to me Cubase is perfect and far more superior then any other DAW, I tried them all except ProTools
I think it lack some pirated version so younger people could use it and bring new blood to the community. Air’s Cubase 5 made it fantastically popular among users especially in my third world country. I used to it so much back then that I sold my kidney and bought the full pro version a decade later (that’s why I am so pi**ed I don’t get legit support vie My Steinberg here in my country).
But now I wouldn’t recommend Cubase to any of my friends cuz they will never be able to effort it.
Speaking about fan base - look how much views on YouTube gets new version of Ableton and new version of Cubase. The numbers differs drastically. These old Cubase users from 2000th are asking weird features like stereo to mono switcher, while non of modern EDM producers except Zedd does use Cubase.
No wonder why Cubase is like 100$ per year subscription than a real DAW for a fee. I think in closest five years the situation will become even worse. Any sound design tutorial on YouTube that has more then 50`000 views are in Abletone or FL Studio.
I am electronic producer and the biggest feature I was waiting for are bezier curves for automations.
Now I am waiting for real macros like in Massive or XY-controler in FL Studio. Without this feature Cubase will always lose to Ableton\Bitwig\FL Studio. And modern electronic music is very sophisticated about sound design, so this is crucial for me. Sometimes I need jump between DAWs to get what I want.
Despite the greatest Cubase users NOISIA are epic sound designers, I still think Cubase lack of this functionality.
I don’t think Cubase lacks of anything else, really, lol.
100% of time Cubase stock plugin user xD 3rd parties stuff is marketing bullshit.
Could you name a few for example? What would make Cubase faster?
Reduce dependance on the Inspector. Have volume and pan at the VERY least, and preferably inserts, sends, and ins/outs all available for immediate adjustment in the track header. Almost all other DAWs have this in one shape or form for a very good reason. How is it faster? One of many examples: Adjusting the volume requires one simple click/adjust on the volume box on the track header, as opposed to first clicking on the track to select it then moving your mouse over to the Inspector then possibly clicking again because it’s not on the right section then actually clicking/adjusting. One click and adjust vs. multiple clicks and mouse moves, then click and adjust. When you use this in PT or other DAWs you see how much undeniably faster it makes things, also including copy and pasting and moving inserts between different tracks and many more. In PT and others it’s all completely configurable so can see what you want in the track headers.
Stop the audio engine from dropping out/the program from pausing so much when you insert new VSTis or plugins. When you come from PT, Reaper, Logic, Studio One, etc., you immediately see how having this issue in Cubase slows down/interrupts workflow significantly.
Be able to do anything with track arrangement in the Mix Window that you can do in Project Window and vice-versa, i.e. moving tracks around, using tab to get from track title to track title, creating groups from tracks, and many more. Having to go back-and-forth between the two instead of immediate access while in either one is a flow-killer.
The Mix Window is slow in that you need to be expanding and closing different sections to get to different parts of it, whereas other DAWs manage to include nearly everything Cubase does without the amount of expanding and closing or scrolling that you need to do in Cubase.
There are many more smaller things, all of which add up to significant time and flow wasting on deadline-sensitive projects in my case. Cubase has many areas in which there are far too many clicks and navigation needed to do things that should be able be done in far less or even just one, which is the main problem as far as speed is concerned. The points I made (and others that I didn’t make here) are all inarguably things that slow things down…but either that bothers someone, or they for some reason prefer to click and navigate more. It’s a preference (a curious one if you choose to want to do more work to get something done), so many of these things should be options for those who still want the aged way of working with these things.
With many of the things people have mentioned here and in other posts, it would appear that either Cubase is indeed getting old because they’re stuck in legacy code that keeps some things stuck in older ways of working/functioning, or for whatever other reason these things haven’t been achieved yet and are keeping Cubase behind the others in these significant ways. Cubase has tons of features that are amazing, and they also need to step up their game in the ways mentioned here and elsewhere in order to keep up with others as far as core functionality and workflow (NOT changing the way Cubase works, but rather improving it in order to stay at the top with other DAWs as far as things like the the audio engine and workflow speed).
all I know is, Cubase 10 is unstable and I have an ULTRA modern PC that I bought for the express purposes of a powerful audio workstation. overcklocking an i9 processor crashes cubase 10 and bricks the PC. This is the only app that does this on my system. I hope they address it soon.
Overclocking a DAW system is defo not recommended. Maybe if you are super clued up on your bios settings and have A grade cooling, (and have the time to test to get it stable), but even then it’s asking for headaches imo and it doesnt matter if your system is ultra old or ultra modern! Run it at stock speed, make sure ALL bios settings related to power are correct (i.e you want the CPU running at full tilt all the time, no throttling or power saving enabled), and you should be closer to a stable system.
The main area I feel Cubase REALLY struggles compared to other DAMS is controller mapping. Cubase is my primary DAW and I love it… but can you honestly compare quick controls with the way Ableton (for example) handles mapping assignments.
What you’ve said makes no sense. It’s a contradiction. First you imply it is ‘old’ and steinberg doesn’t innovate. Then you imply they waste efforts making ‘new’ features. You’ve answers your own question.
Cu8base is like a decent cheese , matures and gets better with age . In my world for the last 30 years Cubase has been and always will be the only DAW , after Yamaha taking over i thought that was it, going down the pan but how wrong i was .
Forever innovating and keeping up with the times and even forward moving from the inventers of VST … Old ? not a chance .
Cubase is the OG DAW! Every time I have to go to another DAW like Ableton for warping / Simpler sampling I always want to get the stems and put them back into Cubase as soon as I can. You can do everything in Cubase and navigate the entire interface without a mouse, edit and arrange like a ninja.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they add better midi mapping and warping / slicing features in the update - all the pressure from hip kids these days i says! I’m in both the game scoring world and pop production world and just love Cubase, looking forward to next month!
Ableton just does a few things uniquely well, the sampler called “Simpler” has the Beat warping mode (time stretching) built in and you can manipulate samples and retain punchiness and transients like no other vst / daw can do. Elastique is very good and I love groove agent and Cubase’s sampler track, and also use Kontakt - but none of these can do what Simpler does in that extremely specific regard. Which is also probably one of the most highly used production tools of modern music and sound design.
People also send Ableton files for collaboration, most people in the pop world I know use Ableton / Logic. I’m always trying to move people to Cubase, all the game composers use Cubase. Cubase is also huge in Asia, living in Tokyo now it’s mostly Cubase over Logic. People talk about it’s declining popularity but if you’re looking at Asia, it’s the most widely used it seems to me.
Unix is from early 70’s. It is the base for mac, ipad, iphones, android, chromebook in form of linux (that is also in most wifi routers and webservers). For sure it is not the same unix today as it was then, but the fundamentals are. In the linux case not a single line of code comes from the original. But it as been evolving and maintained very good for some 50 years. So if a software is old or not is not really a relevant question. The question is, is it maintained and evolving good enough to still be relevant?
During lockdown I bought a 2ndhand Mac and Logic with the intention of learning it, as almost all my clients use Logic to produce on. Some wanted me to start mixing\ad prod in Logic so we could back on forth on projects. Hard for an old dog to learn new tricks but I really didn’t get on with Logic at all. So much of it is counter intuitive coming from Cubase, the mixer for one is absolutely horrible. I now only use the Mac for bouncing stems from Logic and do all my work in Cubase. So as it turned out I’ve spent £800 to bounce other peoples stems lol. At least I can bounce stuff properly and make adjustments to stuff pre Cubase, most beat makers have a habit of smashing every thing to bits and sending me ridiculously hot multitracks. Cubase isn’t getting old but I am.
