Hi guys,
Newbie around here but old timer in DAW land. Recently bought Essential and that was enough to finally win me over. So I’m thinking about upgrading.
But I’m not sure whether I should go for Artist or wait a bit and get full. I’ve read the comparison charts and I wanted to verify that I get this correctly.
In terms of MIDI functionality/editing, would I be missing much? That’s probably my biggest concern here, and it seems there isn’t much difference between the 2 versions - besides VST expression, which of course would be nice - unless I missed something… Also, would I still have MIDI fx such as arpegiators and such?
Audio Warp, VariAudio and Media Bay I think I can live w/o for now. And my projects rarely go over 40-some audio tracks, so track limits isn’t a concern.
Lastly - can Elements 6 be upgarded to Artist/Full 6.5 directly, or do I have to upgrade to either version 6 and then buy an additional upgrade to 6.5?
Thanks in advance!
Make sure that you get the VST Instrument Rack. Otherwise you have to open
an instance for each sampler instrument and cannot route different MIDI tracks
to a VST Instrument. I don’t know if it is also available in Artist.
The MIDI Fx are also a very nice thing.
And vari audio also gets quite helpful because you can extract the melody of
mono instruments to midi. And you can browse and prelisten to Midi Loops you
created on your own in the Media Bay. For me those features are very important
so I couldn’t go with artist. But it depends on the way you work.
Elements can be upgraded.
Just choose Artist or Full in the online shop and
choose from what product you want to upgrade.
Hello,
Yes, there are the same MIDI Insert effects in the Artist version, as it is in the full.
There is VST Instrument rack (this one is in LE version too). You have 32 slots in the rack. In the full version, you have 64 slots. Of course, there is less instruments, and effects in the Artist version.
There is no Control Room. You can’t record from busses, and there is no Automation panel.
In the world of MIDI, you can’t works with external MIDI devices, I mean, to create your own devices.
There is no Logical Editor, same as Project Logical Editor!!!
There is no VST Expression (Expression Maps, Note Expression, VST Dynamics and Extended Output Mapping). I can’t imagine my work without Expression Maps today.
In the Audio field, there is no VariAudio!!! And there is no Time Warp.
At this moment, there are discounts on updates/upgrades. I think, it’s time to upgrade. 
Yeah I noticed I hopped in just in time for the price falls. 
It looks like Artist would cover pretty much everything I need, particularly considering that I use Cubase in conjunction w/ other DAW software. But that VST Expression thingie is darn tempting.
Thanks for the input guys.