In May I crossgraded from Cubase 10.5 to Nuendo 10 due to the excellent price and functionalities. I love Nuendo and what am able to do on it. It’s really amazing. Recently, I signed on for a production course at Berklee and I was introduced to Pro Tools (they teach mostly with Pro Tools). I got an excellent Student discount on Pro Tools and it comes with a XPand, Falcon 2, and a host of other instruments that are cutting edge. I’ve always agonized over Halion and some stock instruments that come with Cubase/Nuendo cos of lack of depth and realistic emulation (you have to do a lot of tweaking on halion to get real sounds). As I dig deep into PT, I understand that Cubase/Nuendo Midi is absolutely fabulous, second to none. The Variaudio is also the smartest and PT doesnt have that at all but depends on Elastic Audio which is no where near VarAudio. I also love to capture my vocals in Nuendo, cos I find editing vocals in Nuendo easier and intuitive. But here are the things I find attractive with PT:
(1) The Key Commands are intuitive (ave never figured this out much in Cubase/Nuendo)
(2)The workspace is massively intuitive…very user friendly
(3) The grid layout and functionality is cool…the snap to grid is easy
(4) The editing tools are seamless and the way they work together, you dont have to keep using the mouse or key commands to flip through ur chosen tool to be able to edit…as you hover on a clip, the right tools show up and you just keep cutting, draggin, fading and editing.
(5) I love the quantize function…it’s easy and works perfectly…I find quantizing a bit iffy in Cubase/Nuendo…takes some time to figure out mostly.
(6)The instruments are massively realistic (XPAND, FALCON etc)…I have almost abandoned my MOXF8 because the Virtual instruments in Pro Tools sound so real to my ears and am beginning to explore them massively. With Cubase/Nuendo, MOXF8 was my companion because Halion doesnt do it for me, and I’m not a sound designer, so ave not been able to get much out of Retrologue, or Padshop2. But in PT, I am still able to use MOXF8, although I can’t rely on it much as I did with Cubase/Nuendo.
(7) I noticed this warm analog sound from PT that I really love so much. Maybe due to HEAT (their analog engine add-on to PT).
(8) The Workspace browser and the soundspace library that comes with PT blows me away. I have so many loops to work with. I know Cubase has MediaBay…which doesn’t have any much sampled loops for modern music.
(9) Tempo changes in Cubase/Nuendo after having produced your tracks could be a pain in the *** if you are not a pro. With PT I am able to do that so fluidly and quickly and everything changes in a flash. The same with pitch shifting as well.
I dont know, but am confused. I love Cubase, I love my Nuendo. I mostly come back to it these days after producing in PT and then I export to Nuendo for mixing and mastering. I don’t think am ever gonna mix in PT at all…Nuendo is the ish in mixing and then i move to Wavelab to master.
With this level of confusion,
(1) How can one get the best of two DAWs like PT and Nuendo without messing his head up, like get things confused like key commands…ocassionally I find myself using Nuendo key commands in PT…lol.
(2) Can you really become so adept at two DAWs at the same time or should I just focus on Cubase/Nuendo which I have learnt so well and can use comfortably, although PT is really catching my fancy lately, and giving Cubase a run for the money.
(3) Should I just produce in PT and then mix in Nuendo? I fear that if this happens, I might lose my hard earned capabilities in Nuendo and may just be limited to mixing in that environment.
Any advice would be appreciated.