Why people are moving away from Cubase

Steinberg Lounge
#1

I work in the video game industry and I’ve noticed that A LOT of people are moving away from Cubase.
There are a couple of reasons for this but I thought I’d give the main ones so Steinberg can (hopefully) fix those things and bring back their users.

We’re talking about sound designers, composers, audio mixers and post prod guys.

Obviously, the post prod guys aren’t working with Cubase because of the lack of Edit Mode (video preview follows when you move or resize an event). They use Pro tools since Nuendo is stupidly expensive and pro tools does this perfectly.
Steiny could easily bring that feature to Cubase or lower Nuendo’s price of 800$ :confused:

Most of the sound designers are now using Reaper because of how easy and fast it is to batch export multiple clips even if they are on the same track. Most of them will often have many sounds in one session and they want to export them all easily while keeping their exact lengh ect. Reaper does that in a breeze.

Composers are also using reaper because of how DSP heavy Cubase got with every new versions. You can easily load twice as much plugins in Reaper with the same setup (we did the test) and every actions seem to be faster and snappier. Reaper rarely crashes even in big sessions so they almost all made the switch.

I’m still a Cubase user at home but I think it’s sad to see how Steinberg seems to ignore those issues/features when it’s just common sense for people in the industry.

#2

Hopefully there is a big re-write of the video code under way following the ditching of QuickTime that should offer the opportunity to deal with many other issues as well; I will be very disappointed if the December release of Cubase (a.k.a. Nuendo beta) doesn’t have a good video engine.

I hear you on Reaper, which I also use and have been a fan of since V1, but it doesn’t stop me using Cubase; these are tools, not mutually exclusive religions. I would not worry about any perceived “moving away” from Cubase in your specific sector, the people who worry about that are somewhere in a plush office in Japan and have much more information about where the market for Cubase is than any of us.

#3

I am sad to read that you have bad experiences. However I am not. Over the years I have followed this forum I have continuously read posts about problems and posts that contradict. People just have different experiences. I am not sure at “all that people” are moving away from Cubase (or Nuendo for that matter). It cannot be confirmed by the representatives in the industry that I know. However I know just a handful. So please tell me exactly how many people you know that are moving away from Cubase? 1, 10, 100??? How many exactly are “most of the sound designers” that is using Reaper? As I find Reaper pretty useless they must have understood something I have not, and safety in numbers. So if it is many, (however not sure how many that makes up “many”) I’ll give it a new go.

#4

I love Cubase but I must admit that the performance is a lot worst than it used to be. Open a session in Cubase 6 and open it in 8.5 … you’ll see you DSP meter jump up. Reaper is just a beast in that department but man is it ugly.

I personally hate Pro Tools but I have to work with it at the office and it annoys me to see that it has a lot more post prod and video features than Cubase. Pro tools dominates in the commercial studios and in the post prod world and that needs to change imho.

When I say a lot of people I’m talking about 15 people out of 20 switched to Reaper for a lot of reasons (DSP, batch export, apply plugins on clips directly ect). For sound designers these features are godsend.

That being said, I don’t know how it looks like in other companies but it doesn’t look too good on our side.
I hope Steinberg will take these things seriously.

#5

I’ll be brief. I don’t mean to sound rude, it’s just sunday :slight_smile:

  1. Off topic, moving to the Lounge

  2. We had a lot of people moving TO Cubase, especially Pro 8.5 (and Nuendo 7, in the game industry). Figures varies a lot form country to country, though, the user’s relative perception as well

  3. We entered roughly 20000 issues / requests / improvement tasks for the Cubase Pro 8 / 8.5 line alone - seeing that this is perceived as ‘ignoring’ is kind of sad, although we know that the user don’t -and can’t- know how much work developers, planners, testers and support as well have to deal with. Still, we do understand that every user has different requirements and what has been done may be great to some and poor to others.

#6

LOL that kind of answer … “people do love us se we dont have to get better and listen to customers will”

After a good laugh bout that answer…I remember that the industry standard since few years is AbletonLive, for any kind os music genre and for gaming music. Every brand is developping hardware for Ableton, not Cubase…every soundbank comes with a drumrack (ableton live) not a G.A.se rack !!!
Same for Halion, sold 350€ thaugh there are nearly 0 soundbank developpers for Halion, Kontakt though has every banks you could wish.

I think that that behavior toward customers (i’ve had some not so nice relations with the Steiny twitter CM, and here to) that makes people go see if the grass is greener else where, especially when a software is the standard, that everybody talks about, or make video courses on (300 out of 305 videos tutos (pro) are on Live not Cubase/Nuendo).

So let me laugh again bout that “a lot of people move TO cubase” … Cubase has not even a simple sampler like FLstudio or AbletonLive !!!

#7

BTW, that “everyone needs are diff thats why we dont solve some things sometimes”, well how about that AOTmixer topic started in 2014 (just to set it we are in 2016, nearly 17)… https://www.steinberg.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=228&t=69912
90% of users are backing the topic, yet NO AOT MIXER !!!
So please stop taking us for fools (and for our money only)…listen to us, show the customers you hear what they need, and do the changes nearly every users ask !!!
(plus for functions asked and steiny says “maybe not everyone will use that”, well just put the otpion to activate or deactivate so everyone is happy)

I really is asking myself bout keeping loyalty to Steinberg with all those little customers “disrespect”…if you were giving a free daw, nobody would complain !!! Though it is not free…so make people go to Live or Reaper that’s a very good company move !!!

