Is Studio 1 the only realistic alternative to Cubase ?

[pierb]

Laptops don't often have numpads. Even so, why would it be the period key when every other timeline based application in the universe uses the HOME key? This is a great example of how Cubase is - easy enough if you already know how to use it but quite unintuitive if you don't. OTOH, I took to S1 like a duck to water because all that stuff was far more intuitive. To be fair, having come from Cubase undoubtedly helped in some places but not to any great extent.

Again, you could have setup your own shortcut if your keyboard does not have a numpad (laptop or not).

If you had been using Live or Bitwig for any number of years, S1 would probably have appeared quite unintuitive too.

[jamcat]

Why do people bag Reaper? Just the fact that it is there delivering a capable product at 60 bucks or whatever is keeping a lid on price gouging and rampant crippling of other products. It starts in notime flat, can run on any number of machines, and is as stable AF. I have used and beta tested many of the others mentioned here as well but I fire up Reaper at least once a day. I use it as a juke box for playalongs for instrumental practice, as a test platform and for simple projects. I have had innumerable projects crash over the years on all the other major DAWs but Reaper just soldiers on so reliably and is really processor efficient.

Because Reaper is like using Windows 98 shareware.
What's up with that plugin menu window? Truly awful.

I so agree! I was very excited to try Reaper since it was said to be so cool and giving so much options… But I could not get over how it looked. I think you can modify it to look more modern (if I am not wrong) but I don’t have time not energy to do that when other DAWs look modern and inspiring right out of the box!

Yes, it’s ugly as hell to the point that it saps your creativity. But that’s not even the worst part of it. The worst is the workflow is almost as convoluted and unintuitive as Pro Tools.

I’ve never had to read a manual for Studio One. It has zero learning curve. It just does what you expect it to do, the way you expect it to do it, in the most direct way with no unnecessary steps.

[EnGee]

I think because he is using a laptop, so he doesn't have num pad.
Isn't possible to access the same on the laptop keyboard? I don't know! I will check to see.
The num pad is very essential to the shortcuts. Not only Cubase, but Studio one uses almost the same shortcuts.

Maybe but, like I wrote before, you can set up your own shortcut if your keyboard does not have a numpad.

Yes sure! But I think (as I understood) the laptop is a little bit far, maybe a half metre away (I did that with my previous laptops), so he is mostly using the mouse for everything. In that case maybe a keyboard beside the mouse might be the answer!

Otherwise, it might be a good guide to add similar shortcuts for the 96 keys keyboard.

[BONES]

I don't know how you could set up a studio where everything was within comfortable reach and the obvious thing to stick out of the way is your computer keyboard, especially if it's attached to your screen, as is the case with a laptop. That's one of the things I really like about working with my dual-screen laptops - the keyboard is much closer to hand than a normal laptop. It's a form factor I think I will find very difficult to give up.

But also... If it was so annoying you could/should have taken a quick look at the short cut key list and changed it if needed.

But I'd have to find the shortcut list first and I was trying to finish an album. Once I found out that you could extend the transport controls, it became unnecessary. Like I said, I don't tend to use a lot of hotkeys when I work.

I don't think cubase ever misses a bit of functionality. In fact I'd say it has so much that no-one knows it all.

Which is my main complaint because they don't make it easy to find stuff. OTOH, I got much deeper into S1 in a matter of a few months because it makes so much more sense, which means you don't have to look shit up all the time.

If you had been using Live or Bitwig for any number of years, S1 would probably have appeared quite unintuitive too.

I'd actually been using Bitwig for 6 months when I finally got the shits with it and tried Cubase. Cubase was a dream by comparison but still a hefty learning curve compared to S1.

[dionenoid]

But I'd have to find the shortcut list first and I was trying to finish an album.

File > Key Commands.

Really hard to find.

[Crossinger]

But I'd have to find the shortcut list first and I was trying to finish an album.

File > Key Commands.

Really hard to find.

