Update to Cubase 10...or change altogether?!

[Laimon]

Hi DAW gurus =)

I'm a humble amateur who plays guitar and occasionally records some music.
I have been using Cubase since basically forever, currently on 8.5 (on Win10 with an Intel Core i7-7700K 4,5 GHz, for the record). In the last years however I didn't upgrade as I was hoping for certain improvements, namely:
1) better usage of multiple cores
2) support of HiDPI
3) mixer history and snapshots
4) bus freezing

As to 1), I read of no improvement. I often get crackles and pops, and when I check my cores it looks like there's always one relevantly more loaded than the others (like, one clipping, the others at 60%)

2) has been just added! Cool, right? Not quite. On Win you get only 100% (which I could achieve already to the same effect with OS scaling) or 200% (way too crammed). C'mon.

3) mixer history has been added actually in previous releases (9 or 9.5, don't recall), but I thought that that alone wasn't worth the upgrade price. And even snapshots seems to be kind of half-assed.

4) would basically be a shorthand to freeze everything that comes into a bus, plus the plugs on the bus. It's not that hard. Meh.

So I'm basically wondering if the mixer history/snapshots (and ok, also kind of a tidier interface overall) are worth the 200$ upgrade. Meanwhile, I find myself wondering if I wouldn't have a better time switching over to another DAW, hoping the change in workflows isn't a total killer.
What would you guys recommend that would address possibly my points above?
Thank you!

[Reefius]

With your PC specs you shouldn't get pops and crackles. What audio interface are you using?

[Laimon]

It's an EMU 1616m (I know, kind of old, but I get along well with it and in the past I had much more trouble with non PCI interfaces)

[lfm]

I'm not on 10 yet, but 9.5
#1) Cubase does not run everything, plugins can have their own settings for cores.
I have a bunch that do.

#3. you are right about half-assed snapshots
#4. I think you still need to re-record output from a bus realtime. Use bus as input to any track and record as usuall. Render in place might be new to you on v8.5 though, not sure, not for busses but still good options to mix into one file or separate, what to include sends, master bus etc.

I looked the other day on 8.0 and gui is severyly cleaned up, and better naming of things - not VST this, VST that on all you can think of. More logical naming for everything, plus manual has improved a lot, I must say. A lot more color options to various parts etc. Almost like theme details, not quite but very much better.

[rlared]

For #1, have you checked your buffer settings on your audio interface? Do you have an audio interface or are you using the built-in soundcard on your PC. Have set your PC to high performance mode? There are lots of system things to check before assuming it's a problem with the DAW.

[Laimon]

#1) Cubase does not run everything, plugins can have their own settings for cores.
I have a bunch that do.

Argh, I didn't expect they could. It's gonna be a hell of a troubleshooting!

#4. I think you still need to re-record output from a bus realtime. Use bus as input to any track and record as usuall. Render in place might be new to you on v8.5 though, not sure, not for busses but still good options to mix into one file or separate, what to include sends, master bus etc.

Doesn't "render in place" produce a different track? That means that one must then deactivate all the rest manually.

I looked the other day on 8.0 and gui is severyly cleaned up, and better naming of things - not VST this, VST that on all you can think of. More logical naming for everything, plus manual has improved a lot, I must say. A lot more color options to various parts etc. Almost like theme details, not quite but very much better.

Sure, I do agree it's much better.

For #1, have you checked your buffer settings on your audio interface? Do you have an audio interface or are you using the built-in soundcard on your PC. Have set your PC to high performance mode? There are lots of system things to check before assuming it's a problem with the DAW.

Sure, when I get pops or such I increase the buffer size. The interface is an EMU 1616m (PCIe). I haven't unclocked my CPU (I could, of course) but 4.20 Ghz is not little already...

[Reefius]

Do you have Multi Processing and ASIO Guard enabled in the audio settings?

[antic604]

Give Studio One 4 a spin for 30 days, although it doesn't have mixer snapshots AFAIK.

I'd imagine Cubase is way to bloated and complex for "humble amateur who plays guitar and occasionally records some music" (your own words )

[SLiC]

Cubase 10 doesn’t work very well at all in HiDPI mode and Steinberg have a note on their site explaining that they have only partially implemented it. Imho their plug ins are unusable in 4K as they don’t resize and have tiny fonts etc.

