I may have fallen in love with Cubase again.

Cubase
1

No real reason for this post just felt like sharing my thoughts.

I left Cubase pro after version 8, for Logic Pro x. I had had enough of the gfx glitches, the lag, crashes etc. And continuous paid upgrades that then introduced more bugs which stopped me from just getting on with making music. It felt like a waste of money when things were just constantly never fixed for the Mac.

When I moved to Logic Pro I was surprised at how powerful and feature rich it was with the incredible alchemy synth and great fx etc. Extremely stable too. I used this for a few years, however in the back of mind I always felt like I was missing Cubase because it just felt like it was more fun to use. I can’t explain why as they are probably close to parity with each other more or less. Maybe it was because I grew up with Cubase and it was my first daw so I knew it inside out. And the hassle of having to relearn muscle memory for shortcuts and workflows with LPX was a buzz kill. But I did it and Logic is really powerful. And coupled with how you can control it using the touchbar is amazingly advanced. People diss the touchbar but when it is optimised for an app like it is for LPX it’s like you have an additional powerful and dedicated midi controller. It’s superb. It’s a shame Cubase doesn’t make use of this.

Anyway fast forward to this year when Cubase had a sale on their upgrades. I nearly didn’t upgrade, but then decided to as it was good value and I was curious. It was a good marketing strategy by Steinberg as it tempted me back in.

Now I haven’t even used the upgrade to Cubase 10 yet. But what buying the upgrade did was make me curious to see how using Cubase 8.04 was going to be after four years away. I have to say I was completely surprised. Fast. Snappy. The colour scheme is easy on the eye, much better than Logic. And everything just flowed and worked well. My muscle memory for all the shortcuts was still there ! After so many years. I was flying around the screen and all my vsts worked solidly apart from waves. Native instruments runs really well. It seems like many of the issues with the Mac have been ironed out.

I never thought I would be saying this but I think I will be making the move back to Cubase pro again.

After reading many reviews and watching videos on YouTube, I am really excited to try out Cubase 10. It looks insane. I am also nervous though. Some people are still having Mac issues. Though I see some aren’t. So best thing is to download it and see for myself. But Cubase seems to have matured into a complete and utter power house.

I really hope Cubase 10 works out well for mac use, as I have enjoyed my time reintroducing myself to Cubase. It’s so much more fun to use than logic. And that still confuses me as to why but hey.

That’s all I wanted to say. Thanks.

2

I’m on Windows 10 and have Cubase 10 Pro. I had Cubase SX 1, 2 and 3. When Cubase 4 came out I did not upgrade. I’m back with first Cubase 9.5 and now Cubase 10 Pro. I too like it a lot. And yes it is fun to work with. There are only a couple of things I miss from SX 3 but 10 is a winner all the way around.
As an aside I was a strong Logic user when it was not an Apple product. I had Logic 4 and 5 Platinum. I had their AMT 8 and Logic Control. Apple stopped that in its tracks,

I was bitter but I’m older and have no time to be bitter.

Enjoy Cubase it is a very powerful DAW.

3

I am there after bezier curves for automations.

4

Just remember, any Quick Control, on any track, can be routed to control any parameter throughout Cubase.

5

More or less the same path : I stopped updating Cubase at its 7.0.6 stage, with its useless RCE editor, the double-lined cursor and the global unresponsiveness of it, and seeing that 7.5 was already here without solving these, beside the clunky mediaBay and the VST 2.x presets management. So, I went for Reaper for more than 5 years, tweaking it to death : themes, scripts, custom menus, toolbars, etc.

Two months ago, I realised that I didn’t make a lot of music with it, despite all the workarounds that I finally managed to set. The main problem with Reaper is that it’s a ‘Lego-like’ host : something missing or not working as expected ? Make (or find) a script ! At the end, the actions list is a mess with different scripts more or less working, many of them needing to run in the background. There was also several things that I never actually got : mainly the UI, the all purpose track paradigm, the whole comping stuff, the clumsy MIDI editor, the very basic mixer, the useless navigator and its inability to recognize RPN/NRPN messages for remote control (beside a convoluted workaround that involves, again, another complicated script and a virtual MIDI port)…

At the same time, I saw the Cubase 30th anniversary offer : I took the jump and upgraded to 10. After installation issues (involving Windows 7, which wasn’t up to date), I’m really pleased using C10, presently : itself, the UI is a relief compared to Reaper one and I’m so much more at ease with the different track types, this with the track versions, the debugged MixConsole, the new windows management (yes, I really like it, globally), the group tracks and also the added contents (there are great and really usable things in Halion Sonic, now).

Nothing is perfect, far from it (there are still the hated double-lined cursor, the clumsy presets management with MediaBay, among others), but overall, I’m glad that I made the move to Cubase again…

6

I never got my head around Reaper.

7

But you can’t do it for multiple tracks and\or effects simultaneously, and that’s bad.

8

Oh shiii I am glad that I’m not the only one who hates the cursour and presets manager.

9

How do you mean?

10

You can’t control few Quick Controls slots with one Midi Controller Rotary and you can’t do it on the separate tracks simultaneously too.
The only way to do some advances sound design is to use plugins with MIDI-learn function.

11

I come from 15 years of Logic and started with Cubase 10 about a month ago. I find it very refreshing to start with a new DAW and love cubase more and more. The only thing I really miss is the possibility to export video, I hope this will be added some day.

12

You can, go to your ‘Studio Setup…’ and go to Track Quick Controls where you set the MIDI Channel and CC# for each Quick Control. You can save templates here that have different CC assignments.

edit

Nevermind, it seems you can’t do this anymore, but I’m pretty sure it was that you once could. It seems though that one Quick Control will hog the MIDI CC… Maybe I was controlling them all with a joystick… hmmmm, I’ll have to dust off that joystick and plug it in.

If however you are dealing with VST that support MIDI, or VSTi that support MIDI. Another work around is, you can just create multiple MIDI tracks, assign them the same controller input, and then assign each output to each individual thing you want to control, select all the MIDI tracks and activate/monitor them all.

13

Thanks for your replay, mate! I was struggling on this really hard and my go-to is FL Studio Patcher for sound design and Cubase for mixing. Annoying, but what you gonna do :crazy_face:

For some basic things I’ll just use automation and tonnes of copy pastes :laughing:

14

Definitely an area of Cubase that needs to be worked on…

15

Cubase has had bezier curves for automation since 9.5 I believe. Or do you mean bezier curves for MIDI parameters in the MIDI edit windows? Waiting for that one.

16

It’s coming, and not TOO far away (I think).

17

Similar path too. Started on Cubase (more seriously) on a Win2000 machine, and got sucked into video editing so jumped to a Mac and final cut/logic setup. And since apples recent pricing and limiting users ability to upgrade hardware, I’ve been trying to find a cross platform solution.

Right now I’ve actually enjoyed Cubase so much (tried Studio One and Reaper) I’ve even moved to a windows machine which is something I never thought would happen.

There’s something about Cubase’s mixer and how it reacts when you over-cook/boost tracks that it seems to clip as per an analog desk without the digital harshness, I don’t know what it’s doing but that is a big reason I love Cubase.

9 times out of 10 it produces better results for me, the EQ, Saturators etc all seem to act how I expect - it’s just a joy at getting me to a sound that I want, oh and the chord track is a godsend for producing songs, and I love that you can start recording at any time when track is playing, Logic isnt so instantaneous, you have to be much more deliberate with recording.

Agree with the preset/mediabay comments too. It’s the main element of Cubase I struggle with.