Where is Cubase 12.5 or 13? [Update: It's here C13 is released!]

[Synthman2000]

Is Ableton Live the pinnacle? Is that what Steinberg are suggesting? It looks like Ableton-isation of the font for Cubase to me, again it seems, fairly sure it happened before. It just says, we have no ideas left, Live is the Pinnacle we shall follow.

I just cannot for the life me see how this helps anyone. It just gives a slight sense of change where no change has actually been made, that alone is detrimental to familiarity which becomes a very large part of why you are comfortable on a DAW. Comfort = efficiency = completed work.

They risk comfort for meaningless change. There are a lot more people who value no change to such inconsequential things than care.

I just do not understand this incessant change for changes sake. It is a disease in the computer tech-world.

Something new to get used to for no reason at all.

This inspector change is not positive however generous you try and be.

[Synthman2000]

could be the combo of VE Pro and Cubase both all silicon.

Sonoma so far seems to be a bit more snappy. the penultimate project shows signs of it, it's been at the edge of what this machine will do but now it's running very smooth. 'seems to', but so far it's all good

Could be Replika as I pointed out which is your crash report, but just completely ignore that.

"The VE Pro server project showed a crash inside NI Replika XT {"possible RAM corruption" therein sez their support} which only involved touching parameters in VSL FX internal to Synchron Player, weirdly."

[lfm]

Being around for such a long time it's hard to grasp why Steinberg don't offer different skins/themes
- this way more people can get what they want/need

Cakewalk is built on Skylight interface offer loads of skins, as does Reaper, as does Samplitude(at least 2 as I found with trial, one dark and one bright).

My last software before retiring used .NET CLI and Windows.Forms and there are applications like VisualStyler that I used
- just place an style object on the main form
- and that restyles every little part of application, all dialogs, the lot
- and there is an skin editor like Cakewalk offer too

I tested a handful of skins for Reaper, but they were all just for front application window. As soon as you went into a dialog it was the same shitty look. It's an astronomical job to reskin an entire application. The skin is an application of it's own.

Car manufacturers don't offer just blue cars one year and just red cars another year. But Steinberg and Presonus do this pretty much. So some will stay clear if they don't like the interface.

You spend so many hours with that interface and important that you like it.

So they add all kinds of new features in Cubase, but something to edit the skin to liking???

[kritikon]

At least it look like they're not going to change quite as often, which is a good thing. Getting rid of the dongle was a real spanner in the works that slowed the f**kers down. Spanners FTW

[kritikon]

Actually, you know what they're going to do next when they've run out of bouncing around between GUIs...bring back the dongle.

[cptgone]

Cubase was my first DAW (if I had been better informed I would have went for Logic, but that would have ended in tears, being a PC guy), and the only one I ever used until a few years ago (when I gave Reaper a quick look, and bought Bitwig).
I was quite the fanboy, back when Steinberg invented plugins.

From 2022 onwards, I hardly made any music - and the 3 months during which I did, I used Bitwig.

Today, to answer a simple question at this forum, I fired up Cubase to check how routing works there.
And the Cubase way struck me as rigid and unimaginative.
(Also, I find it sad Steinberg never upgraded the little apps they call MIDI insert effects. I always liked the idea behind those, but they leave so much to be desired...)

What I disliked most about Cubase throughout the years (apart from the dongle), was how it seems to limit itself to do things the way they were done before the advent of DAWs. I often had the feeling Steinberg didn't try hard enough to get the most out of the opportunities software offers, compared to traditional studios, in terms of workflow and UI.
(e.g. the rigid distinction between mono and stereo tracks jens bemoaned in this thread, when he compared Cubase to "Reaper, Reason, Samplitude, Tracktion, Sonar and energyXT")

Sometimes that overcomplicates things, like having to use groups as described in this thread (such awkward work-arounds always made me fear the day I might have to go back to a really old project, and misconstrue the intentions of my past self).
It's good to see Cubase 13 improve in that regard.