[SLiC]

Oh, and for what it’s worth I have Cubase 10 and Studio One 4 and would recommend studio one 4 over Cubase,

[killmaster]

Oh, and for what it’s worth I have Cubase 10 and Studio One 4 and would recommend studio one 4 over Cubase,

I agree though I wish Studio One's implementation of chord track would be as good as Cubase's.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

For #1: The root cause of the core imbalancing could be a million things and changing your DAW might not be the answer. For instance, are you loading up lots of individual channels with tons of effects? Or have some effect heavy channels feeding into one or more effect heavy busses? Thing like this will just strain one core due to the imbalance. I think most, if not all DAWs, would struggle with something like that. Are you using high CPU plugins (instruments or effects) to boot? What are your buffer settings on your soundcard? What are your ASIO guard settings? I find Cubase to be more efficient than Studio One overall, with Reaper being the most efficient. But in all honesty, the difference isn't what I'd consider huge. Also, different soundcards are more or less efficient at low latencies, so if you've got a low buffer size, maybe that Audient card just can't cope whereas an RME could for example.

#2: Can't comment on. Not running a 4k display because clearly this is still a disaster on Windows. I'll upgrade once everyone figures it out, which is still probably years away. And it's not just the DAW makers, you've also got the plugins themselves to contend with.

#3: Haven't used a DAW yet that can touch Cubase's mixer history. Much better implemented than the Undo in Studio One or even Sonar. Mix snaposhots in Cubase? These seem to work great as long as you're not going to use entirely different automation settings between snapshots. Seems like a somewhat resonable constraint for a version 1 to me. Studio One lacks this entirely. Don't remember how Sonar worked.

#4: Does any DAW do this?

I think you're wise to look at what else is out there since you're not really happy, but I think you'll find in the end that each DAW has different pros and cons. Based on your list, I'd honestly just recommend upgrading Cubase.

The other benefits of upgrading: 1) no new learning curve, 2) it's less costly.

[Laimon]

Wow, plenty of answers =D thank you all for chiming in!
Ultimately I do agree with the last message, all very reasonable arguments. So, upgrading now and I'll let you know how it goes!

[jancivil]

#4: Does any DAW do [bus freezing]?

Not a DAW but the host VE Pro 6 does channel freezing. The only issue with this is Native Instruments Host Automation doesn't come back to its Automation Map when unfreezing.

As to the remark on Real Time Export, the only case scenario this is actually needed is when you have an external connection to an instrument or FX rack or when there is some performance oddity in a plugin, eg., proper tails rendering being problematic offline rendered.

If you want to render a single bus, just use Batch Export and tick the bus as per usual.

[lfm]

#4: Does any DAW do this?

The very one thing I liked about Mixcraft is how they handled at least instruments.
All instruments become a child of a bus/folder integrated into the track - and can be frozen.
Even stacked just stereo out instruments become multi out track - where track behave pretty much like it were a multiout instrument to start with - all prerouted to this parent bus/folder.
You could set key range and transpose for each, just insert a arpeggiator - and in a clever way that flows down the instrument stack - from where you inserted it.

And making presets from that and reuse were right there - this was productive.
Very little mind joggling routings and stuff needed.

I just wished other daw makers picked that up.

I work mostly with external midi gear - so familiar with doing realtime rendering of audio all the time - so don't mind Cubase way or allow record from a bus to any new track. Certainly not a dealbreaker. If using VCA's you just move that to the new rerecorded track instead.

Using external instruments in Cubase was rather neat freeze operation - Cubase did it all for you - ran in realtime, recorded and adjusted alignment - in one go. But just felt trapped by how it knicked hardware inputs doing that.

Best freeze operation I saw is in Sonar - all the track outputs get visible audio as well - not the Cubase "hidden agenda" where you just hear result(audio is in Pool only). You have no guide visually when doing automation other than the original midi - which is not that smooth compared to seeing the audio right there where you put your automation. Have to check, but don't think Sonar does freeze of busses as such.

If rewire really worked flawlessly having each daw rewired into your main to pick the best part from each daw - it would be something.