Not one Cubase mention in Reddit EDM favourite Daw thread!

The Edm community on Reddit has half a million subscribers. There was barely a mention of cubase in the edm community thread about what daws people loved. This speaks volumes.

Cubase is going to have to seriously evolve to survive long term. And that includes features for the edm community. And yes ableton session view.

Times have changed. Ignore young edm producers at your peril. If you don’t draw them in when they’re young, you won’t get them when they’re older with disposable income. The film score community isn’t big enough to sustain steinberg long term. This needs to happen fast. Competition is getting fierce. I hope steinberg have been clever with their road map.

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So the only two groups of people who use a DAW are film score composers and EDM producers?

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I’d rather they fix bugs and focus on things song writers and studio musicians need. EDM producers could use alot of these things as well (even if they don’t know it yet)!

Additions/improvements to the macro/command system. I.E. An easy way to call up a ‘specific’ VSTpreset with a single key-command or macro…not just get a dialog to go hunt it.

A few other automation lane types…such as…macro player, record/monitor toggle, etc.

Beef up the real time MIDI transformers, and/or give us MORE of them.

A way to tag events so that the arranger track can ignore them on specific repeats, and/or recognize and play tied notes upon repeating (I.E. The song starts with pick-up beats, last note of a section ties to a note over the repeat bar back to the first full bar of the arrangement).

I’ve long wanted simpler things like, more event types in the logic editors (and full documentation for all the data types). I.E. It’d be nice if we could use the Logic Editor to move notes living in a part into the expression map ‘key-switch’ lane. I’d love it if I could have the logic editor find all the generic ff dynamic markings from an imported XML, and change them to the translatable version of ff that expression maps can use (or why doesn’t it just import them properly in the first place?). The parameters already exist in a data table somewhere…just allow the logic editor to address and manipulate those fields!

A few minor additions to the score editor’s expression map system. Namely in regards to using things like legato and hold pedals.

Unlocked drum maps after importing from something like Groove Agent. It could save time if after importing such a drum map from an instrument, we could change the output port(s) in addition to the MIDI channel(s) (I know an xml hack to unlock it, but it steals time, sigh).

Improvements to XML score import/export.

Built in loop-back/virtual MIDI port(s).

AUX Sends on Instrument tracks (like MIDI tracks have). Oh, and can we have at least 16 of them?

More sets of Quick Controls (or the ability to expand the one we have, and include a way to select among them in places we need Quick Controls).

More/better logic editors! I’d like to have them for anything and everything the DAW can do! Tempo tracks, automation lanes, arranger tracks, and more!

Allow us to put more/smarter conditions on a Project Logic editor playing back a macro.

Give us some sort of global variables we can store and manipulate information with in Logic Editors.

Allow the MIDI Logic Editors to ‘create arbitrary events’ (not just transform/delete/add-to) according to set conditions.

Logic Editor for VST automation lanes.

Automation Lane versions, and the ability to easily export/import the info on these lanes independently to disk. Yeah, we can kludge in the effect by working with complete MIDI tracks and building 12+ step macros…but in this case, a one click solution already done for the user would be nice.

Instead we get stuff like a sample track (already had Groove Agent and it worked fine). GUI changes. New skins for old plugins, and sometimes new or overhauled plugins.

The new sample editing features are a big plus…but alot of the fluff intended for EDM producers…well, darn near every bit of it we can already do inside our instruments or add with plugins.

Unfortunately, we can not add or tweak ‘editors’, fix nagging little bugs, etc, with plugins.

Honestly…I could care less about having a DAW do ‘instrument level things’ like pump VST controls with LFO. After all…the plugins/instruments we paid a king’s ransom for ALREADY have their own LFO routines! Why would I want to put this job off on the host? For the ones that don’t have LFO, comb filters, etc…I have bidule and other plugins that can achieve the same effect (and can also use it to enter/swap plugins and stuff in unarmed tracks while the transport is going/DAW is playing without any glitches). A lot of the stuff EDM producers want…they can have with a ‘plugin’.

