Feelings about Cubase - Leaving?

Reaper is the lightest DAW on system resources. Cubase is deep, heavily engineered and cerebral but I think it’s mainly because users never stop asking for more features and ways of doing things. All DAWs do the same thing they just approach it in diferent ways. I moved from Reaper to Cubase mainly because I work by myself now and I think the MIDI tools are more developed.

Indeed, I couldn’t agree more. Reaper can also do a lot.

The approach is different yes, that’s probably why we go to one or another DAW.

There are really few things I can do in Cubase that I can’t do in Reaper in the MIDI editor but I understand that it might not be your case as may be I just don’t use certain tools.
Also, in Reaper you somtime have to create the Tool if it’s not native. I, for instance, created a Solo button for the selected track, in the MIDI editor. Or I have created a tool that allows the window in the MIDI editor to follow or not the timeline in the project view. It’s double edged, you can do a lot but you have to dig, ask for help or do it yourself.

The funny thing is that I customized Reaper to have a Cubase like behavior and it’s very nice now. But as I said, I couldn’t use the default setup…

Try quantising audio in Reaper and you soon see why. It’s insane when you’re using it for a period and then come back to Cubase and press ‘Q’ and it just processes without fuss.

Reaper is probably the future for many though due to their licensing and how most larger DAWs are going subscription model. So it’s well worth being familiar with.

I have not upgraded to latest Cubase and am still using the legacy one which is unfortunately out of support. I have tried other DAWs such as FL Studio and Reasons. Neither one works for me. Workflow is not right and Cubase is the only one that works for me. I will try some others.

So, I have started the 90 days trial of Ableton Live (on a laptop)
I just tried to make some EDM track on the fly and my first impression is that, despite that I don’t know how to make many things :slight_smile: , I feel it to be a bit more convenient, more flexible, less clicks, less windows. And it close so quickly for now.
I will dig a little deeper and see what comes of it

Give it some time haha… Wait until you get into heavy drum racks and effects chains. :wink:

Im an Ableton user as well, although to be honest haven’t opened it really since Cubase 12 came out.
I have to admit, Ableton’s ‘arrangement’ workspace is pretty awesome the way it handles audio and midi almost like ACID Pro did. But when it comes to actual arrangement and mixing, and just moving around the song in general, Cubase (and most other DAWs) has it beat. The fact there aren’t even any key commands for rewind/fast forward/etc to move around are so frustrating during playback. Who knows, they may have updated it. I have 11.3.3 installed now, but last time I opened it was over a year ago, aside from making sure it still opened when I got my new Mac last month.

It’s perfectly capable of doing everything, but in some spots its workflow is just odd to me.

Every DAW has its advantages and disadvantages depending on your workflow and needs. I have been with Cubase for a bunch of years off and on but I’m actually going back to Pro Tools as of now. Why? I’m doing mainly acoustic recordings/productions at the moment and even though I’ve invested quite a lot in Cubase I’ve come to realize that the basics are more important to me than a boatload of new features. Not being able to rearrange tracks in the console is a constant annoyance. No metering on ARA tracks is another. Solo being red and mute being yellow is just confusing and goes in the face of other daws and hardware mixers. The list goes on. All small things maybe but they add up to become a big nuisance to me. In spite of a bunch of random bugs Cubase is fairly stable for me at the moment but the GUI is inconsistent and sometimes songs won’t open for no reason. Other people may have other experiences and expectations and might love Cubase exactly the way it is. I don’t feel it anymore.

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Already left for Bitwig Studio around the time cubase 12 was released.

Seeing the extremely lack lustre features added in 13, I have no regrets.

Cubase just isn’t even close to competing with more modern DAWs like Bitwig or Ableton for electronic music or sound design workflows.

It’s a real shame. Because there was a time I was a very vocal supporter & advocate for people to use cubase, but now the direct opposite is true. It would be at the bottom of the list of DAWs I would recommend to any aspiring electronic producer now.

Workflow is cumbersome. Many features essential for electronic production and sound design haven’t been updated in literally decades. New feature implementation is poorly thought through and half assed. Nothing groundbreaking has been added in almost as long as I can remember.

MIDI CC is a dated method for inter plugin modulation. The MIDI inserts are decades old. It has no audio rate modulation capability at all, and not even a native FM / phase modulation capable synth, they keep adding native plugins nobody needs or asked for (2x EQs & compressors in v13 alone) instead of overhauling the dated core DAW architecture. And the plugins they add, are usually poorly implemented. Why add separate multiband plugins, when they could’ve built a multiband insert rack that can hold any 3rd party plugin? Why make FX modulator only usable with the same old native FX processors? This is so far behind what Bitwig or Ableton with max4live are both capable of.

I like the cubase mixer & that’s about it. Bitwig is leaps & bounds ahead of cubase on an innovation front. And everything is designed to enable users the freedom to do whatever they want with whatever plugins they own, rather than the cubase direction of shoehorning users into using native processors.