Another thing I disliked, was the Freeze function - a feature I was very happy to see added to Cubase, until I saw the implementation (back in the day, perhaps it has improved since?) which made me ignore it altogether (and use loopbacks instead, and Render when that feature became available).

A regretable design decision e.g. Bitwig avoided: to open the Key/Drum/Score editor, you have to create a MIDI part first.

While installing my collection of vsts on my new PC during the past week, I used Bitwig to authorise 'em, because it starts up fast, and I had bad memories of the last time I migrated vsts to a new DAW using Cubase (it took ages, and many ended up blacklisted).
But Cubase seems to have improved in that department, too (although it put my vsts in a bunch of separate folders - sigh).

[kritikon]

Agree re freezing. I understand why they do it as they do, but it seems like merely a nod to noisy demand, that is so rigid it's pretty unusable. I've tried all sorts with it and never use it now. Has it changed? No, absolutely not, it's a one-button process that pretty well ends after you've pressed that one button. Quick'n'easy but very flawed. Rendering makes more sense in most instances within Cubase.

Horses for courses though. I like that it's so relatable to a hw desk/recorder setup. If I want to get away from that paradigm I'd use alternative DAWs. It's a system I grew up with, it works for me and I don't have to change it. But it does throw in quite a lot of new things over the years for when I want to get experimental. Probably they develop as they do because of so many users like me - I don't want it to develop away from a tried and trusted paradigm. So they have to tread that fine line between new toys and keeping old toys. And that's probably a selling point to some degree. If I came straight into C12 from v1.0 way back in the last millennium...I would be able to get up and running reasonably easily. A hw studio engineer that lived in a cave that had never used a DAW would have a fair idea how to use Cubase. Maybe not with some of the other DAWs.

Great that we have a choice. Seems like many use multiple DAWs now and they all talk to each other better each year. They don’t all have to be the same, and I hope Steinberg don't try to go down that road. If I wanted it to be like Ableton, I'd buy Ableton not Cubase.

[concealed identity]

So they have to tread that fine line between new toys and keeping old toys. And that's probably a selling point to some degree.

It certainly was in my case. I just moved from Cubase 4 to 12, and there is SO MUCH NEW STUFF. But I can still do all the stuff I was doing in 4 right off the bat. The trick is learning the new stuff so that my workflow isn't based on Cubase's idiosyncrasies or missing features.

I came really close to moving to Studio One (and still might, someday) because of its more efficient workflow, but at some point I realized that if this is the way I've been working for the last decade+, and it doesn't feel cumbersome, then why not just keep with it?

But yeah, Steinberg has always had that problem where they want to move on, but there are still customers with Cubase 11 that want to open Cubase SX projects, so they would just bolt new features on (e.g. legacy plugins, or adding Instrument Tracks while keeping the Instrument Rack). It feels like they're finally starting to move on a bit more (getting rid of old plugins, integrating the Instrument Tracks and Instrument Rack together). I wonder if maybe that's because of the new dongle-less system - it doesn't grant you a license to previous versions like the others, so it gives them a little bit of an excuse to separate Cubase SX~11 and Cubase 12~...

[cptgone]

I like that it's so relatable to a hw desk/recorder setup. If I want to get away from that paradigm I'd use alternative DAWs.

I'm fine with that.
(as I hinted at, it's not my preferred way though, but that's another matter)

What I was trying to say is, even while sticking to that trusted paradigm, Steinberg could do better
(I gave the example of mono/stereo-agnostic audio tracks - such flexibility wouldn't get in anyone's way, if implemented well).

[macmuse]

So they have to tread that fine line between new toys and keeping old toys. And that's probably a selling point to some degree.

But yeah, Steinberg has always had that problem where they want to move on, but there are still customers with Cubase 11 that want to open Cubase SX projects, so they would just bolt new features on (e.g. legacy plugins, or adding Instrument Tracks while keeping the Instrument Rack).

I think that’s part of the problem with the older DAWs, to still support the older projects from older versions. To do it right completely would mostly mean coders starting from scratch. S1 and Bitwig are newer DAWs so had the luxury of reimagining a DAW of today by starting from scratch.