Anyone that needs Cubase in a live performance scenario (DJ, EDM, stage keyboardists, etc) should have a serious look at Bidule! That thing is kind of ugly to look at, but it’s amazing to use, and patches all sorts of features for real time monitoring and stream manipulation (all remote controllable and VST/OSC/MIDI automatable) into ANY DAW. For Cubase in particular…because of the way ASIO Guard is implemented, it can be a real challenge to make major changes to the signal flow while the DAW is playing and not get stops/clicks/etc. Arming/disarming tracks…not a good idea with Cubase while the transport is rolling if an ‘audience’ is listening. Strategic instances of Bidule can solve that…allowing for real time spontaneous, smooth sounding swapping of plugins and more!

Sometimes the stuff EDM producers demand conflict with things all the other studios need. EDM folks want more control over ‘real time’ stuff…things that require the main cores over logical processors, and can quickly max out the audio buffer unless the DJ is very careful about building things, taking advantage of discrete processing, etc. They tend to expect the DAW to do things their plugins and instruments are already capable of if they’d just open the plugin (perhaps read the documentation for it) and USE IT.

If I had a nickle for every time someone asked (and came in here to slam Cubase for not having it without a little work on our part) how to pump a VST control for a synth that has its own IMPRESSIVE LFO matrix built in (one that can even be taught to do things relative to tempo), I could buy quite a lot of new kit with the rolls of nickles :wink:

Studio musicians/producers for other genras of music are more likely to just need LOTS OF TRACKS and instruments (and the way ASIO Guard is designed, benefits these people more…they’ll bounce down and save the stuff that is seriously impacted by latency and real time precision for last…it’s not unusual for them to have projects with hundreds, or even THOUSANDS of tracks).

Please don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against adding new features that appeal to EDM producers. It’d be nice however, if we could get some the stuff on our 10+ year old wish lists (sometimes things no other DAW can do at this point either) as well!

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Yes. Between Ableton, Bitwig and where Logic is going that seems to be a crowded market controlled by companies that know that demographic much better. Regular, musical DAWs seem to be left to the likes of Cubase and Studio One.

However, and here’s the rub I suspect…the EDM market can be a very tempting one to a company. Most of the folks into that kind of production are, I suspect, pretty good customers that buy additional products. There is a seemingly endless demand for loops, samples, chord packs and presets. Just look at Native Instrument. Started out making instruments and effects and now a large part of their business seems to be all these theme packs, all of them EDM oriented.

I’m guessing the average regular studio musician don’t have that need. A few good instruments and some effects and then you’re set. They spend their cash on physical stuff instead like mics and guitars. Or possibly plugins but then it’s usually not the actual producers of DAWs that get the business but rather third party companies like Waves etc. Probably not a coincidence that UA is launching their own DAW with Luna.

I think it’s already well known, since several years, that the so-called ‘EDM community’ are using either Ableton, FL Studio or Bitwig. AFAIK, Cubase has survived until now (last update : 11.0.30 - 24th june 2021), despite this…

This is faintly threatening hyperbole, and in my view it lacks credibility, especially considering the OP doesn’t have any actual sales data from Steinberg or others to do a real comparison.

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What a load of hog wash , Steinberg still owns a big chunk of the market and EDM is a very mis used title for a lot of electronic based artists that refuse to use the American terminology . Show us the Worlds results ,not some silly thread in some silly forum

Presumably results come out of revenues. I think the Ableton people are doing alright in that market.

I agree that the concessions in Cubase are … missing the mark. The Medial Bay is somehow slower than just using Explorer to look for files. I have all the RAM, and all the cores – it should be trivial to pre-load all the files, in the background, and switch folders or do searches faster than it takes to draw another frame on the screen. (Look at Voidtools Everything for something that searches YOUR ENTIRE HARD DISK in fractions of a second, without any pre-indexing necessary. Because the OS (MFT) already knows what your files are called.) Instead, just navigating a folder up or down is sooo slooow, much less trying to audition anything. If Komplete Kontrol can do it for presets across their entire set of instruments, why can’t Steinberg?