Even better: https://pae-web.presonusmusic.com/downl ... _SHEET.pdf

Print this sheet and put a laminated copy on your desk next to the keyboard.

[sleepypoos]

There's absolutely zero alternatives to Cubase. Any other DAW would be a downgrade tenfold in every way.

People who just use the surface features of whatever DAW of the month they're on, won't know what I'm talking about, and that's fine, "keep doing you" as they say.

But if you *really* actually dig deep into DAWs and figure out how to utilize every inch of the program - absolutely 200% nothing beats Cubendo. There's no two ways about it in my opinion.

The only alternative would be Reaper, but it would require scripting in a whole lot of new stuff... and I prefer a ready made, professional designed product rather than a directionless hodgepodge of custom scripts and "every user feature request".

[EnGee]

There's absolutely zero alternatives to Cubase. Any other DAW would be a downgrade tenfold in every way.

People who just use the surface features of whatever DAW of the month they're on, won't know what I'm talking about, and that's fine, "keep doing you" as they say.

But if you *really* actually dig deep into DAWs and figure out how to utilize every inch of the program - absolutely 200% nothing beats Cubendo. There's no two ways about it in my opinion.

The only alternative would be Reaper, but it would require scripting in a whole lot of new stuff... and I prefer a ready made, professional designed product rather than a directionless hodgepodge of custom scripts and "every user feature request".

I absolutely disagree unless you are going to teach Cubase or be in the support team!

Even if you compose/arrange/mix and master your songs, you don't need to know every inch from the program! You just need to know the bits that helps you finish your job! You need to concentrate on the music itself before anything else! Also you need to learn how to use some 3rd party plugins as mostly you won't use only the DAW's instruments and effects!

Personally, I can translate what I do in Cubase perfectly well into Live, Bitwig and Studio One. The nearest to Cubase for me is Studio One, but as I said, I can do the same in the other 3 DAWs mentioned!

Oh speaking of Reaper? Well, it looks damn promising and inviting at first, but as soon I begin to record/edit my ideas, I begin to forget those ideas! So, in theory it is a great and the best for your money, but in reality it is the inspiration killer

[sleepypoos]

There's absolutely zero alternatives to Cubase. Any other DAW would be a downgrade tenfold in every way.

People who just use the surface features of whatever DAW of the month they're on, won't know what I'm talking about, and that's fine, "keep doing you" as they say.

But if you *really* actually dig deep into DAWs and figure out how to utilize every inch of the program - absolutely 200% nothing beats Cubendo. There's no two ways about it in my opinion.

The only alternative would be Reaper, but it would require scripting in a whole lot of new stuff... and I prefer a ready made, professional designed product rather than a directionless hodgepodge of custom scripts and "every user feature request".

I absolutely disagree unless you are going to teach Cubase or be in the support team!

Even if you compose/arrange/mix and master your songs, you don't need to know every inch from the program! You just need to know the bits that helps you finish your job! You need to concentrate on the music itself before anything else! Also you need to learn how to use some 3rd party plugins as mostly you won't use only the DAW's instruments and effects!

Personally, I can translate what I do in Cubase perfectly well into Live, Bitwig and Studio One. The nearest to Cubase for me is Studio One, but as I said, I can do the same in the other 3 DAWs mentioned!

Oh speaking of Reaper? Well, it looks damn promising and inviting at first, but as soon I begin to record/edit my ideas, I begin to forget those ideas! So, in theory it is a great and the best for your money, but in reality it is the inspiration killer

Sorry but I whole heartedly disagree, be a godamned fking master with your tools like you are a soldier because while you're sitting cozy making music - someone somewhere is in a trench realizing their feet are going to get chopped off because of trenchfoot.

Everything I have learned about Cubase - and I have learned everything except for Panels - has exponentially increased my workflow and efficiency, which reduces ear fatigue, which increases the quality of my productions, which means I get to work on more music and make more money, and live a better life.

Personally, I can translate what I do in Cubase perfectly well into Live, Bitwig and Studio One. The nearest to Cubase for me is Studio One, but as I said, I can do the same in the other 3 DAWs mentioned!