The dropdown menus have more text than the Bible, internal routing is cumbersome to set up, no streamlined workflow for multiband processing. Frequency splitting still involves setting up groups or sends with EQ crossovers. And due to everything in cubase being saved as presets at a track level, these crossovers can’t be saved as one preset to be recalled later quickly. The software is overly bloated with legacy features from decades ago, that they can’t / won’t remove due to breaking people’s old projects. Quick controls are still only single use, and can’t be assigned to multiple parameters across different plugins at varying depths, like macros in Ableton, or Bitwig’s device controls.

It’s like steinberg are still living in the year 2000. They need some new ideas people, pronto!

I haven’t seen anything particularly innovative, in any steinberg app, since the addition of sample decompose to grooveagent & backbone.

If you’re strictly a mix engineer, or a scoring composer, it’s probably great, but my advice to any electronic producer would be steer well clear. It takes ages to learn, navigation is a chore & major frustrations will arise once you learn what some of the other more modern DAWs are capable of these days, when it comes to sound design workflow, modulation, multiband processing and FM / audio rate modulation routing, in particular.

It’s just far too limiting where Bitwig gives me the freedom to achieve pretty much anything I could dream up with any 3rd party plugin at my disposal. And I have a lot of 3rd party plugins, so Steinberg’s insistence on adding more native plugins I don’t need, while not addressing the DAW’s glaring weaknesses has become a major point of contention since about cubase 9.

The way Bitwig can host VSTs outside the DAW audio engine is amazing. It’s never crashed on me once due to plugin instability.

I won’t be updating Cubase beyond pro 12 unless they do something truly groundbreaking for my needs. Which hasn’t happened in a very very long time.

I was unhappy with Cubase’s lack of evolution for many years, but learning the basics of a new DAW is a daunting prospect. But I am so glad I did now. After a couple of years with Bitwig, using Cubase feels like an absolute chore to me now. The difference is night & day.

My main gripe with Bitwig is it doesn’t have great transient detection in the beat slicing workflow, but I just use Grooveagent 5 in Bitwig as a drum sampler which makes it a non issue. There’s the lack of ARA2, and mixconsole snapshots too, but I can live with that far more than I could continue to live with Cubase’s dated workflows for almost everything else important to my needs.

I know a lot of other producers who have ditched cubase for Ableton or Bitwig with no regrets. Former cubase users on YouTube like Venus Theory & Dash Glitch dropped cubase for Bitwig. Even Nik from Noisia seems to be using Bitwig now, after they were cubase users for a 2 decade career. So don’t just take my word for it.

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You came back after leaving Cubase a year ago just to let us know you’re still not going to use it? Need attention much?

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I still have a cubase 12 license. And still use it for mixing. I just wish Steiny would do something about how dated & bloated it was for some of the above use cases.

If they did, I’d likely come back to using it for more than just mixing stems exported from Bitwig projects.

My main gripe with mixing in Bitwig was that the mixer isn’t customisable enough and faders couldn’t be enlarged. They have addressed this in the 5.1 beta that’s out now. They are also addressing another major gripe I’ve had since adopting it, in this beta, which is adding a threshold control to the transient detection in beat slicing. The other thing I miss are mixconsole snapshots in Bitwig’s mixing workflow. But that I can live without.

All they really need to do is add a counterpart to that feature and ARA2 extension compatibility & I’d probably never use cubase again. Even for mixdown.

It’s just a bit annoying to see the DAW I always loved so much falling so laughably behind the curve for my personal use case requirements. Really very frustrating after so many years invested.

I still live in hope and pop by to check new features in major updates, and the disappointment continues, as it has for many many years now.

Whereas in under 2 years with Bitwig, 2 of my biggest gripes with it have already been addressed. Because they listen to their user base instead of adding native plugins nobody requested every year instead :stuck_out_tongue:

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Initially I didn’t like the new Cubase 13 update but after new release of Ableton Live 12 and Bitwig 5.x I have to say Cubase 13 looks pretty awesome to me.

The UI of Ableton Live and Bitwig Studio is now cluttered with too much stuff. Suddenly Cubase separate windows for Mixer and MediaBay make much more sense. On top of that Bitwig color scheme is outright hideous. They are fun DAW but when it comes to serious music production I think Cubase is way ahead of any other DAW with exception of Nuendo.

My only complaint are small annoying bugs like custom UI colors and bad Halion Sonic filter. Somehow Steinberg programmers can’t hold custom parameters. :wink:

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[(4) Jacques Brel - Ne me quitte pas - HQ Live - YouTube](https://)

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Leaving ? You can check out any time you like but, you may never leave :ok_hand: :upside_down_face: :crazy_face:

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We need Rewire protocol back, so we can run Ableton inside Cubase.
Easy fix.

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I think when we leave we want to know we’ll be missed.