Similarly, Steinberg invented VST, and then made VST 3 to support sample-accurate automation. Yet … their Eq and Gain stages don’t actually support sample-accurate automation. I ended up writing my own VCF and VCA to be able to cut on the beat. (I’m sure some other plugin I own could do it too, but … I have the tools, and it was a fun throwback to earlier days of my career.)

Sometimes it’s as simple as defaults. Open up a sample of some phrase. If you use the “warp” tool, to try to match up tempo with the audio, it … changes the tempo track, not the audio. And when using AudioWarp, it pins the end of the event in place, so if I try to shorten the phrase before it, the end gets ludicrously stretched/extended, rather than ripple-following. I can see how all these defaults make sense in a world where the audio is immutable (“it’s the dialog track matching the pictures”) and music is composed in that context.

Anyway, I hear Virtual Riot uses Cubase, so at least there’s that :smiley:

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I’m confused. I tap F5 for media bay and I see no ‘folders’ for search results. Only place I see ‘folders’ are in the left pane (if it’s open) where I can assign or unassign watch folders. It opens instantly and already has stuff showing from whatever filter configuration I used last. I don’t even have mine configured to show me actual ‘file names and locations’…even though I could if I wanted that info.

For me Media Bay is quite fast, and has scads of searching/bagging/tagging/rating features, with power user features to decide what I want showing in a column and the order I want it displayed. I type in a portion of a keyword/name, or click the many filters provided. I click a sound and can instantly audition it without needing to load it into the DAW first (even has a little MIDI recorder/player there if it’s a plugin preset or midiloop). It shows me more than just media files, but also VSTpresets. It also shows me what is inside VSTsound archives, AKAI and Roland Sample disk images (have H6), and more.

I’m also really digging the midiloop import/export features of Cubase, and having the instrument end-points intact so I can browse and one click audition them in Media Bay.

Very little of that relational DB stuff (key words, author info, plugin information, tags for tempo/style/character/etc.) is in the ‘MFT’. While I understand that my ‘media and preset collection’ isn’t going to be as massive as a hard core EDM producer…I’m not seeing why it’d be slow unless you just don’t have much memory in your PC, or something system specific isn’t flaking. It’s more than a ‘file browser’, it is a complete relational data base, and one of the BEST PARTS of Cubase.

If for some strange reason Steinberg broke this exceptional aspect of the DAW, and replaced it with a ‘fast/dumb file browser’, I’d be pretty pissed off.

For what it’s worth, on my system I did a windows search for a particular sample that I happened to ‘know’ exists on my system (exact file name), it took it a long time to find it.

In Cubase, I tapped F5 and found it in mere seconds after clearing the filters and typing in only the first few letters, clicked it, auditioned it from Media Bay, then drug it straight onto a sample track, and was tweaking it for implementation within SECONDS.

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Wait, what… there’s a reedit EDM community!

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Yeah, if you use explorer search, it’ll suck :slight_smile: Voidtools is special.

I don’t mean “folder,” I mean … “collection?” Whatever the little icons are called.

I have 36 collections where some came with Cubase and some were part of “buy a big pack of expansions” that seemed to be on sale at some point on the Steinberg site. Pack rat, that’s me.

Clicking “loops and samples” and then clicking on a collection takes several seconds. At least the first time. (It is faster after I’ve already done it, but why wouldn’t this just be preloaded? It’s all metadata, it all fits in memory, as you say.)
My system has 128 GB of RAM and 16 cores; if that’s “too little” then I guess it’s time to hang up the monitors and take up golf or something …

It gets worse when the filtered type is not “audio files” – going into some folder with MIDI files (say, “EDM toolbox”) and clicking around very quickly stops being responsive. Each click takes probably a full second before it starts playing.

