Why is Cubase so hard to use

A Follow up to my email saying I was leaving Cubase.
Studio One has done nothing but crash on me since I bought it at VER 4.5
Updates have so far not fixed the repeated crashes.
So much for jumping ship to the shiny new object. :unamused:

Stability is everything in a DAW.
Looks like I’ll start investing more time with ver 10 Cubase!

So are you saying that people who don’t have hours to waste shouldn’t criticise? I’ve been struggling with a trial version of Cubase 12 for a week and have achieved nothing. The help section is no help at all, simple questions like - How do I set a scale and key for a melody track? give a whole list of options that it will take a long time to read through in order to maybe find the answer. Steinberg have shot themselves in the foot and a simple menu leading to common functions would be more user friendly.

I won’t be paying for a licence when the trial period ends as I want to make music, not wade through pages of text in the vague hope that I might find what I’m looking for. Reason Studios and Ableton both have their faults, but at least they don’t treat their potential customers like mugs.

Scale and key in inspector. Honestly, you should create every track type in a blank project and look what’s there. I think that familiarizing yourself with how the application organizes its features is fundamental. DAWs are complex. You can hardly find one that is “boot it up and off you go.” Almost all require a certain degree of familiarization to be productive.

Use your eyes…

Cubase does seem a bit over-engineered, though it isn’t alone there. Studio One is easier to use, but you give up a lot - functionally - to go there.

I do start with a blank project but there is nothing to tell me how anything works. I understand how to load VSTs and I have several which all load perfectly. I also know how to setup my midi keyboard (KOMPLETE KONTROL S49) and I’m not a novice when it comes to using DAWS, I use Reason and Ableton on my PC, and KORG Gadget, GarageBand and Cubasis 3 (another Streinberg product) on my iPad Pro. Look up my channel up on YouTube and you’ll find some of my music on there. I’m not the only Alan Wilton but I seem to be the only one who has posted any music videos.

I think that my criticism of Cubase is fair as it is unnecessarily complicated. A good DAW should be straightforward and easy to use for anyone of average intelligence who has ever used any kind of recording device. I’ve never seen a user interface that is so badly designed as Cubase. I don’t have time to search through pages of help just to find the basics, so Cubase is of no use to me, and I suspect that a lot of other people feel the same way.

A post was split to a new topic: Help setting up audio in Cubase