Cubase Pro 10.5.20 is *no longer* the perfect DAW

[xbitz]

Cubase has the disadvantage of having an army of geriatrc, long-time users who are averse to major changes in the interface - over the years, they've developed muscle-memory.
Yes, people like me.

10.5.20 still should have had an update to fix the display bugs.

Same here. 15 years ago I could switch DAWs on the fly. Now I can't anymore. Studio One may have a faster interface but I still work faster in Cubase. Too lazy to spend year or two to gain muscle memory of new DAW

They could offer that and still start the application up with a standard setup when then coud ne (re-)configured by the power-user. Nothing is stopping then from doing that.
Having to first set up an "input bus" - an obscure concept most DAWs (if any) do not know - in a apparently unrelated window that is accessed/opened via a apprently unrelated top-menu entry on a per-project basis in order to be practically able to record a mono source is beyond absurd if you think about it for a moment, I would say.

^^^ about this 'muscle memory of' thing I'm still(started to) using S1 with Cubase shortcuts ... https://blog.presonus.com/index.php/201 ... tudio-one/

can be set here, at bottom right ...

[keyman_sam]

I moved to Logic because of the dongle. I really miss the MediaBay from Cubase. If they were to bring Cubase to non-dongle version (even with online auth like Reason) I'd readily consider it.

[Tronam]

I moved to Logic because of the dongle. I really miss the MediaBay from Cubase. If they were to bring Cubase to non-dongle version (even with online auth like Reason) I'd readily consider it.

Since I frequently alternate between desktop and laptop these days, Logic has essentially replaced Cubase for me since projects can be loaded interchangeably. Without some form of machine or cloud authorization I just never reach for it anymore despite upgrading to CP11. I do with they’d evolve their eLicenser to be more laptop friendly, not to mention their UIs.

[keyman_sam]

I moved to Logic because of the dongle. I really miss the MediaBay from Cubase. If they were to bring Cubase to non-dongle version (even with online auth like Reason) I'd readily consider it.

Since I frequently alternate between desktop and laptop these days, Logic has essentially replaced Cubase for me since projects can be loaded interchangeably. Without some form of machine or cloud authorization I just never reach for it anymore despite upgrading to CP11. I do with they’d evolve their eLicenser to be more laptop friendly, not to mention their UIs.

How do you keep the two Macs in sync w.r.t plugins and samples?

[jens]

I do wish they’d evolve their eLicenser to be more laptop friendly, not to mention their UIs.

Yeah, my dongle is held together by scotch tape... a shame that it is now also required for Spectralayers (as a consequence it happened a few times already that I couldn't use SL when I needed it and ended up having to use RX instead - dumb shit)

And yes, I'm not sure they actually know what a touchscreen is over at Steinberg HQ - too modern technology for them, it seams.

As I mentioned before: they're firmly rooted in the 90's - okay, the dongle is much smaller now (sized like the ten or fiveteen years old technology it is), but at least the old one wouldn't break when you looked at it for a moment too long.

[BONES]

after such a long time of using Studio One now, I always forget how good looking and usable Cubase's GUI is.

Are your eyes painted on? Cubase looks like a dinosaur, GUI-wise. It's awful. One of the reasons I was tempted to try Studio One was that's it's GUI looked so much nicer/more modern than Cubase's.

There are quite a few things I like about Cubase. Switching to it from Orion was much less hassle than I'd anticipated and we were compensated for it in many ways with all the features and functionality in Cubase we'd never had in Orion. Unfortunately, Cubase has way too many issues on my PC that made working a lot more hassle than it needed to be. In the end, the move to Studio One became permanent when I realised how much more stable it is. To be fair, a couple of updates fixed a few of the problems but once you've lost faith in something, it's hard to trust it again.

[pixel85]

Cubase looks gorgeous. The best looking DAW.

[EnGee]

I like Cubase colours more. The contrast is the best but S1 has a better design except one thing is annoying and that is the track indicators are for midi signal not for audio level! I don't understand the idea behind this really!

Anyway, last time I was recording and editing in Cubase, I heard and saw a sudden spike in the cpu! I used only few old NI synths, so it is unlikely it is the NI. I searched the net and of course found some people with similar problems. I lowered the ASIO Guard level to low and set the project bit to 32 instead of 64. I need to test again now. If this problem continue, then both S1 and Live are more stable than Cubase and I would happily use one of them as my main DAW instead of Cubase.

[boark]

Cubase needs to eliminate the dongle. That alone prevents it from becoming my only DAW.

And the draw tool needs a key modifier to show the erase tool and select tool. It's neat that the select tool has a modifier to show the draw tool. But it requires holding that key down the entire time to draw in notes. Would rather use the draw tool and hold the modifier to show the select and erase tools as needed.

