i find the interface of ableton mind numbingly boring and unintuitive but i do rewire a version of lite to make use of some of the synths

I agree entirely. For me there is already to much of trying to be all things to all people with the last few updates.

I definitely have no need for ‘clips’, i can understand that there might be a user base that does tho…
I guess this is what the voting system is for, make sure you vote for the things that are important.

I for one am jealous of a few features of ableton such as the macro’s & racks…
Doesn’t mean i am going to pick up ableton as the daw as a whole is missing so many features that i love and cant live without in cubase.
But it definitely would be a huge benefit to be able to have that kind of control over my audio, it would open up sound design doors and speed up my workflow by ALOT.

Every daw eventually takes concepts from each other and its somewhat needed to stay relevant, but of course you should always strive to innovate with features unlike other daws & i think cubase already does this well.
We lead the pack with soo many things.

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Well, great thing about Steinberg is they created VST/i, and made it open source - so there are a ton of solutions out there… which is sort of how I look at Cubase, it’s an organizational shell of which Steinberg put VST out into the world for everyone to create whatever they want to put in it.

Not %100 about what you’re talking about with Ableton, but it sounds like Blue Cat Audio patchwork could be a solution for you, or KushView Element Modular.

Totally agree !
knowing ableton quite well :
to me cubase is 100 times better and faster for handling big projects, finishing projects, mixing and editing, but there is still a few areas where cubase can learn from >

1/ more modularity in the midi and audio insert / processing.
( eg i can not work actually without a plugin host to merge / chain / paralell plugin presets like Image Line Mini Host ( the best ! ) or Blue Cat’s Patchwork - and especially merge and recall different complex config with ease )
Althought the lastest Multitap Delay is clearly heading in the right direction regarding modularity
despite some limitations ( MultiTap Delay : how to set each tap's timing in ms? )

2/ An Easier way of midi assigning controllers to parameters
( NB : i know my way around Remote Devices & Quick Controls :wink: but still…)

3/ Ability to have other midi inserts than steinberg in the midi inserts slots / without all the routing hassle when loading them as instruments etc.
( anyone struggling with midi divisi ? )

4/ a kind of drum rack host ( 1 midi note = a whole chain ( instruments + inserts etc… ) )
i use kontakt like this, nothing near as easy.

4b/ A possibility to control start and end point of a sample in GA / Sample track / Sample editor with cc for quick editing / choping ( and this is not only for beat, editing foley session, sound design recordings etc… is soooo faster with this )

5/ the docked “channel settings” window in lower zone

+1 for mentioning groove agent wich is a killer as a midi phrase player !
if tempo detection in mediabay was implemented, it could work as a clip player :wink:

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I think Ableton Live is also shifting towards more traditional DAW features. To my understanding Ableton Live 11 will have more traditional mixer view in addition to the Session view (‘clip grid’). And phase locked multitrack ‘audio warp’, which I personally would welcome in Cubase too.

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I agree, too to Lovegames post
As a hobbysit I have tried a few DAWs in the past
And I’m not going down the whats better Daw route,as it s been heavily discussed
But overall Cubase seems to gel with me a lot better. The more I have got to grips with things its got better and better
Cubase has a great pedigree ,lots of history, powerful stock plugins,lots of great features/tool ,Gui is good as well as navigating
The song export feature is now even easier to use. Midi editing is very powerful,Audio is too
For composing songs, Cubase is great.I found using Ableton quite hard going in places.
Not been with Cubase long (just over 24 months) but enjoying the learning process,anyways
Given time Cubase will add more features and become more powerful.Of course there are areas to improve on no doubt.But there is no such thing as a perfect DAW

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Does the maschine VST automatically define and change the tempo of samples to match the project tempo? I haven’t investigated this yet?

Yes, it does pick up the tempo (incl. start/stop from the host). It is always in sync and loops the clips parallel to the Cubase arrangement. I use it mostly for beats. So I have the beat playing from the clips while I’m composing the rest in Cubase. I have Machine Jam which I use to selected the clips to play, without the need to open the VST. A clip could also have an audio loop which is automatically in sync as well. I do EDM stuff…
For me its very efficient and almost replaced GA5.
Maschine is quite complex, but powerful. A clip can have multiple samples of course and audio loops in parallel. It can also include sounds from other VSTs inside the same clip…

Yeah no. I just tried it. It doesn’t do what I was talking about. I mean if it did everyone would be talking about it and there’d be loads of YouTube videos on it. It would basically turn cubase into ableton.

What I said was can you open a maschine VST, import a sample into each sample slot and they all automatically tempo and pitch sync with each other in time with the tempo daw. They do not. Furthermore you cannot drag and drop from cubase into the VST etc etc. All it can do is trigger loops. You can do that in cubase. Why would you need to open a maschine VST just for that.

I recorded a video demonstrating my workflow:

I admit, it is not straight forward.
Maschine works not the same way as Ableton regarding the clips.
The loops are automatically in sync but not automatically transposed.
And yes, I’m also not happy with the fact that Steinberg locks their libraries to their products only. Resulting that Steinberg loops can’t be dropped to any non-Steinberg product. It works for your own imported content that is available as files on the filesystems.

Interesting. Thanks for the video. I didn’t realise you could convert the midi into audio within the machine clip, which then means it follows daw tempo. That’s very useful but like we both know it can’t be key transposed unfortunately.

Other than the midi to audio aspect that you showed, I pretty much have the exact same workflow. The audio to midi aspect of it can just as well be done in cubase really with musical mode etc, but the advantage of doing it in the maschine VST is for the use of clips and being able to mix and match instantaneously for immediate idea generation and a scratch pad.

This has given me food for thought. I might play around with it a bit more as this potentially has opened up a new set of cool work flows for me (even though ideally I like to keep everything in one place and work as fully in the daw ie cubase, rather than a daw within a daw ie maschine VST in cubase. But interesting none the less. Thanks and your English is great by the way. Very talented.

Not really, if all the 3rd party hosting plugins were able to drag & drop elements from cubase into them, sure…
But if you have build a bunch of synths, audio or whatever and want to do some complex macro business or some crazy routing etc, you are kinda stuck or left to rebuild everything in a 3rd party vst which would take hours and break everything in your track that you already did…
It’s not a solution at all in my eyes.
We are definitely missing a few elements to be able to do some really custom & creative work with ease in CB…

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Wow! My thoughts entirely. Why be like Ableton? Ableton exists and if you want something like Ableton use it. Me? I want something more like Cubase. Something where you can get serious and get the boring stuff done properly.

LoveGames your like symbol has disappeared, otherwise I would have clicked.

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Cubase still looks like I should be waiting for my dial up modem to finish connecting to AOL… It’s a total visual nightmare. But under the hood she’s ahead of the curve.

I never get these comments… to me it’s the most modern looking DAW? maybe change your screen monitor settings?

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Yeah, don’t get it too, especially compared to some other popular daws.

I very much like the new look of Cubase and it’s plugins. Modern, crisp, high res, clearly laid out, pleasing on the eyes, smooth zooming/scrolling, no total flat-design-madness,…

Yes, I find the other DAWs look more like a tacky iPad App - not at all what I want to be looking at in my studio on my screen. I would say S1 is the only one that compete with Cubase, but, still like Cubase more

Absolutely agree.

Antonio.