Farewell Cubase

Cubase
#1

Dear Steinberg,

After being an ardent and long-term user of Cubase since v1 in the late 80’s I have come to the sad realisation that this DAW has now become too cumbersome and unreliable for me to continue using. The Sentinel has destroyed it for me. Every time I try and do any work there is a mandatory audit of my system and 10+ minutes wasted while Cubase rejects certain plugins which Ableton has no problem with. I got so tired of it that I just started using Ableton Live instead which is so light and nibble in comparison. Quick to load and reliable. I had to open a Cubase project today and was once again confronted with this total BS. It’s been nearly an hour and I still can’t get Cubase to open so that’s it I’m done with this abortion that is v9.

#2

At least you got v9 to work. I’ve spent the last 5 hours trying to get the demo to work. What a mess. What kinds of software engineers cook up this kind of nonsenes? I’m certain their work makes perfect sense to them, so it should make sense to everyone else, right? WRONG.

I’m going to give the install/license revolving door of failure one more try. If it doesn’t work, I’m going with Logic Pro. Steinberg, shame on you! Your preoccupation with IP protection has gone too far. :laughing: :unamused:

#3

This is a fixable issue on your side. The complete plugin scan is only supposed to happen while running Cubase for the first time. It’s probably not supposed to be taking that long either.

#4

I’d love to know how as my experience of Cubase 9 is just watching plugins being scanned and rejected and then after 10+ minutes nothing but the Initialising screen. It never loads up even.

#5

I disabled all the VST folders and got past the initialise screen but it still didn’t load up properly. See screenshot. And then when I went to exit it hung. My worst Cubase experience out of every version. Cubase has always been a dream for me until v9. Nothing but headaches and utter frustration.

Cubase 9 Load.jpg
Cubase 9 Load.jpg1920×1080 213 KB

#6

You can still use 8.5 as well?

#7

That’s not a bad idea.

#8

Ableton is alright, but lacks some crucial features like user definable keyboard shortcuts. Live seems to me more geared toward making robotic electronic music, trying to make music using real instruments i found to be quite frustrating. Just me 2 cents. Live is great for sound design, but for making full songs, i’d stick with Cubase. I’m running 9 and do not experience the problems you have (on Win 8.1).
I’d try a complete, careful, fresh install, monitoring at what point in the install the problems arise.

#9

That’s just how it looks when loaded now. :confused:

#10

As Grim say’s that is how it looks until you load a project.

To be honest I have had my issues with C9. I am a three screen user and had a lot of problems with audio dropouts and strange mouse behaviour. I ran through the usual scene of blaming Cubase and cursing the latest update. That was until I saw in another post that updating the video card drivers was a useful way forward. I followed that advice and sure enough the audio dropouts had gone and with new batteries in my mouse mean’t that too was behaving itself.

Now I am not claiming that this has anything to do with your issues, however, it does point to the growing complexities of the systems that we run and how not managing them properly has consequences as we add more and more stuff onto them.

I don’t use any 32 bit plugins anymore and to be quite honest it has made my life a lot easier. I try to use the latest versions of all the plugins that I use - which can be a pain - and I get rid of those I don’t. For any project that uses 32 bit plugins in previous versions of Cubase I convert to audio and remove the original plugin before importing into C9.

I can’t say that C9 has got in the way of my “creativity”. In fact I hardly notice it. There is only one thing that really does make me cross and that is the inability to change projects without shutting Cubase down and restarting. For some reason Cubase does not like to change project when running.

#11

Yeah, then you need to go to file > new project

#12

I mostly make electronic music (hopefully not robotic) and agree Ableton also suits me better for that and Cubase for pop rock which I don’t do much of hence why I was content in Ableton land until I needed Cubase for a pop track. I’m running Win 10 and yes thinking maybe a fresh install is on the cards. Even after the Sentinel flags a lot of plugins the program still won’t initialise. If I rename my VST folders to stop them being loaded Cubase initialises. I don’t have any 32bit plugins.

#13

Ok thanks, good to know that is not an issue at least.

#14

Nice!

My “robotic” comment is because doing tempo changes in Live is far from easy. If you want to make a bar a little longer than the previous, it’s super easy in Cubase, you just grab a bar line and move it, not so in Live.

#15

Funny because I am brand new to Cubase and just bought Cubase 9 Pro and had no issues getting my Komplete 11 plugins and VST collection loaded and working with it. I also have Ableton Live 9 which is great for live performances but to me, Cubase is far superior to Ableton for composing and arranging large numbers of tracks. I love Ableton for live ad hoc jam sessions and have that with a Push 2 controller but editing long 50 minute tracks with 20+ MIDI and audio tracks is far more cumbersome and painful in Ableton than Cubase.