I am buying a small mixer for a side project, (the Yamaha MG10XU), it comes with Cubase AI. I have a home studio and I’ve been frustrated with another DAW that doesn’t support polyphonic aftertouch and has caused much aggravation when trying to record a MIDI HiHat pedal or cymbal chokes on an electric drum kit. I hear Cubase does support that so I plan on using it as well as my other DAW and if I like it enough I suppose I’ll just switch over.
I am still trying to figure out the difference between Cubase AI and Elements. I also would like to find out if there are differences in the recording and editing abilities of MIDI in various Cubase versions. Any info would be appreciated. The more detailed the better. Thanks!
Here’s the main things that are missing in Cubase AI compared to Cubase Elements:
-No Hermode tuning
-No Dither effect
-No Remote Control Editor
-Only 4 Insert effects and 4 Send effects per channel (Elements has 8 of both)
-Can’t quickly switch between the primary and secondary timer display format (For example switch everything from bars+beats to seconds)
-No Sampler Track (this gives you the ability to quickly turn any audio selection or file into a playable instrument, includes filters and envelopes)
-No Arranger Track (plays different sections of a project in any order you want, without moving anything)
-No Chord Editor in the piano roll (allows you to quickly draw chords or edit selected note groups)
-You can’t disable tracks (good for making big templates with many VST instruments/effects pre-loaded)
-Limited Channel Strip (Cubase AI has EQ and normal Compressor only, Elements adds low+high pass filters and gain before inserts, Noise Gate, Tube Compressor, Vintage Compressor, EnvelopeShaper, Tape Saturation, Tube Saturation, Brickwall Limiter, Standard Limiter, Maximizer)
Cubase Elements-only VST instrument and content:
Prologue (synth), Acoustic Agent for Groove Agent SE 4 (deep sampled drums)
For Cubase Elements vs higher-tier versions, this should give you a rough idea of the differences: Compare the Versions of Cubase | Steinberg
Overall Artist and Pro are a big improvement over Elements, and you should definitely look into buying one of them if you like Cubase. The MIDI implementation in Cubase Pro is very complete and powerful.
Just so you know, you can upgrade Cubase AI to Elements at half the usual price.
Cubase started life before there was a Windows OS, and before there was a MAC. It was a powerful MIDI editor then. It has built upon those beginnings in each release since then.
I wasn’t aware of that… interesting. The comparison they show says a feature in Artist that’s not in Elements is “Full instrument expression control on single-note level”. Hmmm… What does that mean exactly? Are they referring to polyphonic aftertouch support? They aren’t super clear if the capabilities of the MIDI editor are the same in all of the versions or if they differ.
On a disappointing sidenote, I’m reading several negative reviews that say they bought Cubase but it’s not available on disc or usb and you have to download it from Steinberg but the file is corrupted and they can’t get a response from customer support. That is HUGELY disappointing.
Just remember… you see “several negative reviews” out of 86585 forum users. So the vast majority did not have problems with this concern.
BTW… I submitted a support request to Steinberg (not related to this concern) 3 days ago. I already received two email responses. The last one directed me to call them at the given number. I did, we discussed the issue and… BOOM! Issue resolved. In less than 3 days. Nice!
I’m not sure what 86585 refers to, I guess I’m uncool lol. The reviews I was talking about were buyers on Amazon. It’s good to hear you had that type of support. So who are 86585 users?
Well this isn’t very good. I just downloaded the 90 trial of Elements and it won’t install. Says it can’t connect to the license server. Not looking too good for Cubase right now.
Something in your computer or router is blocking access to the server. It’s extremely rare for the license server to be down.
Try disabling any antivirus or third party firewall software and run the eLicenser Control Center as administrator (right click). It could be helpful to know which OS you’re using.
Keep in mind that a very large portion of Amazon reviewers are impatient computer illiterate people and even software with ultra simple installers get negative reviews for magically not working, or because support didn’t respond within 3 hours during a weekend… It’s not exclusive to Cubase.
Cubase Elements does support Poly Pressure events. “Full instrument expression control on single-note level” refers to Note Expression, a VST 3 feature invented by Steinberg.
This video was recorded with an old version of Cubase, but it should give you an idea of how it works:
86585 is the number of members in the Steinberg forum. My point was there are users who have issues dowloading and installing Cubase and other Steinberg software but… the vast majority do not have any issue. Sounds like you seem to be having issues. I hope the suggestions posted by Romantique Tp helps.
Yeah, I was using a hotspot at work to download the 5Gb file for the Elements trial version. My cell creates a mobile hotspot but it throttles any tethered connection (lame). So that makes sense and I’m sure it would work but now that you say it doesn’t support polyphonic aftertouch I’m not even going to bother with it, that’s the whole reason I wanted to use Cubase. Everybody was saying it did support that and that it was really great with MIDI.
I really don’t understand why ANY DAW would not support that. That’s a basic 101 recording need. If you’re using an electric drum kit like VDrums, it’s necessary. It’s super frustrating running into this with now 2 major DAWs.
