Being a developer myself, I try to keep an open mind about realistic goals, even if it is frustrating at times. Every day here on the forums there are new questions, new problems, new requests, etc. Given the very wide scope of the requests, it just doesn’t seem likely or possible for Steinberg devs to be responsive to it.
And it just feels too big. I can’t imagine anyone leverages every part of Cubase in it’s entirety, and it’s trying to support a lot of different workflows, which just doesn’t seem possible.
I’m a composer, but of electronic music, using VSTs for everything, and rarely samples or video. I have easily maxed my CPU a number of times, as I’m always exploring new worlds. The only reason I have Cubase 12 Pro at all is because it’s one of the closest experiences at the moment that has solid VST3 support with no dongle and at least some forward support for being able to drive composition without a mouse. It’s still incomplete, especially for being so close, and thus very frustrating.
No DAW gets all of these things right. Not one. And it baffles me to some degree because it seems like the core of any composition tool would be getting that workflow correct before any other aspect of the DAW.
If you’re doing recording, ProTools is king. It doesn’t support VST and sucks for pure electronic composition if you need that flexibility.
If you’re not worried about vocals or visualization of your audio chain and want less mouse, Renoise can be great, but is much harder to visualize your automation lanes while blending, which is a big part of doing electronic composition when you’re exploring spaces.
Magix and Digital Performer DAWs all crash regularly with my testing for tons of common well-known VST3 developers. They just aren’t stable for exploratory composition.
Ableon, BitWig, FL STudio, Reason, Machine, Reaper, Sequel … many of these tools have some great pieces and I’ve generally found stable, but are either restrictive on DAW controller integration, deep template mapping control, completely hardware driven DAW controller integration, completely motorized fader and bank switching support for in-the-moment channel adjustments, are 32-bit only, are difficult to setup while retaining focus, or just have too much going on to focus on quick VSTi and channel VST loading and above anything getting solid song composition components down on the mat before any other aspect of the DAW gets throw in the way. Maschine with NKS is some ways gets closer than a lot of DAWs for that level of integration including VST and VSTi integration … but often still depends on the developers producing the NKS presets and mapping files, is challenging to navigate or do full song composition, and for me is often either way too processer intensive, slow, or fails to correctly sync transport-wise to use within another DAW.
Wusik has just released a beta for a keyboard driven DAW called Wusik Station STX that seems promising, but currently does suffer from VST stability and is a work in progress.
But it’s just too much. Steinberg seems to be working towards being able to drive the DAW with a controller, but just isn’t there yet, and I don’t expect those requests to get prioritized over all the other requests pouring in. It’s like so many of the breach settlements happening now … there is never enough money settled to go around for all the people whose personal information has been compromised, and makes no sense when it happens so frequently now that everyone already has multiple years of identity theft protection so whatever half-cent garbage reimbursement for being irresponsible with your data becomes the only option. In this case, the tools do too much, they can’t be focused, they rarely fit just your use case, and people want the tools to do a million different things, getting a million different things poorly instead of a few core things well.
Nothing I say will change that now, I think really I’m wasting my time here. It was just an extra kick from Steinberg they stiffed people on the voucher and aren’t going to respond. Better just to assume they aren’t going to honor such things in the first place than be hopeful they will.