Cubase or StudioOne?

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Since my last post was more about why I love each host, I forgot to mention one huge area where I feel Cubase excels. And if your work is designed around this area, this could be a big deal.

One area where I feel Cubase excels; composition. Cubase has numerous features designed around the composer. Whether it be the robust notation (a little clunky, but still great, and display quantize is awesome), chord tracks and chord pads, expression maps, numerous beat design methods, MIDI inserts, etc. It truly is a host designed for the composer, and I don't know of any other host that has as deep a feature set for that purpose (traditional composition, though I am aware other hosts have tools for more loop based or EDM or other areas). The MIDI editing is second to none, IMO and gives you an extreme amount of options for how you compose using MIDI. Even the Logical Editors and transformers can create loads of flexibility in getting your creativity flowing.

Studio One does have scratch pads, Note FX and a couple of other compositional features, but it doesn't get anywhere close to Cubase in this area.

Brent
My host is better than your host

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woggle wrote:
I'm also shopping for something different (to Reaper in my case). Has to work for sound to video on Windows, which cuts out Cubase
Just curious, but are you saying this because of the Quicktime issue? Steinberg have said they will be releasing an update for 8.5 and above with an all new video engine in a couple of months, if that helps? If not, I'm curious what you were hoping to find in the sound to video features that you didn't find in Cubase, but did find in others?

Brent
My host is better than your host

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koolkeys wrote:
woggle wrote:
I'm also shopping for something different (to Reaper in my case). Has to work for sound to video on Windows, which cuts out Cubase
Just curious, but are you saying this because of the Quicktime issue? Steinberg have said they will be releasing an update for 8.5 and above with an all new video engine in a couple of months, if that helps? If not, I'm curious what you were hoping to find in the sound to video features that you didn't find in Cubase, but did find in others?

Brent
Thanks Brent for reminding me about the video engine but I have a project I want to finish in the next month so don't want to wait around - there might be delays even. And there will probably be other projects as well between now and the Cubase update
I also prefer the object/clip editing modes in Sonar and Samplitude compared to what I could try in the Cubase demo or saw on youtube. That is probably the main thing.

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koolkeys wrote:Since my last post was more about why I love each host, I forgot to mention one huge area where I feel Cubase excels. And if your work is designed around this area, this could be a big deal.

One area where I feel Cubase excels; composition. Cubase has numerous features designed around the composer. Whether it be the robust notation (a little clunky, but still great, and display quantize is awesome), chord tracks and chord pads, expression maps, numerous beat design methods, MIDI inserts, etc. It truly is a host designed for the composer, and I don't know of any other host that has as deep a feature set for that purpose (traditional composition, though I am aware other hosts have tools for more loop based or EDM or other areas). The MIDI editing is second to none, IMO and gives you an extreme amount of options for how you compose using MIDI. Even the Logical Editors and transformers can create loads of flexibility in getting your creativity flowing.

Studio One does have scratch pads, Note FX and a couple of other compositional features, but it doesn't get anywhere close to Cubase in this area.

Brent
That is why I had preferred Cubase above all even it did not have ARA. But a couple small features essential to me are missing in Cubase and so I dumped it as a possible main DAW.

However if FL Studio with the best piano roll editor teaming up with Cubase? Wow! As stated earlier run FLS Studio as a VSTi in Cubase if they are compatible with audio and midi file exchange. As far as I know they are not. Any suggestions to get these two great DAW's to coexist? If the Cubase/Fl studio marriage did work out I would then have Studio One for when i need to use ARA.

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LawrenceF wrote:Yeah, I've come across a few people still on v2. Not all that unusual.

For (probably) most, it's hard to pass up some of the v3 features like extended fx chains and VCA's, but I still agree, if you don't need or don't see any practical value in any of that stuff, there's no real point in spending money on it.
FX chains and multi instruments potentially interest me (in case it is possible to automate the macro knobs by automation lanes, is it?) so I think I may upgrate at some point but now I have other priorities. I have S1 Producer so the upgrade price is quite steep for me.
You may think you can fly ... but you better not try

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for regular audio & MIDI production it's pretty obvious imho, C9.01 vs S1.3.3.2 :

- front end (recording, comping, editing), it's Cubase, hands down. :shrug:
comping alone - elegant & mighty vs. clunky & fundamentally misdesigned :roll:
or MIDI - rudimentary at best in S1, not even a basic drum editor or list editor in 2016 :nutter:
- S1 has a few isolated highlights over Cubase in audio editing (e.g. multitrack warping), still overall no real contest
- back end however, mixing, goes to S1 all the way - not least due to its brilliant controller mapping :hail: , no nonsense VCAs that work as opposed to Steinberg's weird and flaky overthinking, and many other pragmatic solutions
- UI & handling is a tie again, in general I would prefer Cubase (since the popup insanity has been reduced), but the fatal keyboard focus misdesign since C7 and the unsuccessful wannabe-a-Mac windowing (also since C7) kills all its clever detail solutions if you prefer key commands over mouse, so S1 feels much better in a real world comparison than it should, based on the isolated details.
Steinberg dropped the ball here, totally - Presonus benefits.
- CPU efficiency is equally shameful on both. :help:
- both have bugs and issues, Steinberg more and uglier ones, but Presonus actually care about fixing things, big :tu: for that.

all the above is about basic, everyday DAW workflow and features, disregarding specialized goodies like Logical Editor or S1's mastering stuff.

