Count myself as a Professional user in that Cubase is the main DAW of my commercial studio which runs 6 days a week. I prefer it over ProTools as a creative tool but certain things about how I can organise a mixflow is also faster. Yes there are problems but I think all DAWs are never perfect. I’ve never had a client complain that I wasnt tracking and mixing in ProTools instead of it. They trust that its my tool of choice and its the end result that counts.
On saying that there are multiple things that need to happen to bring the ProTools people over. Some of those are in red on my signiature…
I agree with you. One of the main reason that most are using ProTools is simply because all the major studios have ProTools which they have used since the old days where ProTools was probably the best for professionel use.
These days where you see more and more of the big guys working in their own studios for mixing/producing and only using the major studios for tracking a lot of them have moved over to different DAWs, yet ProTools still remain the most used DAW in the commercial world.
I think it really comes down to our workflow and how we are making music…
Do you use Hardware?
(ie mono compressors, mono eqs, mono reverbs, stereo fx, etc)
I have almost 32 channels of I/O of hardware via External FX (a mixture of mono and stereo devices)
For people in the age of UAD and plugins, you don’t think twice about applying an 1176 to an instrument. Mono or stereo it doesn’t really matter for you. But for ME, I only have a couple 1176s. SO, either I want to apply 1 to the bass and 1 to the vocal, or both to a stereo drum bus, or 1 to a guitar then apply a mono-to-stereo analog chorus box after that. To have the flexibility of any of those scenarios via Cubase External FX solution is not possible. They don’t allow it. However in Logic X (and I think Protools) it is possible.
Do you record vintage Analog Synths?
(My studio has alot of them)
Maybe your 55 so you remember, but in the 70’s and early 80’s most synths were typically not stereo. There is 1 output. So I record my mono synths with a mono channel. I also do this because alot of time I want to route this through my La-2A or LA-3A (not the plugin) and I need it to be in mono for that. But I also usually like spreading synths out. So apply some stereo chorus FX. But convert the mono channel to stereo Cubase makes you create another group bus. Logic you can do this all in-line.
For the record…I am mixing now on Cubase (not Logic X)
The main dealbreaker for me is Real-Time Render. Logic doesn’t have real-time for their bounce-in-place. (I need realtime for my hardware)
In summary I think Cubase would be the ultimate mixing choice for me if:
Took advantage of Multiple Cores better
External FX feature had more flexibility (doesn’t lock out that channel assignment, until you actually use it. had a mix knob for external fx insert plugin. had mono-to-stereo capability)
Everything else is fine.
For the record I don’t use an analog mixer…but I am using Softube Console, which I think it awesome.
Oh I thought this was known and admitted by Steinberg themselves?
I haven’t done any scientific test myself…but was going on what everyone here has said about the performance.
I just got a 6 core 2013 MacPro (not like 12 core), but maybe I will be able to tell a difference over the MacBook Pro 4 core I had.
They only tell you that a faster CPU is better than more cores which is the exact same in Logic and any other DAWs. This has nothing to do with Logic being better with more cores.
for render in place no but for bounce yes logic has realtime… You can just sole the channel you want bounced, press command B and choose realtime then import automatically into project audio bin option. Works fine.
Yes that way is possible, but my workflow counts on being able to render-in-place (or bounce-in-place). Say I finish mixing drums, bass, keys/guitars and ready for the next phase of the mix…I want to be able to render 10 or more hardware FX sends (to free them up for other tasks) and to keep going. I want the new track just below the original with the same sends/panning and fader volume. I also want to keep the original track with the inserts (in case I needed to re-do something) but have it disabled it and hide it in a folder. To do that manually would be a pain, but render-in-place (bounce in place) does this.
I am not saying it’s ideal LOL… my favourite is pro tools in that regard… for VI’s you just drag and drop the midi… and you can freeze aux, multi outs, everything, or render them… I even render the wet aux reverbs some times as audio files and mix to taste that way to save cpu… so easy in PT… I haven’t explored this much in Cubase yet… still learning so much new stuff in 9.