Is Studio 1 the only realistic alternative to Cubase ?

[Super Piano Hater 64]

Very few developers actually have a vendetta against VST3, but the ones who do have an oversized soapbox and a clutch of useful idiots willing to parrot their propaganda.

In our previous interactions I've tried to give you the benefit of the doubt, but if you're still carrying on with this gross distortion of reality, it would seem you haven't learned.

I have one last piece of advice for you. There is no corporation that can return your affections. So, next time you fall for a waifu, at least pick one with a face.

[jamcat]

Even a casual observer can see most plugins support VST3 now. If there were widespread issues like some claim, that wouldn't be true.

[BONES]

To give you my experience, we decided that we couldn't use Cubase live because it takes way too long to load a song, so I looked at Studio One as a possible alternative. It only took me a week or so to feel completely comfortable in S1, although I have to admit I am anything but a power user, I only use it for the basic, obvious things in the obvious way. After a month I decided I would stop using Cubase and start using S1 for everything and I haven't looked back.

A couple of weeks ago I reinstalled Cubase, for the first time in a year or so, and it just felt so clunky compared to S1. I had expected to be able to jump straight back in but over time my workflow had obviously deviated quite a bit and I struggled in Cubase. Luckily I was only opening old projects and exporting MIDI files so I could rebuild them in S1 because I don't think I'd like to produce another album in Cubase. All of which is to say that it's really easy to get into S1 after Cubase but, over time, you will develop your own workflow to take best advantage of the way it works.

I've never had any critical stability issues with S1 under Win10. I do get occasional crashes but only when opening or closing a project, never while I am doing stuff, so I've never lost any work. OTOH, I used to lose a bit of work now and then in Cubase, S1 is more stable for me than Cubase 10 was/is.

[THE INTRANCER]

Studio One has been pretty solid up to version 4.6 that I've remained on, and didn't find any issues with version 5.1 that I tested either. I've been through all versions, from 2.6 to 4.6. Any crashes with Studio One have been rare but, it's typically been my own fault for not providing enough virtual hard drive space of more than 20 gigabytes. Photoshop has a big temp file that gobbles around that much for me. I've had 16 gigs of ram with Windows 7 Home that I used, so if I planned to work on music, I've typically shut everything else down that I didn't need running, (Windows 10 unlocked the 20 gigs I actually have).

Typically, Studio One tended to have more issues on the Mac platform, but that wasn't the case for everybody, having spent my time on the Presonus forum to see how people faired and that of the release notes to highlight any bugs. Some poorly coded plugins that you find that are given away vie Focusrite freebies have created problems, so it's always best to vet them first before you use them in any tracks. I'm still using a custom-built I7 920 desktop today which I've had zero problems with, cooled with a huge Zalman CNPS 10X Extreme https://www.legitreviews.com/zalman-cnp ... eview_1034.

Other factors to maintain a good performance of a DAW is to lock the speed of the CPU at a decent overclock with a custom build and cut off any power saving features.

To answer the OP though, Studio One is like a clean cut suite dressed for the modern era and with some tricks on Windows it's possible to make it less flat looking in places. It makes a fresh change from Cubase that resembles more like a coat you'd have found being worn by Frankenstein, with GUI elements floating around from the early 1990s. If you're working with old gear that requires system exclusive bulk dumps from old hardware then you're best to stick to Cubase as it's not something Studio One supports by default.

Studio One, for music production, mixing, mastering, creativity, speed and intuitiveness, really can't be beat as an all round DAW and, it does things other DAWs can't or do very well.

[Super Piano Hater 64]

Even a casual observer can see most plugins support VST3 now. If there were widespread issues like some claim, that wouldn't be true.

Plugins that adopt VST3 will mostly work, most of the time. There will be the occasional razor blade in the users' cheerios (crashes, memory corruption, projects that have to be rebuilt almost from scratch) but for the most part it will just be dozens of tiny little annoying papercuts. When people encounter these minor issues, they will grumble about them and suffer through, the same way they always have when there's work to do and a deadline trying to catch them and eat them.

It's fine. Life will go on. In four or five years, maybe the VST3 ecosystem as a whole will even be kind of good. In the meantime, a lot of this horse hockey was entirely avoidable. Don't hold grudges against people for talking about specific ways it could be improved.

[jamcat]

Even a casual observer can see most plugins support VST3 now. If there were widespread issues like some claim, that wouldn't be true.

Plugins that adopt VST3 will mostly work, most of the time. There will be the occasional razor blade in the users' cheerios (crashes, memory corruption, projects that have to be rebuilt almost from scratch) but for the most part it will just be dozens of tiny little annoying papercuts. When people encounter these minor issues, they will grumble about them and suffer through, the same way they always have when there's work to do and a deadline trying to catch them and eat them.

It's fine. Life will go on. In four or five years, maybe the VST3 ecosystem as a whole will even be kind of good. In the meantime, a lot of this horse hockey was entirely avoidable. Don't hold grudges against people for talking about specific ways it could be improved.

I'm all for people taking their use cases to Steinberg to help them improve VST3. This has always happened. I'm fine with developers discussing technical issues amongst themselves and helping one another improve their code.

What I do take issue with is when developers irresponsibly air their grievances publicly to the end users, either to make excuses for their failings or just to whip up a mob, knowing full-well their cheering section has no ability to form a qualified opinion about C++ development but will dutifully and uncritically repeat those complaints in an echo chamber like KVR where each echo comes back even more distorted and uninformed. To the point that there is now a throng of unwashed roaming the KVR landscape telling anyone who will listen that VST3 is unusable and incapable of producing working plugins. Despite the reality that almost all plugins are already working quite happily as VST3 plugins.

