Unfortunately I’ve reached another end of an era. I recently was forced to look at Logic again after 3-4 years of straight Cubase use, and I’m sad to say that I’m glad that I did. Kind of. At the end of the day, switching to Logic makes sense for me. But like any long term relationship, it’s complicated.
What I’ll miss-
Expression Maps. No one else does this and they’re so awesome and so invaluable to composers
the score view. I know many people don’t use this but after diving deeply into it I was shocked at how powerful it is, and how easy it is to get professional looking scores once it’s all set up.
Notes in the piano roll view. Multiple controller lanes. The mixer. The Media Bay. Track visibility controls. Mixer view sets and visibility control. The amazing export window for stem bouncing. The Logical Editor.
Why I’m switching-
Logic is more powerful on OS X. It’s sad but true. I can run 100-150 Kontakt instrument tracks in Logic. Cubase tops out at 50. VEPro works great with Cubase, and gets around the problem, but if I want to move away from VEPro, I need to move away from Cubase.
Logic has been more stable. It’s crashed only 1-2 times in a week, compared to Cubase’s 4-5 times per day.
Video Export
So, far more things I’ll miss then I’ll be gaining. BUT the things I’m gaining - performance and stability - are pretty damn huge.
I inherently distrust Apple these days, so I really want to go back. But for now I gotta take a break from Cubase
I come from Reaper where performance is one of its best strengths, and I still find VE Pro mighty useful. Just because it keeps things clean, projects load faster and I distribute load over 2 computers. Agreed on automation - can be a bit cumbersome.
good choice. you wont miss crashes that ruin music production.
even budget programs out there are mosre stable than cubase.
steinberg has alot of catching up to do.
but theyre too busy working on elicenser instead of actual software
I switch to another DAWs (Logic, Digital Performer, Pro Tools, Studio One, Reaper) sometimes. Just for another “perspective”. An inspiration thanks to the different view, different workflows. All of them have bugs. All of them have bottom necks, all of them are illogical in a certain points. And all of them are crashing time to time.
I’m using VE Pro, what also helps me to switch DAWs.
But my main DAW is Cubase. If I need to do a serious work, then I’m always using Cubase. It offers the most features for a pro work, to me. So it’s the fastest one at the end.
And I also like the sound-engine. I really don’t like the sound coloring of other DAWs (mainly Logic).
If Logic is very stable these days, that’s certainly great news. They used to have considerable session corruption problems, with the undo function being pretty dangerous among some other things. I wouldn’t have dared to score entire feature films in a single session in Logic, which is what I’ve been doing with Cubase ever since I switched back (my screen right now: http://i.imgur.com/omp0ZHA.png).
8.5.15 hasn’t crashed on me once during this latest project, so I think the version itself is pretty solid. Crashing multiple times a day definitely sounds like a plugin is causing problems, so I would check that first!
I’m the opposite. As a long time Logic using (7-current) I am in Cubase 8.5.15 full time. MIDI is better, Audio is better, CPU is the same (yes it is with ASIO GUARD). If I still need a LPX synth I just fire up MainStage or slave in LPX. No crashes.
It took about a month to be as fast in C8 as I was in LPX. I wasn’t totally new to it I’ve had a version around since Cubase Score 1.0 but haven’t actually seriously used it since LP7 was out.
Yeah I mean I dunno why Cubase always crashes on my system, it just does. I do push it very hard. Almost always seems to happen during an auto save, which I set to a pretty high interval.
My templates are very big. 150 tracks or so, routed to 12 busses, with 12 FX sends, etc.
Again, with VE Pro Cubase runs great, but I’m being forced to collaborate with someone who doesn’t use it (and refuses to), and after tests with Cubase showed it couldn’t handle enough Kontakts to load our template. Logic could, for whatever reason.
And as scoring in general moves itself more in a contemporary direction and away from straight orchestral scoring, the need to have the flexibility of instrument tracks becomes more and more essential. When I have everything separated out via VE Pro, it DOES discourage me from making certain FX and automation choices that are relatively easy with instrument tracks.
That all said, I am SORELY missing Cubase’s interface. I feel it is lightyears ahead of Logic. Logic is INCREDIBLY obtuse about certain things, mostly due to Apple’s “make it simple” approach slapped on top of a comparatively deep program.
Man oh man, I’m constantly in this same dilemma. Cubase really is more feature rich and capable overall but the cpu efficiency does become such a drag. Logic can have a ridiculous number of instruments and fx and max out the audio track count, and still be on buffer of 64 or 128.
If Cubase would improve it’s automation handling, vst preset browsing - such a drag having to wait for the media bay scan everytime on every inst/fx - but the Mediaby is far superior to Logic’s browsers. Audio editing in Cubase is far superior and more responsive, and of course midi editing is in a league of it’s own.
Logic is just so quick and efficient that for straight up scoring with midi it is just dead easy, simple to export to video no problem. When you start wanting to incorporate sounds and loops from files that aren’t apple loops, or process fx / transpose audio on the fly - it becomes a king size drag. I’m always rewiring Ableton for those duties. Logic is definitely taking a lot of ideas from Ableton (new plug in design / macro controls / track stacks).
