I have used Cubase for 30 years going back to the Atari ST days but it’s time to move onto something else, I have used reason since V1 in the early 2000’s. I really struggle with Cubase as I know people say the audio difference in DAWS are subjective but I just can’t get a decent sound from cubase with today’s mastering techniques. Cubase is the king DAW I will never deny that but you really need a treated room even though I have some treatment in my spare room and also use a good pair of ADAM A7 monitors but I find the sound out the box with Cubase is muddy and you have to write war and peace to get a good mix and loud punchy non distorted master. Reason I have always liked the sound straight out the box, the mixing process is enjoyable as it sounds pretty good to start with, maybe reason studios have some invisible master chain on the output to make it a bit more compatible with the home studio room set up is a mystery but to me it sounds great. I have done the various test were making the identical track in each DAW using the exact same samples and not using any plugins so it is the raw sound and I find that reason comes up trumps. They have very different work flows but with reason you load up you get instant inspiration, whereas Cubase your greeted with a grey blank canvas not always the most inspiring, a bit like just turning on a midi controller keyboard as opposed to a synthesizer with great sounds not that Cubase does not have great vst’s and synths but the workflow to get into that instant groove takes longer. I will probably still use Cubase for vocal recording as I find there is nothing that comes close, but music composition I will do in Reason.
“I find the sound out the box with Cubase is muddy and you have to write war and peace to get a good mix and loud punchy non distorted master. Reason I have always liked the sound straight out the box”
Is this a troll post? The audio difference between DAWS does not exist and there’s a mathematical way to prove it. If you don’t believe me, do a null test. I don’t think you know what you’re talking about - no disrespect intended
can you imagine working in music for 30+ years and claiming that a daw has a sound…wow
Nope not a troll post otherwise I wouldnt have mentioned I dont deny that Cubase is the King DAW to me. And like I said sound is subjective, whether it is to do with panlaws or summing can make a difference to a DAW’s output, are you telling me that if you loaded some samples into say Fast Tracker you wouldn’t hear the difference to say Cubase, safe to say you would. But anyway I have not come here to have an argument, but just to say that’s what I have personaly found with the 2 audio apps and if the result I am hearing is sounding better in the other that is what is important regardless of numbers. I also did the phase test and suprise suprise, they didnt cancel each other out.
This has to be a troll post.
You’re comparing a modern DAW that uses universal lossless .wav formats, verus a 1990s DOS app that i’m pretty sure uses lossys compressed formats?
If you’re not getting a good sound, it’s probably because you are blaming the DAW
+1,000,009
The OP may not be deliberately trolling and believe what he says but it is clearly nonsense.
Fast tracker also accepted standard non compressed wavs. Anyway different daws will have different ways it implements sample interpolation etc otherwise why would every new version of cubase or any daw in fact say “New improved sound engine” If in theory it just sounds exactly like the previous release. Different daws will have their own specified unity gain default, The eq default flat setting would probably be different to say abletons flat eq setting. Like I said out of the box it sounds muddy to me compared to reason not saying that it cant sound amazing because obviously it does but just takes a lot of work which then leaves me scrapping the project as I cant get it to sound the way I want it to sound. Like with eq, 2 different eqs but they all have the same frequencies but they have subtle differences. Cubase frequency eq works and sounds different to the channel strip eqs even though they share the exact frequencies. So Flat in Cubase maybe a different sounding Flat in another daw.
Good luck!
I am sorry if you think I am trolling as that is not my intention. Everyone just has different experiences, I see so many posts by people saying how unstable cubase is well for me it is one of the most stable daws I have used hence why I stuck with it so long. Maybe it could be the workflow and having a new workflow has subconciously made my mixes sound more pleasing in a new app. I never liked what happened to recent cubase overhauls as I feel its getting far too ableton-esq for my liking graphically. I am sure I will still swing back and forth but music composition and mixing I will do in the new daw, but outboard midi stuff I wont use anything but Cubase as nothing comes close.
There’s no difference. You can do a null test.
If anything Cubase might be better than some DAWs now with the 64bit mix engine.
Big Reason fan here. I love it for sound design. I love it for resampling and I love the modular environment. It also never crashes, ever. But for all out production it is so far behind the curve. Sound wise, It does everything in 24bit, which is plenty, and obviously can sound great, but I run Cubase at 32 bit float and I think it can run at 64? There just is more headroom and that’s a fact.
The difference in sound may be down to harmonic distortion embedded underneath the DAW outputs. Reason may not be transparent about that. Cubase doesn’t inject harmonic distortion into it’s outputs. Your sound is as good as what you put into it and your strategy. As to a DAW making a difference with sound? It’s very insignificant if there’s any at all, and it might boil down to harmonic distortion layered into the Audio Engine (Pro Tools has it too in HEAT and they are open about it, and they give you a choice to turn it on or off, and with some other DAWs, they might not be open about it and force it on the entire system, so you might hear some differences in your sound).
I would have thought you would leave Cubase for Pro Tools and not Reason. I have Reason and never use it as a DAW, but as a plugin for all the sounds it has. But as a DAW? Reason looks like a modular and cranked up pieces of a children’s game/cartoon software interface. I would never use it as a DAW…it doesn’t just stack up to anything that Cubase can do. Cubase is still unrivalled for it’s production capabilities. I’ve had reason to question Cubase’s strengths but that’s only in mixing and only boils down to my workflow preferences and nothing else. So for my mixing, I’ve migrated to Pro Tools exclusively. I can’t handle the cluttered Cubase mix console. I prefer PT’s clean interface, routing capabilities and many other possibilities. For my productions, I enjoy Cubase so much. Different strokes anyway. If you prefer Reason, then that’s cool…
I haven’t noticed cubase sounding different but it has too many unpredictable crashes and freezes often