[v1o]

Sorry, I guess I worded that badly - what I meant is that you can't select a note (or a few of them) in the piano-roll editor and then edit only its velocity at the lower dedicated velocity editor when it starts at the same time as another note, as is the case in other hosts. I have no clue why that wouldn't work - tbh it seems like an actual bug to me.

You can do that. Just select individual notes and use the menu bar above the midi editor to type in a velocity value for each note.

Btw.: why do I have to manually first select the pencil tool anyway to edit the velocity that way. That's a major nuisance. The pencil tool should appear automatically as soon as I hover over that area of the GUI. Very bad and stupid in a mostly very well-thought out application.

You use a modifier key for that. On Mac its the CMD key.

I think you're just used to working in a program where the pencil tool appears automatically and because of that learned muscle memory you now expect all other sequencers to behave the same. But every DAW workflow is different, if they change the behaviour of the velocity editor it would be inconsistent with the behaviour of all other operations in the rest of the program. The reason you use a modifier key is because it's consistent with how things in the rest of the program work.

Thought so - I was only about 99% sure I didn't overlook something somewhere - again very bad, sorry to say.

With regards to importing midi file names honestly that's not something that I've seen raised on the forums yet. And it's not something that's come up in my personal workflow. Regardless it's a good feature to have, my suggestion would be to write an email to the support team.

[v1o]

It was simply my lack of knowledge...

One has to press shift in order to edit only the velocity of the selected notes.

It's debatabel whethger this is very reasonable (pun unintended), however it is absolutely and by far not the kind of drawback it seemed to be.

Moral of the story: RTFM folks - RTFM all the way.

Okay glad you found a solution!

[LeVzi]

tbh I am tired of Steinberg, not Cubase. The DAW itself works well enough , 10.5 is probably where i'm stopping at until I upgrade the system. But having spoken with support from Steinberg for issues with 10.5 and the 11 trial, they were absolutely clueless.

e.g. I have a project in 10.5 which was killing my system, I got told it was UEFI Bios for one reason. lol TUrned out all the GUI's were open "behind" the project window and closing them freed up the resources.

Also, the same project had a multitude of colours for different tracks, as we all do. Those colours didn't open in Cubase 11.

Their support said the project didn't have any colours saved in it at all. Even when I supplied screenshots.

They are making update after update but can't even fix something as basic as no colours. They need to back off the updates and actually get a fully stable version running. Throwing more and more features at us doesn't give us the confidence that the actual DAW is stable enough, at least for me to be assured it is.

Problem is, there is no alternative to Cubase for me. Plus, would have to be pretty good in terms of workflow for me to change now, but Steinberg are just depressing.

[jens]

Sorry, I guess I worded that badly - what I meant is that you can't select a note (or a few of them) in the piano-roll editor and then edit only its velocity at the lower dedicated velocity editor when it starts at the same time as another note, as is the case in other hosts. I have no clue why that wouldn't work - tbh it seems like an actual bug to me.

You can do that. Just select individual notes and use the menu bar above the midi editor to type in a velocity value for each note.

Sure, but as I clarifed I was talking about the dedicated editor at the bottom.

Btw.: why do I have to manually first select the pencil tool anyway to edit the velocity that way. That's a major nuisance. The pencil tool should appear automatically as soon as I hover over that area of the GUI. Very bad and stupid in a mostly very well-thought out application.

You use a modifier key for that. On Mac its the CMD key.

I think you're just used to working in a program where the pencil tool appears automatically and because of that learned muscle memory you now expect all other sequencers to behave the same.

Nope, all I expect from things is to be reasonably (pun intented this time) developed.

The default cursor does nothing for the velocity editor so there is absolutely no point in having to press a modifier/select a different tool first - it simply makes no sense.

With regards to importing midi file names honestly that's not something that I've seen raised on the forums yet. And it's not something that's come up in my personal workflow. Regardless it's a good feature to have, my suggestion would be to write an email to the support team.

I constantly keep running into that problem!

I turn MIDI files from different folders in Superior Drummer into clips for various sections of a song and later on I can't remember anymore even just what folder they came from, so if I want to use more of the same (variations, fills and what not) I basically am pretty much f**ked. The workaround would be to have to make notes for each folder/file I use for any given song.
Super super tedious and cumbersome! I am totally stunned that I seem to be the only one running into this kind of problem.

[mladi]

I tried S1 but i didn't liked the GUI. Cubase comes a long way and i like how it looks now.

Both sequencers were very stable, made not much difference which one i used.

[chk071]

Cubase needs to eliminate the dongle. That alone prevents it from becoming my only DAW.

After they just had a downtime of their activation servers for several days, I could imagine that they'll consider dropping eLicenser in the near future.

Maybe that's just wishful thinking though.