#8

Due to customer claims I have 6 DAWs installed, Reaper and Live among them, I would say I am fairly aqainted with most of them. For my own projects I use Cubase 99%. The last 1% goes to Logic (version 9 that is) that does something Cubase cannot. If somebody comes to me and want to use Live, I am thinking “oh my god not again”. I really hate it. One is not better than the other, but the one is preferred above the other by ME and the other by YOU. Isn’t it nice that the different developers have different approaches to their products? So that both you and I can have a DAW we are quite satisfied with? Why whish Cubase would become Live? You already have Live. Put your money there. Nobody forces you to continue to put your money into Cubase or any other Steinberg product. Obviously you are right when you are comparing available AddOns for Kontakt vs Halion. Most looses compared to Kontakt, including UVI, However there are areas where UVI clearly wins (more complex instruments). Kontakt being better for most developers does not make neither Halion nor UVI obsolete. I agree that Groove Agent is poor compared to say Toontrack, however many seem to love it, and even if it is a puzzle to me, if they create music from it, that is the most important part.

#9

To be specific I dont want Cubase to be Live, I want Cubase to learn from others too !!!
I want mostly, them to listen to us more than they do (that AOTmixer topic, is the real example of them ignoring us)…so i compared this to Live cause most of Live users says that customer service is listening to their needs !!!

I didnt compared Halion TO Kontakt, but the lack of 3rd party company. Thats a sign that companies doesnt acknoledge Halion at all !!!
I said its a sign to show the interest of companies to a product. Like when i said most of the pro tutos are about Live. Thats a sign that it’s the one being the industry standard. Like Protools is the industry standard in post prod, in 95 oyut of 100 pro studios. Its not Cubase or Nuendo !

I still use Cubase, so dont take that like a hater, take those statements like a disappointed paying user !!! I would love to see Cubase evolving the way users need it, not like the dev wants to see it !

So my last thing is check the topic started in 2014, about a problem that, well even you im sure, 90% of users complain about: AlwaysOnTop mixer (like it was before !!! why did they removed that simple function? they does even explain why they did, or why they dont change it back…so we (customers) fill left aside)

#10

These are words you put in my mouth and gathered from my answer and I assure you, wrongly.

I also have a hard time understanding how you can that easily list usage percentages which are wildly different from continent to continent and from country to country. However, I’m no sales or marketing guy, I’ll just leave it at this.

On a more tech side. As I tried to explain several times, the new mixer handling and behaviour are due to the introduction of independent windows, possibly one of the top user requests ever. Luis and Guillermo stated elsewhere that the request has been forwarded and looked into - my understanding is, AOT will be re-introduced if a solution that will not send all plug-ins’ GUIs behind the mixer is found. Plug-ins hiding behind the mixer was one of the biggest complaints in the 7/7.5 iteration, hundreds of times more than the complaints about the current behaviour - which does not mean lack of will to improve it, nor that it is perfect.

#11

But please get that THIS USER is satisfied with the mixer. THIS USER is satisfied with Cubase the way it is (on almost every functions). YOUR desires will IMO destroy what I was hoping Cubase would be over the years. I dont want Cubase to “learn” anything from any other DAW (at least as it is now). It has not been like that all of the time. Cubase has learned over the years and developed into a very satisfying product. Where did you think that development came from. Not listening to the users? Do you think the Steinberg developers spent all their time in a secluded area or in a locked up basement, and then EUREKA, here is Cubase 8! Nope, Cubase is above all user influenced. Turing it into the best of DAWs for MY USE, and for many with me. I hope that even there is a handfull of you, there are zillions of users that are satisfied with it the way it is.

#12

Probably pretty hard to actually quantify that in an accurate way though.

I’d argue that Nuendo is the better app at least for post production and mixing, and possibly also sound design. So if people are moving away from Cubase I’d expect a fair amount of them to move to Nuendo instead.

Please don’t tell me that you think Nuendo is “stupidly expensive” and Pro Tools is cheaper!? That’d be the funniest thing since Adam Sandler…

Pro Tools do many things perfectly, some things poorly, and some things it doesn’t do at all. Nuendo has better import/export with WWISE for example, and PT doesn’t have that at all. Nuendo has Control Room, and PT doesn’t have that at all (yet). Nuendo has a EDL re-conform function, PT does not. Nuendo has Media Bay, PT does not have an equivalent. And so on. You can compare the two and find differences, but as to which are actually important and time/money saving that’s a different issue. You’d really have to sit down and list it all and tally it up.

Every single professional studio I’ve worked in in New York has had PT HD, with either TDM or HDX (or the latest native). All of them (post studios) have also had Sound Miner for asset management, but that’s obviously limited in terms of what assets are managed compared to Media Bay, not to mention a far less tight integration. They also almost always have a third party hardware monitor controller as opposed to Nuendo’s Control Room. And so right there you’re looking at the cost of PT HD + SoundMiner + Monitor Controller (StudioComm, Dangerous etc) versus Nuendo. You can’t say with a straight face that Nuendo is “stupidly expensive” compared to that.