If Cubase would improve in these areas and also incorporate an Autosave on crash, I would have no issue leaving Logic - just use Mainstage over the IAC bus to get the Logic instruments that don’t exist in Cubase.
I have everything set up as instrument tracks. I took a piece I did in Cubase and crossed it over to LPX. The load was about 50% across all cores in both cases. ASIO guard set to normal. I thought for sure LPX would be better but it wasn’t…maybe just a couple percent.
Cubase is very heavy on CPU and other resources. I switch to Ableton and Reaper more and more due to the same reason as described above. With other DAWs I can work on lower latency and with more plugins, plus they are more reliable. This gives me impression that Cubase could be much improved in this area. When it becomes more CPU efficient, it will be very good tool. Now it is so so. It has many features, true (most of which I never use), but it is simply too heavy on resources.
In the past CPU power was increasing every year, and we all experienced how Cubase became slower with each new version. But it was no big deal, we just upgraded our computers, and it was faster again. Now the problem is that you cannot upgrade anymore to gain speed - CPUs are not getting faster anymore as they did. But steinberg is still maintaining their habbit ob making Cubase heavier and heavier on resources. I think now they will have to start working on optimizing the code. Other modern DAWs are living proof that DAW can run very efficiently.
I’ve got my fingers crossed for that one! I was about to abandon Cubase (over 25 years as a user) due to CPU issues, 8.5.15 improved things enough for me to persist, but I’m still finding it easy to run out of CPU on reasonably small (by some standards) rock/pop productions.
Same here, 8.5. 15 and Win 10 made a big difference, improvement, but as someone else pointed out the year over year CPU gains are very marginal now as we are at the end of the current core tech run of pre quantum chips era, and software VST availability and the complexity has exploded …i also read a Steinberg article somewhere where the engineers eluded to considering the pro tools esc hardware model with a ceiling on track count. …
But I squeeze by thankfully because I moved towards analog and accoustic recording quite a bit a pared back my vst stuff
Same here, 8.5. 15 and Win 10 made a big difference, improvement, but as someone else pointed out the year over year CPU gains are very marginal now as we are at the end of the current core tech run
Regarding Win performance, I talked to someone recently who said they had 300 instances of Kontakt in Cubase without issues, BUT they were running PC. I definitely think OS X is hampered somehow.
I have everything set up as instrument tracks. I took a piece I did in Cubase and crossed it over to LPX. The load was about 50% across all cores in both cases. ASIO guard set to normal. I thought for sure LPX would be better but it wasn’t…maybe just a couple percent.
Hmm, not sure how you’re getting these numbers. I’ve noticed Cubase performs well as long as the number of Kontakts remain under 50 or so, then it exponentially spikes as you add more. Here are screenshots of my Logic and Cubase Templates, at idle:
Note, track numbers are higher in each session reflecting other track types (audio, FX sends, busses). Buffer size set to 256 in both. ASIO guard at Normal in Cubase (High crashes my system frequently.)
You can find benchmark test wins for every daw on the internet. Here for example is one where cubase (with asio guard) has the best results:
The cubase performance meter isn’t very accurate. You can load the most vsti’s in the last quarter of the scale.
As I’ve tested logic pro X the last time, it still has this huge automation bug, which doesn’t let you set sample accurate automation while using plugins with latency. An absolute show stopper for me.
You can’t look at it at idle…that’s a false reading. If you have midi on those Kontakt tracks in LPX you would notice a more even load. LPX basically shuts down at idle (if that’s the right team to put it)
You can’t look at it at idle…that’s a false reading. If you have midi on those Kontakt tracks in LPX you would notice a more even load. LPX basically shuts down at idle (if that’s the right team to put it)
Actually, I think my measurement is accurate, for my needs anyway. When scoring this particular TV show, I need access to 80 Kontakt instruments or so, but I’m rarely never using all 80 at one time.
Cubase, with 80 Kontakts at idle, runs my CPU at 60-70%. This is evident not only via Cubase’s meter but by OSX as well, which shows a huge processor load.
Logic, at idle, has a very low CPU usage, allowing me to have a very large template, with all of my POSSIBLE sounds routed and ready to go, but not taking any resources when not being used.
I see where you are coming from. If you actually were using all those instruments in LPX it would actually get around the same overhead which I tested with that piece I did. CP8 will act as if you are processing everything all at once.
My template is pretty big so what a number of us have done is disable tracks till needed. This gets your idle CPU way down. I keep basic stuff active that I know I’ll need so I’m usually idle at about 20% at the start. The piece I tested with ran around the 50% mark. When ported over to LPX and playback occurs it’s about the same. If it wasn’t for this I’d be back in LPX full time dealing with its idiosyncrasies.
Now the beauty of LPX as you are experiencing is you can load a lot more instrument tracks (till you hit your RAM ceiling of course) and LPX’s meters won’t blink an eye.
LPX’s midi was driving me nuts for a while but I was working through it till an LPX update wiped out all my key commands and nowhere could I find a backup of it (despite having three backup locations). I must have updated them before checking and they were not incremental for this machine…just copies. Oh well that one is on me.