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Love C13 and now with the new bios update from asus amd from Windows it gets more and more stable. And yes we all want all the good stuff Ableton have for electronic tech and other stuff to get a good workflow. Cubase have alot for other stuff, And ableton have fast work flow to make fatt Dark deep tech and other stuff that is Loved on the dancefloor. Otherwise Cubase is good for that to. But we need more stuff from Halion. And rezisable vst and synths. And all Halion amd other synths need to be that. And for me i want all synths to be free from halion so i can just klick on it and start to play without start up halion. And more good stuff for faster workflow that thay have on samplertrack får ducking and for making techno rumble. But i do it with volume envelope follower, that is dont understand why Cubase dont have ? and more synths for grene specific music like tech DnB psy progg psy and other grenes. Yes we can make it on stockplugins but it take longer time. Coz like me i do different styles and Heby forgotten how some stuff work next time i use it. Like Halion extremly powerful and yes i can build my 303 and diva and serum in Halion. But to advanced for me, and i dont h e time. Arturia have a new 303. Why cant Cubase make some super synths and super efffects for electronic stuff. I buy it direcly. I only HBO all izotope for 3 part vst amd vsti. And dont want any 3 party. So give us super synths and FX for faster workflow for som fat underground music pls Steinberg :slight_smile: all sy the amd vst and all samples i have from Steinberg in Cubase are top notch. its fast to work to the arragment are Done. Then it take times coz lack of fast working vst and all smal stuff and details take times in Cubase. So give us and we Will buy :slight_smile: and the only samples i need is in Cubase super high quality samples. And now they have Pro Percussion Bundle thats pure love for an electronic music maker :):slight_smile: but if im way from Cubase before i medes to relearn. But now it upp and runing within 5 min.

I understand that you want to go back to ableton coz it have stuff speciffic for electronic music. But why dont use both? Everyone come back to Cubase or Avid heheh after they go to another Daw or use Cubase or Ableton with another daw. I love and hate Cubase. Love it for the devoloment and have somthing for everyone. Harder if i work with different styles and Hate it coz there is not stuff to make different styles and generas in and to buy that are easy to work with and to get fast resultat in the workflow. There is Ableton better. So its just for Steinberg to make more stuff for us that is like in ableton but with Steinberg quality:) i Stay with my Cubase hehe HBO to mutch i dont have knolage on in that daw :slight_smile:

Exacly what i think to. And the engineer s need to make more super sonor synths like diva Serum Massive 303 that brake Arturas and D16 303 and more quality stuff for production. Amd more vst like envelopefollower amd all basic stuff to make it work fast. Hate to have 3 party stuff. And i have waited for a long time now. Hallon hve alot but its to advanced to work with when in music mode. I want to pick a synth that have a sound and make melodies within 5 sec, not start to program retrolouge 2 for 30 min to make somthing prestine. If i want 303 sound i take a 303. Of i want fat pads i take a synth for that. If i want a fat trance lead i take a synth for that. And cubase can make everything. But it take to long time to get there. If i dont want to buy 3 party.

I’m more curious when the minority of ‘EDM producers’ decided that ‘dance music’ was the only genre in existence and all of our tools need to be based around it??

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I have been using FL Studio since my PC went kaput, and I had to use my laptop, which had it on there, but now I have a new top-spec PC, I’m still using FL Studio as I have a bunch of tracks I need to finish in it. But I’ve had SO MANY PROBLEMS with it. Just try something simple like fading or splitting an audio clip. Can’t fade without tedious automation on the level control, and splitting causes bad clicks at small intervals. Seriously, FL Studio is an amateurish DAW, but I have to finish the songs in it. After 3 years oof use, I couldn’t tell you how the channel/track system works or how to properly organise and select plugins. I had to write a small console app that renames the plugin folder structure to get them to display properly! It has good points, like a very fast startup and shutdown (when it decides to shut down properly), but overall I find 20% of the experience atrocious. Cubase is THE DAW if you are fluent with using it and know what you’re doing. To me, it’s a pro’s dream. Very versatile. Every DAW has issues, but versatility is everything to me. I must be able to carry out my idea without roadblocks, and only Cubase does this for me.

Yep and now its Done :slight_smile: i do all music from progressive monotom and Swedish folk music on nyckelharpa, and eurorack and synthwave and everything in between. But have never seen myself as an EDM musician or producer. when I make my own, I like to express different styles and different rhythms. worst that exists when All electronic music would get a branch and a name for the style. it has destroyed the creativity of many. music is music and creation. then the book templates can come up with styles and names for what it should be called. so what you think of “EDM” theoretically can be done completely isolated with stock plugins. then you can do everything from stock plugins and the samples in cubase any style, just takes a little longer. don’t know how old you are but I’m old enough so when I started, you made your own sounds everything from kicks hihats snare yes everything. samples are considered cheating. however, it has disappeared a bit now. and having a specific synth for a purpose is actually fun and good for creativity. have had a nord lead 3 before only needed it and cubase, then you could make all sounds on it, together with software… and kick and perc from tone generator and noise. actually do rock rock, but today you can only do one style, otherwise you don’t know where you want to go. I do everything and moxa the master with relatively good results in the mix. the mastering is more difficult to achieve on all different speakers, etc.

And yes i can play piano to :slight_smile:

what kind of music do you do or produce?