Regarding filtering and classification; if you can get all those tags on all the content, that’s great and all. It’s not really relational because you can’t “join” between datasets, but I get what you say – someone actually tagging everything for you is a lot of value.

(I’m actually kind-of disappointed with Steinberg and Native Instruments that they can’t just make the metadata go both ways; it’s eminently technically possible but each of them wants their own little walled garden or something, to the detriment of me, the paying user trying to find that particular trumpet sound I need … and, if you’re into EDM, I imagine Splice would be another target to integrate.)

OK, only 12 cores and 64gig here, and ran it on an old HEX core on cheap DDR2/SATA2 tech with only 8gb for many years. My ‘collection’ is SMALL relative to the kinds of things typical EDM producers would have and try to manage.

Still…

For VSTi presets and midiloops, given that clicking a sound in media bay and releasing the button calls up a complete plugin state in the background, it makes sense it’ll take a moment.

In contrast, if you ‘know’ that’s the sound you’re looking for, it’s probably better to use a right click option or a click and drag one to get it loaded into the project straight away. Skip the ‘audition phase’ all together.

Plus, if it’s really a lot faster, and I knew the sound I wanted lives in Kontakt, what about just having a track on ready that can be instantly imported into Cubase with an instance of the plugin initialized and ready to go, then find the sound inside Kontakt? better yet, just keep some instances in the ‘project template’ for this purpose. Having a few instances already loaded and on standby would also reduce the chance that injecting something new into the mix while the transport is rolling would cause ‘stop glitches’ as the DAW loads things and reassigns processor tasks.

Again, I may be misunderstanding the demand here. My media and preset collection is going to be really small compared to a PRO EDM producer. I don’t need the sound up and running in a few seconds like a stage-performing EDM/DJ star, without causing the daw to ‘glitch’ while monkeying around and injecting new demands on the system load. If I did, on a regular basis I don’t think I’d choose a DAW like Cubase in the first place. Legacy support and all would be less important…I’d go for something that was designed for ‘real time work flow with modern plugin technologies’ from day one. It’d likely be something more free from the baggage of maintaining ‘higher degrees of legacy support’.

Just me, but again…I have a 10 year old wish list for really simple things in Cubase that probably don’t involve scrapping 20 year old technologies and redoing them from the ground up. More like…“Hey, the engine can already do this. Lets just give the user a UI or scripting back-door, and the information required to access and manipulate those data tables)”. Hey, all this stuff is already in the engine, and stored in the same data formats as everything else…so lets give the user a track-type to automate it!" “Gee, yanno, we already have alot of this code that does this and that to MIDI tracks, we’ve already got ways a user can ‘convert’ this to an automation lane and such. Why not ‘reuse’ this code, and allow the same sorts of batch processing, cycle recording, etc…that one can do with a MIDI track?”

Give me more hooks to make the most of the current engine (More/better logic editors and/or a route to bypass the clicky UI thinggies and import text-editor scripts for these, more automation track types, etc.).

Fix the minor bugs that riddle the DAW (even if they only impact a relatively small portion of Cubase users).

I do understand that if I wanted to set up a rig on a dance floor and do insanely improvisational things to a project in real time, wile also running a light rig and fog machines…Cubase might well NOT be the DAW to go with.

As mention before, I only need that kind of ‘on demand’ speed and accuracy occasionally, and simply ‘supplementing’ Cubase with something like Bidule is ‘enough’ for my needs.

However, if I want support for instruments made anywhere from nineteen eighty weird to cutting edge ‘today’, to through compose a song or score, get tons of theory/editing/compositional aids, and render a really nice ‘mix/recording’, it’s the first DAW I’d reach for.

Many of the Cubase features I use the MOST are just ‘bloat’ to an EDM producer. A lot of the things they demand, while I’d find very useful, still take a major back seat to a 10 year old wish list of relatively ‘simple’ feature requests and/or bug fixes.