[cptgone]

I think that’s part of the problem with the older DAWs, to still support the older projects from older versions. To do it right completely would mostly mean coders starting from scratch. S1 and Bitwig are newer DAWs so had the luxury of reimagining a DAW of today by starting from scratch.

Cubase SX (2002) was a total rewrite, and didn't support the old project files (*.all) that went back to 1990.

[Synthman2000]

"And the Cubase way struck me as rigid and unimaginative.
(Also, I find it sad Steinberg never upgraded the little apps they call MIDI insert effects. I always liked the idea behind those, but they leave so much to be desired...)"

If you cannot do something that becomes a personal problem I can understand that. I have been making music which could be argued to be cutting edge. That seems to have been going well in Cubase and I know a lot of other producers using Cubase making very good music, superbly mixed, pristine and audiophile and at 44.1kHz . Though this is more about real knowledge, ability and specialism within genres.

If you are all about time stretching, time manipulation as an effect in itself and special effects in the time domain then Ableton Live is where it is at.

I find unnecessary endless amounts of options off putting. I use Reaper at a very basic level, actually for simple playback, like a media player with meters. Other than that it looks like a nightmare I don't want to get involved in, clunky, too user definable, not very pleasing to the eye. Too much brain power needed to get basics done.

What are you doing (routing wise) that is destroyed in your music through inflexibility in Cubase ? I am not suggesting that it is an impossibility that your music is so advanced, experimental and awesome but what is so challenging? Cubase is not so fluid in the time domain as Live as an example. I have Live Full licence but have never even fired it up, it seems very different to Cubase and that has put me off. Even though I understand many dance music producers somehow like how it works, it originated from loop based/time stretch based production. I occasionally time stretch a part to sync and that is about it.

I don't think highly complex, configurable DAW's means music becomes better (or any audio engineering for that matter) that is another topic and subjective but I often feel many of modern techniques are workarounds from not knowing the basics properly or even not being able to hear what you are doing cause your monitoring is leaving much to be desired, like a sticking plaster over a gaping wound.

"e.g. the rigid distinction between mono and stereo tracks jens bemoaned in this thread"

Sometimes you have to wonder if some moaning is for the sake of moaning. Sorry if I misunderstood but I like having stereo and mono track distinctions, that is good for me.

(I guess the moan is cause you cannot send L/R of a stereo track/instrument to fx independently easy or something ? Something I have never needed to do.) That is going to make or break your track is it ?

People should realize how good we actually have it. I suspect people like to moan about tools as an excuse for not being able to produce the results they imagined they would be producing with the most powerful studio technology imaginable in their spare room.

[cptgone]

What are you doing that is destroyed in your music through inflexibility in Cubase ?

Please don't put words in my mouth.
Read what I said.

---
(Recap: I tried to explain a KVR user how to route a drum sequencer vst to a drum vst.
Afterwards, I realised I had explained how that works in Bitwig (and I suspect the guy who asked uses Cubase).
In Cubase, not 1 but 2 tracks are needed, and the 2nd track needs to have its MIDI input set to the output of the first.
I prefer Bitwig's way: add all the vsts (effects or instruments) you like to any such track.

That led me to some general thoughts on how Cubase could be better designed, in terms of workflow, routing, and the way some features are implemented.
That has been my sentiment for 25+ years.

I thought it a good idea to share those thoughts.
Perhaps it wasn't, as people are so prone to misunderstand each others views these days)

[Synthman2000]

And there was me thinking Cubase was an incredible drum sequencer in itself, and then some.

You are right though, everyone is permanently on send. Receive, not so much.

[cptgone]

And there was me thinking Cubase was an incredible drum sequencer in itself, and then some.

The Drum Editor is cool, but there are dedicated vsts that offer more features (IIRC), including:
- probability
- reverse direction (and even random)
- an easier way to add rolls
- lanes with variable length

Not to mention things like Euclidean rhythm generation.