Yeah, you clearly need to learn more of Cubase - start with the LE and PLE - that won't translate to any DAW unless you are willing to code your own scripts in Reaper.

[licasto2]

[BONES]

Even better: https://pae-web.presonusmusic.com/downl ... _SHEET.pdf
Print this sheet and put a laminated copy on your desk next to the keyboard.

Have you seen the size of my f**king desk? If I can't get the keyboard close enough for hotkeys to be useful, how the f**k am I going to find space for a cheat sheet?

IMG_20220125_115913936_2.jpg

I normally have my Seaboard and array of Lightpad Blocks where the front laptop is.

The other point that seems to have escaped your notice is that I simply don't like using hotkeys unless I have to so while you sound like you'd be keen to go and find them, I am loathe to even have to think about it. I see their necessity as a failure of the GUI. In Studio One there are exactly three hotkeys I use on a regular basis - Spacebar to start/stop playback, Shift+L to zoom out to the length of the song and CTRL+P to set the loop length to the current selection. Spacebar is convenient, even from a distance, Shift+L is the only way to do that and CTRL+P is easier than using the right-click menu. Everything else I do with my mouse, because it's all easy to do with my mouse.

[licasto2]

I mean you can just hit the dot on the numpad or customize that to any shortcut you prefer.

Laptops don't often have numpads. Even so, why would it be the period key when every other timeline based application in the universe uses the HOME key? This is a great example of how Cubase is - easy enough if you already know how to use it but quite unintuitive if you don't. OTOH, I took to S1 like a duck to water because all that stuff was far more intuitive. To be fair, having come from Cubase undoubtedly helped in some places but not to any great extent.

Not only Cubase, but Studio one uses almost the same shortcuts.

S1 uses whichever shortcuts you care to assign. It's kinda cool like that. But the thing is, I am not a big user of hotkeys as my keyboard is often less accessible than my mouse - up on a stand with a hardware keyboard in front/below it. You also have to be able to learn hotkeys and if there isn't a button with a tooltip to tell you, you can't learn it.

The boxed version of one of my graphics applications, Xara, used to come with a little laminated card with all the important hotkeys on it and that was very handy. Later on they changed a lot of them to conform to Photoshop and that was even handier.

Find one that is stable and use that.

Is that really a big issue for many people? Because I've never had any serious problems with any of the hosts I've used. I think I might have lost work once or twice in 18 months with Cubase, hardly the end of the world, but I've never lost any work with S1 or Orion.

The point was- they are all so similar just pick one and if it works for you, use it. If it doesn't, move to the next one. Everybody is going to have a different experience because everybody, especially Windows people, have a little bit different computer set-up, plugin folder and interface driver. One man's DAW bliss could be anothers DAW catastrophe.

[andypryce]

I see their necessity as a failure of the GUI. In Studio One there are exactly three hotkeys I use on a regular basis - Spacebar to start/stop playback, Shift+L to zoom out to the length of the song and CTRL+P to set the loop length to the current selection. Spacebar is convenient, even from a distance, Shift+L is the only way to do that and CTRL+P is easier than using the right-click menu. Everything else I do with my mouse, because it's all easy to do with my mouse.

Not everybody may need but there are lots of useful features that are reached by hot keys which are neither on the GUI or Menus. It is impossible to put all those features on the GUI, that would be carnage.

[jamcat]

The only keystrokes I use are the spacebar, enter, and 'D'.
Sometimes I use the arrow keys to move MIDI notes.
What else do you need?

I'm very comfortable with the way I use Studio One.

[sleepypoos]

The only keystrokes I use are the spacebar, enter, and 'D'.
Sometimes I use the arrow keys to move MIDI notes.
What else do you need?

I'm very comfortable with the way I use Studio One.

What about being able to press a key and instantly have the lead vocal track selected and positioned on screen, the channel editor opened, the track height maximized, and zoom width perfectly focused on the totality of data on said lead vocal track... all one button press.