I am working in Ableton about 3 years. It’s simple amazing for Edm. Super great workflow, cool stock fxs. Amazing session view etc. At this summer I was purchased Cubase also just for film scoring

Well there’s not a lot of mentioning cause there is no up to date Cubase version on the cracked market :wink:

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Sad truth…and for legit licensees, the entry price tends to be lower as well.

Funny thing is how they ‘demand’ all those cpu intensive features to end up with a product that sounds like a Commodore 64 playing first generation MOD files.

Half the time it sounds like something I could make with a free Atari Emulator and mod maker. The other half, when they do actually go for a sound that’s not 8bit from hell, it’s like the whole point of the piece was to see if it can generate frequencies specifically designed to try to contort and DESTROY a good set of loud speakers.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of GOOD EDM out there too. It’s just…well, we’re talking about Reddit folks here :wink:

Ah! If I know what sound it is, no problem!

What I know is what the sound I want should sound like. Then comes the problem of finding some preset that sounds close enough – hence, why speed of auditioning is crucial.

Native Instruments solves this for their synths by having a small sample of each present of each instrument entirely for auditioning, in Komplete Kontrol. No loading DLLs or initializing patches needed! And it’s pretty easy to suck it all into RAM and play it fast.

I do agree there are many things that could be improved, in GUI and workflow if nothing else. Making all the standard features support sample accurate automation would be one of those things …

I’m kind of blown away by the demand for this.

Human ears aren’t that good…and the speakers (only the most expensive and perfectly placed/setup/powered ones can ‘begin’ to detect and reproduce such increments of precision), the intermediary D/A converters on the thousands of chips sets out there, ear-buds, ultimate listening environments tend to color/compress/lossy the mess as well.

It’s also odd that a good portion of the plugins out there are dedicated to ‘muddying things up’ and making it sound more ‘analogue and imperfect’ to boot.

So we demand perfect sample accuracy at one level, then throw a triple stage tape saturation plugin on the desk to undo it.

Hmm…

Hey, I get it, some kinds of sound design and hard core ‘research’ demand sample accuracy, and predictable results that can be calculated and reproduced ‘perfectly’ every single time it’s played.

However, tracking a few guys with guitars, drum sets, and a babe or two with a Mic…knowing full well 99.9% of the target market is going to be listening on cheap ear buds, even cheaper/worse D/A converters, through lossy MP3 players…

I’d much rather have an improved user macro and key-command interface, and more/better logic editors.

A nice warm mix that should sound ‘musical’ and expose all the things I want heard, while hiding the stuff I don’t…in as many ‘listening devices’ and ‘media formats’ as possible is the goal.

We’re dithering, compressing, and nosieng the mess out of it anyway…so hopefully it’ll sound nice in the crappiest speakers on the planet, and perhaps even ‘sparkle’ in a nice Hi Fi system that’s set up properly in a good room.

EDM is gonna get played in noisy clubs, with crappy acoustics, through whatever racks and stacks one can get there on time, and get a good price from a stage/light/sound company. It’s all over the map!

The EDM community majorly runs on cracked software - if Cubase dropped it’s protection then it would be far more popular. It’s really as simple as that. The more people that jump on it, the more people making tips/tricks videos on youtube etc. It’s a case of follow the leader, and as you say when disposable income occurs, the chances of legit users increases.

I used to play live and others I’d meet at venues would ask me if the ilok was a memory card reader, the levels of piracy in EDM is just mad. In fact, that even stems down to sample packs that many use as the basis of their music too. Steinberg don’t help this conundrum in that basic functions like Sidechaining and Audio quantizing/warping was considered high tier features that require a dongle - they’re bare necessities for EDM.

Only recently sidechaining is now in the Elements version. But then they don’t allow you to use any of the MIDI effects such as Chorder, LFO, or Arpache SX (For arps) at Elements level - it’s just insane, the MIDI effects are decades old and hardly a ‘premium’ feature.

