I have never seen Cubase at Mixing With The Masters–or any pro guys using it to mix top records. In fact, usually when someone is talking about Pro Tools alternatives, I hear Logic or Studio One. Never Cubase.
Of course, I’m sure many professionals are using Cubase. But what’s stopping it from taking over even 30% of the pro mixing market? At least the optics are not showing that.
Because they’re being sent protools sessions.
In on protools
Out on protools
Its just like 2 inch 24 track tape used to be, just the lowest common world wide standard.
Nothing to do with the actual work done in between in and out.
the statement in the question is not supported by objective numbers.
Would you e.g. consider Hans Zimmer to be a pro?
In addition this is very much like “Why is every pro on Mac”? The answer would be: First of all it is not true and secondly: Because obviously “Pros” are in love with vendor lock-in and pretty design, while carrying a Rucksack full of adapters to connect to the rest of the world is necessary. (Most likely you need an ORIGINAL Apple-Rucksack to put the tons of adapters into it) ;o)
Ernst
Hans is a composer. I think Cubase is lightyears ahead for mixing than PT. PT might still have a minor edge in audio editing.
its too expensive switch ALL market from PT to Cubase/Nuendo.
HZ composes with Cubase which gets mixed in Protools. And the OP is about DAWs that ‘‘pro mixers’’ use. As mentioned before Protools replaced the 2inch early on and soon mixing desk before anyone else. It makes no sense for all pro audio or post studios and mix engineers to change it no matter what new stuff comes out.It means less compatibility, obsolete archives and days lost learning a new DAW. The other DAWs are used more on an individual basis. Especially by new comers. Although both DAWs are behind Cubase, to get Logic or S1 is easy. Buy, download and start to use instantly. No waiting for a dongle which I think puts a lot of people off. By the way how S1 came to this status so quick is, Presonus always aimed first for the fastest workflow over more features.
StudioOne is a rewrite of Cubase - isn’t it?
It is rather interesting how Studio One has had a meteoric rise in the pro community. In fact, they are gunning for Pro Tools market.
There is a “pro tools expert” website, and a “logic expert,” and a “studio one expert”…never a Cubase expert. Many times I see plugin developers wont even feature Cubase as a host daw in their promotional screenshots.
Cubase is just as old, if not older, than Pro Tools! It’s been around since the 80s. And now Yamaha owns Steinberg.
Funny that Steinberg renamed Cubase to Cubase Pro, and started offering cross grades from Pro Tools.
Protools originally came with expensive proprietary hardware and was marketed to pro studios under similar purchase and lease conditions from the same pro audio dealers that were in the pro studio equipment dealers they were used to.
Most of these studios already used Macs for automation of analogue desks so it fitted in well
And was marketed at engineers.
It was never meant to be a music compositional or home music tool.
Cubase came from the home computer /composition creative base to which audio recording was added
Totally different
Things have blurred over the years, but origins still linger in perceptions
True. Creativity/process in composition has also evolved exponentially. Cubase now is extremely powerful (so are computers), and has the potential to be THE DAW. Hopefully, we get there soon.
Biggest one for me is’
ProTools saves a project “session” upon creating a new project.
In cubase it creates an “untitled” folder first, even thou you select a project folder, you have to “save as” project at the beginning. If you forget to save as your project at the begining, all the audio files will go into “untitled project” folder and then when you remember to name and save as the project it will be under new name but audio files will be in “untitled folder”…
Very cluttered.
ProTools is much more organized
And for issues like slow preset browser and media bay:
Because Protools is promoted to them. At times force-fed to them unintentionally.
Pro Tools is still the industry standard when it comes to audio and is widely used in studios all over the world. But it really sucks at midi… 
That’s where Cubase really excels. Even compared to other DAW’s.
The short answer is, people are not able to think for themselves.
In North America you can blame it on Russ Jones Marketing and have to go back to the late 80s. Jones teamed up with Steinberg and formed “Steinberg / Jones to promote Cubase in North America. Russ Jones did a deplorable job promoting what all of us knew was the most ground breaking “sequencer”. The term DAW had not been coined yet. In fact, Cubase was the first true Digital Audio Workstation when they introduced the 4 track “Cubase Audio” in the early 90’s, possible late 80’s.
Cubase is much more common in Europe where they had a different distribution deal.
Bottom Line: Digidesign (sold to Avid) paid very generous “spiffs” to sales people who sold their product over the competitors. Russ Jones Marketing was asleep at the wheel.
I was working in music retail selling recording equipment in NYC during the late 80’s and 90s.
I was a beta tester for Digidesign’s Sound Designer, Sound Tools, Session 8 and the first “Pro Tools” and had a ring-side seat to all the different DAWs that came along. Steinberg was always a trail blazer and if it hadn’t been for Russ Jones Marketing in the USA Cubase would have taken over the North American Market.
Even though I was beta testing lots of different offerings back then I always used Cubase for my own work as did many creatives at the time. After a few years of Digidesighn products being pushed on the big studios, herd mentality took over and persists to this day.
For the same reasons, the music sequencer “Logic “by Emagic (Now Apple) became the musicians choice for song creation while Protools became the Post Production choice due to the fact that It’s midi and notation features were none existent at the time.
Steinberg continued to blaze trails with the creation of ASIO and VST. No one could even imagine the possibility of Virtual Studio Instruments at the time. Or virtual audio effects and processors - now know ubiquitously as plug-ins. Yet, here we are.
To this day I still evangelize people over to Steinberg whenever I can. And I’m always thanked later.
Now you know !
Onward !
PS - Curious to know if Avid was ever able to figured out how to handle stereo interleaved files… That was always a non-starter for me.
Wow–thanks for sharing that; very insightful. However, ProTools did get some stuff right for audio–they’re just not innovative. And their business model is really parasitic. But then I think, Avid knows the Hollywood/LA/NY/Nashville market and how much money is involved. They just want their cut by any means, even if it’s by imposing artificial limitations and then providing paid proprietary solutions, knowing that an industry is used to and invested in their system.
yep