Cubase 7 To Cubase 9.5 Upgrade Questions

[wagtunes]

Because of the sale, I am thinking of upgrading from Cubase 7 to Cubase 9.5.

Honestly, the main reason I am even considering doing this is due to fear that support for Cubase 7 will stop or that new VSTs will eventually not work in Cubase 7 because all testing will stop for it.

I say this because, functionally, I am totally pleased with Cubase 7. It does everything that I need it to do and, most importantly, I know it like the back of my hand having used it for 5 years.

So give me a compelling reason, outside of support issues why I should even bother upgrading to 9.5.

What amazing things does it add that I'm going to say to myself "OMG, how did I ever live without this?"

Sorry, but that's really what it comes down to. I'm really done buying things just because they're new. Now, what I buy really has to give me something that I don't have or it's a no sale.

So what are the MAJOR improvements?

Also...

1. Can I run Cubase 7 and 9.5 side by side?

2. Is there a demo for Cubase 9.5?

[JonSolo]

Yes you can run all versions side by side. Upgrading to V9.5 allows you to run all the way back to Cubase SX, and you can run at the same time. This means that your old projects will open in their original versions unless you overwrite them.

This has saved me countless times.

Yes there is a demo, but it seems you are on it.

[Scotty]

There are plenty of videos which show the new features... truly you may love them or not care at all about them. I know one thing that you will dislike is there is no 32 bit vst support... so you need to bridge any old plugins that are 32 bit.

Best features for me... easily customizable plugin management. Mixer undo, lower dock option great for single monitor set ups. Sample track, wave meters, chord tracks, render in place, better drum editor, bezier curves for automation, metronome that is highly customizable for odd time signatures etc, VCA automation, scalable mixer (not that good looking but functional). Too many to list. This may not float your boat and I don't want to convince you to part with your money so don't consider this an endorsement for your decision.

Also new plugins Frequency is really nice and Groove Agent SE, other plugins as well but you may have those covered with 3rd party stuff.

[wagtunes]

There are plenty of videos which show the new features... truly you may love them or not care at all about them. I know one thing that you will dislike is there is no 32 bit vst support... so you need to bridge any old plugins that are 32 bit.

Best features for me... easily customizable plugin management. Mixer undo, lower dock option great for single monitor set ups. Sample track, VCA automation, scalable mixer (not that good looking but functional). Too many to list. This may not float your boat and I don't want to convince you to part with your money so don't consider this an endorsement for your decision.

Honestly, nothing you've listed made me go "Wow, I gotta get that!"

Of course I don't know what's in Cubase 8 that's not in Cubase 7. But like I said, I'm very happy with Cubase 7 as far as functionality. It does what I need it to do.

[Scotty]

I just edited it as I left out some major updates since 7... re read it again and see if there is anything there...


also search "what's new in Cubase 8" , 8.5, 9, 9.5 etc... it will take to the page with the additions for each version and videos.

[wagtunes]

I just edited it as I left out some major updates since 7... re read it again and see if there is anything there...


also search "what's new in Cubase 8" , 8.5, 9, 9.5 etc... it will take to the page with the additions for each version and videos.

Thanks. I'll go check out the comparison page. Of course it's moot anyway because they won't send me my demo license.

[jancivil]

I stayed with Cubase 5.5.3 until I got a computer which came with an OS it won't install onto.

I like the EQ, "Frequency" a lot, but lately they've broken it, I use it in regions in the audio editor (audio part editor to be precise) and its spectrum display now doesn't work.

Actually I'm using Nuendo 8 which isn't very different than Cubase 9. I have encountered the weirdest most destructive bug in all my life in it. It shrinks some MIDI tracks down - like it's doing 'Process Tempo' but at far, far beyond what that's built to achieve - which cannot be reconstructed with tempo track changes. So now I have to export MIDI all the time for safety.

I gave up for the time being on getting my account back, so I'm [60-day] demoing Nuendo until I die. New dongle = new opp. for a trial activation, sez eLicensor software, so ok I sez.

[wagtunes]

I stayed with Cubase 5.5.3 until I got a computer which came with an OS it won't install onto.

