What's a good DAW to switch to from Cakewalk?

[3ptguitarist]

I have to revise my assessment of Cubase and drums editing. This is some RTFM shit I found yesterday. If you instantiate an Instrument Track (I never did, using always the vst rack to) so I never simply saw this appear but there is the option to take a drum map from instrument. Which instead of setting up twice is just the once. The instrument has to support it but BFD3 does. Groove Agent does, another thing I never use.
You have to save it as its own .drm to edit it but that's trivial to do.

I dont think I understand what you're trying to say about the drum map. Would you be able to explain it I'm beginners terms?

[jancivil]

I'll show it in pictures.
1) an Instrument Track has been instantiated:

create drm from inst.png

Cubase will be able to create its drum map [.drm] from the instrument.

2) BFD3 with drums mapped to notes:

drum map in BFD3.png

3) Having selected the option in 1), I get [a verbose reading of the map]:

drum map setup.png

Which I edit, because the names of notes are too long to fully see in Key Editor (I can resize it in Drum Editor but I don't work with it primarily). Then I save that with a descriptive name and load it.

Now, I connect that map to the track. I'm connecting it to a regular MIDI track but the "Instrument Track" is where that option reveals.

[jancivil]

I forgot to say: to edit the Cubase-created map I have to save it as a new map;
so that's the edited map I want to see; seen here to connect to:

assign drum map.png

So now, where normally there is just the note name (and/or number) there is the descriptive name of the drum articulation.

useful names in editor.png

Which is how I want it, but I used to have to create the Cubase Drum Map from scratch.

[jancivil]

I learned this and RTFM some, because I had set up the whole freaking map in Drum Editor (because there you can invert the default so low is low and high is high finally ), which meant nothing to Drum Maps, no save of it from there at all.
So at least there's this, meaning I no longer have to look at the low notes of the map at the top of the stupid thing to create a map, it's just deleting the redundancy (after a 'save as') in the names it winds up with.

[jancivil]

Actually drum notes up in the 'Grooves' range in BFD3 (C6 +) do not show up in the created map.

[Bansaw]

Reaper. Get a demo of it from reaper.fm
You can trail it for 30 days.
Its well programmed, slick and has never glitched me yet no matter how many tracks I've laid down.

[3ptguitarist]

Reaper. Get a demo of it from reaper.fm
You can trail it for 30 days.
Its well programmed, slick and has never glitched me yet no matter how many tracks I've laid down.

I didn't like the look of it, though I haven't really messed around with it much. As I said above, I am thinking about getting a kontrol s61 mk2 keyboard and I want daw compatibility and reaper isn't one of them. I don't want to have to spend a lot of time trying to find a work around.

[lingyai]

Any DAW, really

[3ptguitarist]

I'm now deciding between cubase pro 10 and ableton live 10 standard/suite. I am using maschine mk3 and soon kontrol s61 mk2. I want compatibility with a daw and the two above are compatible with the kontrol s61 mk2. So4, and some others aren't compatible so I may avoid those other daws.

Is ableton good for basic go intermediate midi note editing? And is it good for audio recording? I'll be recording guitar and vocals. I know cubase is good for audio recording, but I want the live clip feature and popularity of ableton for live playing and hiphop/electronic music production.

Any thoughts?

[rlared]

I have a Komplete Control MK2 as well. I think the DAW compatibility is nice, but I don't think it's so great that you should rule out other DAWs because of it.

It is nice to control the transport and mixer. But you have to use Komplete Kontrol on every track to really take full advantage of the integration. I find Komplete Kontrol to be too inflexible so usually don't use it.

I would say don't weigh the integration too heavily unless you really think you're going to put it to full use. For me it's more of a marketing pitch.

[3ptguitarist]

I have a Komplete Control MK2 as well. I think the DAW compatibility is nice, but I don't think it's so great that you should rule out other DAWs because of it.

It is nice to control the transport and mixer. But you have to use Komplete Kontrol on every track to really take full advantage of the integration. I find Komplete Kontrol to be too inflexible so usually don't use it.

I would say don't weigh the integration too heavily unless you really think you're going to put it to full use. For me it's more of a marketing pitch.

I use some of the komplete software and maschine so I figure it'd work good for me. I don't want to have problems with compatibility with something like studio one pro 4 which doesn't have daw compatibility with kontrol mk2.

What about komplete kontrol do you find inflexible? Also, what daw do you use?

[rlared]

I have a Komplete Control MK2 as well. I think the DAW compatibility is nice, but I don't think it's so great that you should rule out other DAWs because of it.

It is nice to control the transport and mixer. But you have to use Komplete Kontrol on every track to really take full advantage of the integration. I find Komplete Kontrol to be too inflexible so usually don't use it.

I would say don't weigh the integration too heavily unless you really think you're going to put it to full use. For me it's more of a marketing pitch.

I use some of the komplete software and maschine so I figure it'd work good for me. I don't want to have problems with compatibility with something like studio one pro 4 which doesn't have daw compatibility with kontrol mk2.

What about komplete kontrol do you find inflexible? Also, what daw do you use?

Right now I'm using Studio One Pro 4 and FL Studio, though to be honest I enjoy bouncing from DAW to DAW. I used Cubase 9.5 Pro for a while but found it too heavy/bloated for my tastes, despite the KK MK2 integration.

Komplete Kontrol has a few annoying things. First, it's a closed environment. It can only open NKS-compatible synths. You can't stack multiple synths inside of one Komplete Kontrol instance, nor can you do a split between two instruments inside a single instance. You can't tell what synth a preset is for until you load it (unless you filter by a specific synth). The interface for browsing presets is small and not resizeable for some reason. The arpeggiator is not as good as many outside tools included in other DAWs.

Bottom line, I bought the KK MK2 thinking I would get a huge amount of use out of the integration but in the end I didn't like Cubase enough, plus I like other synths better than the ones included in Komplete. So I suggest you "try before you buy" if possible.

Don't forget that Komplete Kontrol integration still works in any other DAW (browing, auditioning, selecting presets, arpeggiator, etc). But it doesn't automatically select the track you're working on, you can't control the transport (this is BS and I really hope they change this in the future), you can't control the mixer, etc in other DAWs.

[rlared]

By the way, there are plenty of people out there who would disagree with all the points I made above. So it's really a matter of preference and what is important to you.

[jancivil]

If you use NI instruments with a lot of Host Automation, NKS is a real thing.
As to flexibility, that's fixed at factory, you can't revise it.

[rlared]

If you use NI instruments with a lot of Host Automation, NKS is a real thing.
As to flexibility, that's fixed at factory, you can't revise it.

Agreed. If you want to browse through presets, load one and just tweak the preset parameters (of which there are a lot of), record a few takes and automation all without leaving your keyboard, then the KK MK2 + Cubase is fantastic.