Sure they could. They could also give away Cubase and lower Nuendo’s price to $199. They could do a lot of things. The question is what’s reasonable.

100 bucks says that the primary reason they’re using Reaper is because a bunch of them are working from home and don’t want to spend the money. Quite frankly I don’t disagree with that decision. If Reaper does what you want, the way you want it, as fast as you want it to, and it’s the cheapest option, then there’s absolutely zero reason to get something else. For a lot of us though the needs aren’t met by Reaper though.

Having said all of that I don’t disagree that there are things Steinberg needs to address, and I wouldn’t be against giving Cubase users edit mode or whatever it’s called.

#13

If you like Ableton, buy Ableton. it would be a stab in the back if Steinberg gave in to that clip based hipster crap called Live…

#14

Thanks for the reply Fabio I appreciate it! I know you’re looking at popularity and what features people request the most and all but I’m just stating what I see at work and I think it’s unfortunate since Cubase is still my favorite DAW and it surpasses any other DAW in a lot of ways. There are certain features that are big enough to make them switch and I can’t blame them since we have a lot of work and efficiency/speed is the key.

What I meant by “ignoring” was about how DSP hungry Cubase was and the Edit Mode confusion that happened when it was in Cubase but suddenly removed and now we have to pay 1800$ to get it :confused: I read those thread about Edit Mode and a lot of ppl want it back. The video team and post prod audio guys are trying to all use the same DAW and Pro tools is the winner only because of edit mode and the price point.

I’m sure they would use Nuendo if they could, but the company won’t pay that kind of price for the whole team. There’s a hole between Cubase and Nuendo when it comes to post prod and video and pro tools fills it unfortunately.

I also don’t see how this thread was off topic in the General section but I guess you perceived it like bad press so it’s better to put it in the lounge.

#15

Hello,

thanks for posting back. I see what you mean about the Edit Mode and can only say I would never like to see features removed from a new version.

About Cubase being more intensive, support is all ears to spot any specific issue. We also test other DAWs and the performance is quite even under all of our testing conditions. I’m not excluding that under specific conditions Cubase might perform worse that others (or better, that is), but without knowing what those conditions are, no one will ever understand why.
Specifically to Reaper, I tested several projects in the past (a very generic audio test pretty recently: https://www.steinberg.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=226&t=93206#p519220) and never saw such differences - so, it would be interesting indeed to know which kind of projects you work on and what other software you use. I for one, do exclusively audio mixes with loads of FX, but 5 to 10 VSTi per project, which is most probably radically different to what you do. I’m particularly interested in performance and stability, and would gladly try to understand why you see such degraded performance.

#16

No, I’m not that cynical or smart in a PR meaning. But seeing how ‘the plea thread’, which is much more off-topic than this, is still lingering in General, then this can can fit there as well. Moved again :astonished:

#17

The takeaway from threads like this (those that start with an unproved premise) is that all you have to do is type something in order to create the appearance of a valid statement.

The posting of a phrase such as “The earth is flat” gets the same prominence as “The earth is round”, regardless of its accuracy. Then, others post agreeing or disagreeing and some of these participants presume that a consensus has been reached. This assertion becomes a presumption which is used to buoy one side or another- both in the starting thread, and in others, by way of citation, and then we see statements like 90% of say , making an, well, click me, because I can’t say it here :wink:

#18

Welcome to the internet …

#19

I thought to make it a valid statement you have to type “Fact”.

#20

State your credentials, then name just about everyone…composers, mixers sound design, post prod, just about everyone but the lowly “hobbyist” or prosumer who IMO are actually in the drivers seat for any DAW that exists today including PT. The “professionals” are often at the prosumers mercy because the money is with the prosumers not every day studio users.

And never ever use any data to back any claim of course. :smiley:

FWIW, AOT has never been a big issue for myself, I’m just a poor sap who uses Cubase about every day since the late 90s. The reason is that I use C8.5 on 4 21 inch monitors controlled by an IconPro so real estate isn’t as important as the user on a small laptop.

But do you care to know what problem is huge to me because I work with 4 video monitors? To this day there is no way to focus any mix console, or various windows other than ctr+tab cycling through the windows. Another huge problem for myself is the lack of key commands and unfinished functions that contribute to some huge overall consistency problems that don’t exist in PT. Fast workflow and attention to detail with the core DAW functions is hugely important for me. While some users value the DAW tools that are included in Cubase, I’m mostly happy to just use just 3rd party tools and wouldn’t miss them if they vanished tomorrow. But I know that won’t happen because prosumers are in the drivers seat.

I totally understand why AOT is huge to others. It seems to me it should have been fixed by now.

As said previously in this thread, there so are many different users, hence a lot of different feature requests. Cubase is the most feature-rich DAW available. That is a blessing and a curse. One bug might be huge to you, but low priority for someone else. The goal I hope is to identify and address the most common feature requests and the most common and major bugs.