I like the EQ, "Frequency" a lot, but lately they've broken it, I use it in regions in the audio editor (audio part editor to be precise) and its spectrum display now doesn't work.

Actually I'm using Nuendo 8 which isn't very different than Cubase 9. I have encountered the weirdest most destructive bug in all my life in it. It shrinks some MIDI tracks down - like it's doing 'Process Tempo' but at far, far beyond what that's built to achieve - which cannot be reconstructed with tempo track changes. So now I have to export MIDI all the time for safety.

I gave up for the time being on getting my account back, so I'm [60-day] demoing Nuendo until I die. New dongle = new opp. for a trial activation, sez eLicensor software, so ok I sez.

Interesting. I think I'll stay with 7.

[jancivil]

I was using 5 for ~5 yrs past when they ended development of it.

I like the curves for automation quite a bit, other than that... oh, the time stretch algos have changed, and IMO improved. And the zoom can be grid-determined. So I wouldn't really want to go back albeit the things are relatively minor.

The shrunken-head MIDI parts are so small the first time it happened I thought it was deleted. I mean something that goes for a couple of minutes is now a fraction of a second long. And it happens apparently upon quitting.
I had never actually investigated 'Process Tempo' before so it weren't me! And it's impossible to do anywhere in the remote vicinity of make it 150x smaller, so who knows what weird code caused this atrocity. I actually did some arithmetic, going back and forth with toggling time base on and off to eventually grow the part back to where I could locate where notes belonged. It will NOT process tempo more than 2 times the length evidently.

[lfm]

The shrunken-head MIDI parts are so small the first time it happened I thought it was deleted. I mean something that goes for a couple of minutes is now a fraction of a second long. And it happens apparently upon quitting.
I had never actually investigated 'Process Tempo' before so it weren't me! And it's impossible to do anywhere in the remote vicinity of make it 150x smaller, so who knows what weird code caused this atrocity. I actually did some arithmetic, going back and forth with toggling time base on and off to eventually grow the part back to where I could locate where notes belonged. It will NOT process tempo more than 2 times the length evidently.

Weird stuff - do you use 960 ppq or something larger?
Thinking if getting some overflow at some point.

And having retrospective midi record active I've had weird stuff too. Turned that off already running Cubase Elements 7(now on Pro 9.5).

The data collected at retrospective may get timestamps earlier than start of timeline. So moving clips to another track it jumped into timeline, far from where they were recorded originally due to retrospective stuff needed to go on existing timeline. The full clip was moved way off possibly because time became negative or something.

It seems to me that Cubase handle retrospective in a way that create strange things sometimes. And once cursor start positioning recorded midi event on timeline - the retrospective timestamps are kept relative this - and if too many events may exceed timeline start weird stuff happends.

If want retrospective midi recording, minimize buffer to maybe 100 events or so. I think it was huge as default.

Just a few ideas for a workaround maybe...

[jancivil]

The shrunken-head MIDI parts are so small the first time it happened I thought it was deleted. I mean something that goes for a couple of minutes is now a fraction of a second long. And it happens apparently upon quitting.
I had never actually investigated 'Process Tempo' before so it weren't me! And it's impossible to do anywhere in the remote vicinity of make it 150x smaller, so who knows what weird code caused this atrocity. I actually did some arithmetic, going back and forth with toggling time base on and off to eventually grow the part back to where I could locate where notes belonged. It will NOT process tempo more than 2 times the length evidently.

Weird stuff - do you use 960 ppq or something larger?
Thinking if getting some overflow at some point.

And having retrospective midi record active I've had weird stuff too. Turned that off already running Cubase Elements 7(now on Pro 9.5).

The data collected at retrospective may get timestamps earlier than start of timeline. So moving clips to another track it jumped into timeline, far from where they were recorded originally due to retrospective stuff needed to go on existing timeline. The full clip was moved way off possibly because time became negative or something.

It seems to me that Cubase handle retrospective in a way that create strange things sometimes. And once cursor start positioning recorded midi event on timeline - the retrospective timestamps are kept relative this - and if too many events may exceed timeline start weird stuff happends.

If want retrospective midi recording, minimize buffer to maybe 100 events or so. I think it was huge as default.