So for the time being, I have no other sensible choice but to record in Cubase and mix in S1. :roll:
Lawrence - how about a humble request for adding Cubase to your clever import tool, pretty please ? :idea:

ymmv,
susiwong

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Kalamata Kid wrote: However if FL Studio with the best piano roll editor teaming up with Cubase? Wow! As stated earlier run FLS Studio as a VSTi in Cubase if they are compatible with audio and midi file exchange. As far as I know they are not. Any suggestions to get these two great DAW's to coexist? If the Cubase/Fl studio marriage did work out I would then have Studio One for when i need to use ARA.
FL Studio running fine as rewire slave or as a vsti since years inside Cubase.
Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.

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I guess all this does is show why different DAWs exist. for comping and editing I vastly prefer S1!
I switched from Cubase 8 to S1 as I found after demoing that I worked much faster, got stuff done and finished (in project). I never used drum or list editor, or a lot of other Cubase features (and I don't need all of S1 features either!), if they are important to you, then Cubase may be the way to go; they are both great and both are capable of world class professional results. :tu:
X32 Desk, i9 PC, S49MK2, Studio One, BWS, Live 12. PUSH 3 SA, Osmose, Summit, Pro 3, Prophet8, Syntakt, Digitone, Drumlogue, OP1-F, Eurorack, TD27 Drums, Nord Drum3P, Guitars, Basses, Amps and of course lots of pedals!

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If using external midi gear I found StudioOne overcomplicated that with how you need to configure everything.
And they had strange anomalies like if not having monitor through on a midi track, it only recorded note events, no controllers. Don't know if they fixed that since 2.6 I used. If using VST instruments you never notice, but with external midi gear you do.

And something about policy of Presonus bother me - not only did they discontinue Producer and forced everybody to take the step to Pro with v3, but pricetag was high as well.

I also had issues with control surfaces and navigation - since track view and mixer did not have the same entries. But might be fixed now, also getting all tracks for multi out VST instruments.

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duplicate post
Last edited by LawrenceF on Sun Dec 11, 2016 1:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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susiwong wrote:Lawrence - how about a humble request for adding Cubase to your clever import tool, pretty please ? :idea:
I didn't add it because Studio One already opens Steinberg Track archives directly.

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Cubase better than s1v3 (on osx) ...

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koolkeys wrote:Since my last post was more about why I love each host, I forgot to mention one huge area where I feel Cubase excels. And if your work is designed around this area, this could be a big deal.

One area where I feel Cubase excels; composition.

Brent
For certain. Like... there's no doubt about it... at all. :hihi: :tu:

What puzzles me (often enough) more than anything else is why any real music producer type would ever have to be told that something like Cubase will have way more features like that than any more new-ish product like Studio One, Reaper, Bitwig, whatever else. You'd think that would be obvious to anyone with half a brain but when these threads happen you always hear it, which is kinda stating the obvious.

There are always people new to music production who'll look at their respective web pages and graphics and marketing and to them, they kinda all look the same on the web pages, and the 30+ years of development underneath Cubase and similar things (and the lack of similar in S1) is not something they may consider or even be aware of ... but for people already involved in music production, they should already know that.

The real "competition" for or with any new-ish product (in the market, say Bitwig) is really "hearts and minds", not overall features. The latter thing takes at least a decade (and likely a good bit longer), to become comparable enough feature wise overall to make it less of a thing, to have enough advanced features where it maybe doesn't matter so much to power users.

The only theoretical way around that reality would be for a wealthy company like Microsoft to build a DAW, and put a team of 50-60 full time developers on it, and they could probably crank out something quite advanced and really deep in less than 5 years.

There is no universe where any product will show up and fully match the feature sets of Cubase or PT or Logic or similar in 6-7-8 years. It just doesn't happen, ever.

So... yeah. Not with you here, but when I hear someone say... "Cubase has WAY more features than Studio One."... my initial thought is typically ... "Uh... ya think?" :hihi:

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Cubase all the way. Stable as a rock (v9) fairly good CPU utilisation.
S1 = crash prone, cpu hog. (v3.x on Mac)
I would have a hard time choosing between these DAWs if the mentioned differences was not present though.

Edit: Have some realtime CPU issues with Cubase now so I guess no ones perfect. :hihi:
Last edited by jtrake on Tue Dec 13, 2016 7:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

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LawrenceF wrote:
susiwong wrote:Lawrence - how about a humble request for adding Cubase to your clever import tool, pretty please ? :idea:
I didn't add it because Studio One already opens Steinberg Track archives directly.
true, you're right about that.
I was secretly hoping for something a bit deeper, including plugins and stuff (haven't actually tried yours as I don't own / use any of the supported hosts).
btw, thanks for all your helpful contributions once again, clips to macros and what not. :clap:
cheers,
susiwong

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