The issues you've laid out here yourself are common memory leak bugs caused by poor pointer implementation and not correctly deleting objects. They're programmer errors, not VST3 SDK errors. You should know better, but I'm sure you already do.

[machinesworking]

Even a casual observer can see most plugins support VST3 now. If there were widespread issues like some claim, that wouldn't be true.

VST 3.0 came out in 2008. That's right, 14 years ago. Compare this to the less portable Mac only AU standard, and it's adoption. It's not pretty, a less portable, Mac specific plug in format introduced in 2002 was widely spread by 2004, and we have now finally after hardcore strong arming by Steinberg 14 years later, most, not all developers on VST3.

I don't have to claim anything, the facts speak for themselves. Now I'm not saying it's a terrible format etc. I'm saying it's obviously way more work for plug in and host developers than any other format we've seen, with not very many noticeable advantages, except probably stellar performance in Cubase and Nuendo. CLAP is an obvious reaction to this.

[jamcat]

Actually, as you should be able to tell from the ubergeeky naming convention, CLAP was developed for Linux, which will be perpetually in search of an audio plugin standard among other things. Such is the legacy of open source. 1000 cooks and not a kitchen manager to be found.

[machinesworking]

Actually, as you should be able to tell from the ubergeeky naming convention, CLAP was developed for Linux, which will be perpetually in search of an audio plugin standard among other things. Such is the legacy of open source. 1000 cooks and not a kitchen manager to be found.

Yeah, you might want to read up on CLAP. U-He and Bitwig are involved so I'm not too worried about it getting the Linux treatment. Plus this is typical deflection, CLAP isn't really a thing yet to talk about whether it survives or not, it's an idea at this point.

Mostly, VST3 isn't discussed negatively because developers talk about it here and non developers get riled up by that, it gets discussed because it's 14 years old and Steinberg are actively killing VST2 because adoption has been absolutely glacial. In my own experience when Live and DP got VST3 it mostly was a non starter, no improvements for me, mostly more failed plug ins. So again, I think only Cubase as a host is really benefiting from this change, most other hosts work better with VST2, that's been my own personal experience.

I still use VST3, it is the future, but let's not pretend it's anyone's fault but Steinbergs that hosts and developers took this long.

[LeVzi]

I am hoping and praying Cubase (Steinberg) listen to their users and allow the use of VST2 still within the DAW.

Or just update to VST3 and think of replacing your VST2 plugins with those that have VST3. If you are comfortable with Cubase, then stay with Cubase unless you want to be polyDAWs (like me and some others ), then S1 is a really good DAW and the nearest you can find to Cubase.

Well as i've said many times, there are some VST2 plugins working fine, that will not be updated because they are no longer supported and have been a part of my workflow for years (eg Camelphat) so I will be gutted to lose them.

I am hoping and praying Cubase (Steinberg) listen to their users and allow the use of VST2 still within the DAW.

No offense meant, but, I always wonder who "the users" are, and why single people always want to know exactly what "the users" want.

Actually, it's pretty misleading to judge from forums what "the users" want (there are many reasons for that... it's not the "average Joe" who inhabits forums, and, contributions are often based on anger, and dissatisfaction, and rarely on the opposite).

Anyway, there won't be a way back. I can promise you that. If anything, Steinberg comes out with VST4 at some point. If they feel like it's worth it (new features, or significant improvements).

The users are the ones who are genuinely annoyed at the prospect of losing VST2 plugins and being forced to VST3. And there are plenty.

[LeVzi]

So if VST2.4 is dropped completely , how will this effect VST3 supported plugins that use the VST2.4 .dll's

I've tried to delete the VST2 of some plugins and when I load the VST3 "equivalent" the plugin doesn't load.

That's some kind of wrapper at work, so why can't that work ?

[EnGee]

Well as i've said many times, there are some VST2 plugins working fine, that will not be updated because they are no longer supported and have been a part of my workflow for years (eg Camelphat) so I will be gutted to lose them.

So why don't you stay with what you have now? What the urgent matter makes you upgrade Cubase?!

You can stay using what you have for 10 years or maybe 20 years! Just unplug your PC from the internet and deal with it like a hardware workstation!

[chk071]

So if VST2.4 is dropped completely , how will this effect VST3 supported plugins that use the VST2.4 .dll's

I've tried to delete the VST2 of some plugins and when I load the VST3 "equivalent" the plugin doesn't load.

That's some kind of wrapper at work, so why can't that work ?

Hm... can't be really. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to install just the VST3 version of those plugins.

Try uninstalling everything, and then just install the VST3.

Even if they were wrapped (I have no idea, and I don't care what's going on in the background), I haven't seen yet that the DLL files have to be present when the VST3 is installed.

[Fraggle]

No. Its Ableton Live suite 11.

this

[LeVzi]

Well as i've said many times, there are some VST2 plugins working fine, that will not be updated because they are no longer supported and have been a part of my workflow for years (eg Camelphat) so I will be gutted to lose them.

So why don't you stay with what you have now? What the urgent matter makes you upgrade Cubase?!

You can stay using what you have for 10 years or maybe 20 years! Just unplug your PC from the internet and deal with it like a hardware workstation!

Because the other plugins will get updated there maybe issues with that, and of course Cubase gets updated with better stuff.