Just a few ideas for a workaround maybe...

Hmmmm; yes, my PPQN is 4000. I never saw this before Nuendo 8.1.
I have retrospective record on as well. I'm not using it so that gets turned off. It was 10000 events, the default. I left it on, as one of these 'maybe this could come in handy' but it never has occurred. Your logic seems to apply, I bet that's it. But again, never saw the likes of this before. It was terrifying. I recognized the events but that is bizarre. I did the arithmetic to get them in the ballpark at an ungodly hour and don't remember. It could be they were 1/10000ths of their former size.

[lfm]

Hmmmm; yes, my PPQN is 4000. I never saw this before Nuendo 8.1.
I have retrospective record on as well. I'm not using it so that gets turned off. It was 10000 events, the default. I left it on, as one of these 'maybe this could come in handy' but it never has occurred. Your logic seems to apply, I bet that's it. But again, never saw the likes of this before. It was terrifying. I recognized the events but that is bizarre. I did the arithmetic to get them in the ballpark at an ungodly hour and don't remember. It could be they were 1/10000ths of their former size.

The high number for retrospective is really weird when you think about it a bit.

How many minutes of recording wouldn't you do with 10 000 midi events - like notes and controllers?
Maybe a lot of pumping modulation wheel and pitch wheel then.

Like what you played last hour or something - added to any recorded now?
Not sure when it starts to buffer - if when record enabled or so.

If you do many takes - how does it work - clear buffer each loop if you do that?

I turn that retrospective off to be sure least amount of problems. Or set to 100 or so not to cut an early hit on a key.

For Nuendo - it seems they set midi resolution almost up in range of sample accurate then.
120 bpm - two a second - 2 x 4000 = 8000 ticks a second - well, not quite there but really high. If 48k every six samples there can be a midi event.

One hour create 8 digit number for ticks - which is not supported by float(only 7 digits), if that is used.

Or is there a standard when sharing projects between studios for this?
But don't think neither OMF nor AAF support midi at all.

And another thing I have been wondering about - what does project length really mean for Cubase?
Default is 10 minutes - what happends if that is exceeded?

You talked about lengthy midi recordings, and thought if it applies to your problem somehow?

For midi there is 24 midi clocks each quarternote - so wonder if better that set resolution is multiples of 24.
Most common I've seen in computer sequencer is 960, or default in Cubase was 480 as I recall.

[Ph-J]

So what are the MAJOR improvements?

Things I really like:

Render in place
TrackVersions (already in 7 ? I use this all the time to try different things)
Revamped FX (deesser for example) + Frequency EQ
Import tracks from project
Mixconsole history
Direct offline processing (or what is it called ? close to the 'object editing' of samplitude)
The 'Sampler track' I end up using more than I thought I would (which was none at all)
(The 'Multiple markers' feature I haven't used yet , but could be useful)

edit: already been said and no big deal to me, but the Plugin Manager is useful too

There might be other things, but I can't remember what was in 7 vs now

[lfm]

Other biggies in later Cubase Pro for me:

multiple markertracks - really useful to have while tracking and mixing, and separate timebase as well so they can stay in place or not. Up to 10 marker tracks - and one is active at a time - and simple checkbox changes that. Really useful for video too since you can have markers for scenes that stay in position.
Key positions for automation - make a marker track for that etc.

VCA fader groups - real nested fader groups to get organized for real as project grows

Video engine does not require Quicktime installed(but still rather cpu hog)

64-but audio engine option in 9.5
Own custom metronome patterns in 9.5 - at last can you get odd time signatures as you want them.
Double amount of insert slots on each track in 9.5 - now 16
Improved pre/post fader for inserts in 9.5 - you just flip pre/post and plugin is place where you want it.

Otherwise on Steinberg.net got to Cubase and New in 9.5 - and then you can navigate to New in 9.0 etc.

I also found they improved manual quite a bit each version - which is nice.

[Reefius]

The lower dock and the fixed transport bar are some of the best features for me. No more separate open windows for editors and mixer, and the transport bar niceley sits at the bottom of my screen. I always found the floating transport bar annoying.