In regards to usability and session view, Cubase bigger issue is to fix the ease at which you can control instruments and effects chains without needing to expand menus and such like - that’s a bigger turn off for those coming from Ableton, as most legit EDM artists use arrange view when composing anyway.

There’s also a ton of controllers for Ableton that utilises it’s rack/grid system - Cubase has the CC121, but even that is limited to 8 ‘quick’ parameters per track which aren’t easily managed. You can’t scroll through the devices and make real-time changes to the reverb after your lead synth for example. Look at what you can do with the Push controller as a comparison.

Also the transformers and max4live style expansion is something Cubase is miles behind on. If you wanted to compare Cubase with something like Ableton/Bitwig/FLStudio they’re quite different at the core level. Cubase can’t even do uninterrupted playback at this point, it’s a very much deliberate DAW for the more mature/methodical user and is years up that path.

The trouble with focusing Cubase to the EDM crowd is that Steinberg would do it via bolt-ons to what’s there, and it’d be a longterm mess. When the actual solution (above) is to reduce software protection, or cleanup the lower tier products to offer features people want, and rewrite core elements in the DAW so that it can achieve continuous playback and navigation is simple/fresher. At that point, they have something to build on.

It’s much more likely that going down a subscription route will be their answer to attracting new EDM users, but even then it’ll be priced too high as they have existing users and their invested value to consider - would cause a storm!

Honestly, I think Steinberg are best to just keep doing their thing, if they make continuous improvements based on community feedback and fix bugs then there’s no better seller than word of mouth. But the lack of core basic features at entry level products is doing them no good, you can’t even see if Variaudio/Comping does what you need without buying a dongle, the point of entry is just too guarded - getting rid of the dongle will help with that of course.

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Again, if the sounds are NI, and you know their players can ping a demo sample of all your NI sounds…open the NI player and search there.

EW can do the same thing for their Core X subscribers…even for instrument’s you’ve not downloaded.

I do understand that YOUR needs for quick auditions are HIGH, and there may be a LOT of Cubase users who agree with you.

Mine are not. I have other things I’d rather see come to Cubase ‘first’. If I wanted an EDM focused DAW, I’d get and use one.

What I need instead, are composing/editing tools, and to be able to plug in a wide range of gear (some very old) and plugins and make it sing. I need a super flexible audio matrix, where it’s easy to bring external stuff into the mix, sync it with a lot of old (far from perfect) technologies, etc. Newer DAWs can’t really do this stuff well, and probably never will. Legacy support is of no concern to them. Meanwhile, Cubase can still do the ‘old stuff’, while opening doors to also somewhat use the ‘cutting edge technologies’.

This so would’ve helped me many times over the last years.! My boss would constantly ask for various ‘versions’ of finished songs, of differing length, structures, extra instrumental bars added, extra tail-out, repeated chorus here or there, etc, etc according to clients wishes or promotional needs. The Arranger Track could’ve been it, could’ve been so much more…

Well, solutions are there of course, but we all know the pitfalls/time taken to ‘workaround’ and produce satisfying results… you just get on with it…

But back to Cubase not being on many Reddit EDM users radar - maybe that’s setting off alarm bells for some; but honestly, I just don’t believe there’s some EDM market exclusion bubble or blind spot at Steinberg HQ, if that’s what’s being implied.

And having said that, I wouldn’t be surprised if the next major Cubase release has some ‘Clip Launcher’ type feature built in. Either that or, as an interim, maybe a much revamped LoopMash tool - one that fully includes MIDI and that you can record into (MIDI/audio). That probably would be quickest (engineering effort) to implement, compared to a proper, full-blown clip launcher/editor integrated into the Arrangement Page. Maybe (shock, horror) some actual brand new MIDI/FX/Modulation tools included too.!

BTW, lots of other great stuff in Brian’s post above. But here’s the thing - we have to promise ourselves we won’t go wishing our lives away, hoping upon hope for inclusion any time soon… :wink: