Cubase Pro 12 pleasantly surprised

[SantaClaus]

Not being convinced by version 6 of Studio One Pro, I said to myself, I will invest the sum for Cubase Pro 12.

I love Studio One Pro, but a little disappointed with this version 6.

I'm surprised that it's so easy to convince people to switch to another DAW... I would never switch for the reason of a new paid upgrade not convincing me.

Don't worry, they'll ditch Cubase in six months and try something else. Version 5 works well, heck, even versions 3 or 4 actually. Those users wanted to switch, the update had nothing to do with their "choice".

[ATS]

I myself just decided to ditch Studio One and purchased a competitive crossgrade to Cubase 12 Pro for $180. Let's see how it works out.

I purchased the Cubase 12 Pro cross-grade as well but for it was a waste of money so far. I could not get on with it and went back to Studio One for now.

[ATS]

I tried to like Cubase.. I really tried, but it is so damn slow to load and feels so clumsy. And the way it looks is somehow not pleasing to my eyes (not even the version 12). I don't LOVE Studio One's GUI, but somehow it is not so unpleasant to my eyes. I know I know, it is just visual thing, but using a DAW is also visual in since you need to stare at it while using it I might give Cubase 12 another test sping after I get faster computer and see if it's not so sluggish.

in my opinion version 6 of Studio One looks even better,

[Trancer]

As written in my message, but apparently some people prefer to take the words out of context and adjust the words as they see fit.

Yet my words are clear once again.

Took Cubase not out of spite or anything else.

But just to try both and see which one will best meet my expectations, my use and especially the one that will be most suitable for my hybrid use.

[Trancer]

No offense to some, for now I prefer Cubase Pro 12.

Studio One Pro is a daw that I like a lot, but want to form my own opinion on which one will be the most suitable.

I really have the impression that, as so often, there are useless debates that prevent any interesting discussions and exchanges of real ideas and constructive opinions.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I went from Studio One and tried out Cubase for about a year. For me, Cubase had some nice things in how mature it was. The MIDI Transformer was very powerful and handy. It supports Eucon, which was nice. The MIDI-side of the house has a ton of features. Audio-side did everything I'd expect too. One of the nice things was that it felt like a DAW that had been around for 20 years and had all the big stuff covered very well, and even lots of little esoteric things.

The things that sucked about Cubase for me: remote control sucked. I know that's been improved recently and good for them. The whole no-VST2-sidechaining thing was utter nonsense. The DAW was very disorganized. Menus upon menus and then they'd move menu items around with each release, and on top of it, many screens still had that old legacy look. Just felt a mess. The Routing screen didn't seem to understand that users might have patchbays, and not hard-wired hardware assignments. I think they've since introduced a "Pipeline"-esque feature. And the big one was workflow: just slow! Studio One's drag and drop everywhere workflow really suits me.

Since then, I'm on Reaper and as happy as I've ever been with a DAW, and Studio One is my #2 DAW. I won't be going back to Cubase. Plus, I'm still annoyed at Steinberg with the decision to kill VST2 support on M1 Macs and eventually the entire product line to force VST3 adoption. But outside of the politics of that decision, it does seem like Steinberg did address some of my big complaints with Cubase in recent releases (I'm still on 10.5) so good for them for focusing on the weakest part of the DAW and improving them. Easy to understand why someone would be happy with Cubase 12.

[Trancer]

I'm on Windows 10 so still support for vst 2.

I am discovering Cubase and for the moment I appreciate it, nothing prevents me from switching to Studio One Pro.

What I'm doing for now.

We'll see which one suits me best.

Reaper is very interesting according to a lot of opinions.

For my part never join.

[THE INTRANCER]

I find Cubase to be an overwhelming, cluttered mess of ugly windows and buttons.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I'm on Windows 10 so still support for vst 2.

I am discovering Cubase and for the moment I appreciate it, nothing prevents me from switching to Studio One Pro.

What I'm doing for now.

We'll see which one suits me best.

Reaper is very interesting according to a lot of opinions.

For my part never join.

If you [or anyone else really] do ever look at Reaper, I highly recommend you start with the Reaper Blog 3-part series called something like "The Defaults Are All Wrong". I had figured out like 85% of what's covered in that video over the course of a year or so, but if that had existed at the time, it would've shaved months off the learning curve. If I were Justin/Schwa, I'd just make those the defaults. Users would find Reaper a lot easier to learn if that were the case.

Reaper is incredibly powerful and incredibly customizable, with a hundreds of preferences, but once it clicks with you, it's incredible (IMO). It really feels like I've got my own custom DAW sometimes - tailored exactly how I want it to look and work in a way that other DAWs just don't have. There's really almost nothing that's the "Reaper way" of doing things (other than maybe the Action List) as nearly every bit of how Reaper works can be tweaked however you'd like it to. For better or worse.

[EnGee]

I would take Cubase over Reaper any day anytime!
Yes, Reaper is super customizable and super light with tons of functions both in Midi and audio, but the problem is I can't transfer what I know from other DAWs. I can't guess how things work. I must learn everything and every small detail because everything and every shortcut is different from other DAWs. Foe me, it's a big headache to compose anything in Reaper.

Cubase is fine! But I prefer Logic and S1 workflow and environment.

[_leras]

Cubase is very good. Once you have a project template it's pretty easy to work with.

It can also do.almost anything. I do prefer the Bitwig workflow and screen layout for writing music. Cubase better for mixing though.

[Trensharo]

Nothing sluggish about Cubase. Load times aren't bad. Studio One often takes 40+ seconds to load cause it likes to rescan plug-ins and whatnot (still the case in v6). On average, Cubase is faster to load.

[Serhii Kot]

Nothing sluggish about Cubase. Load times aren't bad. Studio One often takes 40+ seconds to load cause it likes to rescan plug-ins and whatnot (still the case in v6). On average, Cubase is faster to load.

You can disable plugins scanning in startup.

[BONES]

I myself just decided to ditch Studio One and purchased a competitive crossgrade to Cubase 12 Pro for $180. Let's see how it works out.

Why? Nobody cares what you do if you can't explain why you've done it. It's the "why" that helps other people with their decisions, not the "what", which is something your mum would be far more interested in than anyone here.

It lacks of the Pre Section, the EQ and the channel strip and especially the inbuilt Pre Section and EQ is what makes the work in the channel editor so fast and convinient in Cubase!

I always hated that shit because it was hidden away in a separate interface when it should be part of the mixer. It's just really bad UX.

Maybe it's something that we needed from the paid upgrade that we were looking forward to for a long long time, and expected it to be a part of this upgrade, and when that doesn't happen, it means waiting for the next upgrade, and if that happens.

Really? You didn't have any music to make, you were just sitting around waiting for an upgrade?

So it can get tiresome waiting for something you want for a long time, meanwhile it being present in other already available DAW.

How f**king dumb is anyone who waits around for an application to get something that another already has? Anyone with half a brain would have switched as soon as they realised, wouldn't they?

Can you still work without upgrading, sure. But it's not always that fun and it's simply personal preference at this point.

So when was it fun? When did it stop being fun? Why did it stop being fun? Right now you just sound like a complete fool to me because I can't see even a hint of rationality in anything you've said.

On the other hand, it might exactly be what you get with Cubase: Loads of "Yes, I want another paid upgrade with lots of stuff in it!". Might be the better DAW in that regard indeed.

Yeah, exactly. Cubase has had at least three paid upgrades since Studio One v5 was released. Maybe that's it, they want to pay more regularly for meaningless upgrades, rather than do it every few years. Because I gotta tell you, there is more in S1's upgrade than it the last three paid Cubase upgrades combined. Stenberg even charge for .5 upgrades, FFS!

[BONES]

I cannot agree here... sorry...
1. The magic is exactly not having to throw in your own plugins but to have everything ready to go... you save a whole lot of extra clicks and plugin browsing, plugin opening...etc...

Which is great if you want exactly those effects. OTOH, if you have better effects or only want one or two of them, you still have to put up with all of them. OTOH, you can make a track preset in Studio One that will load exactly what you want every time you create a new track. It's measurably superior to what's in Cubase because you're not stuck with what Steinberg decides you need, you are free to create whatever it is you actually need and get all the same convenince.

2. This exposing of parameters is for me a very nerdy way of accessing the parameters... how useful is to have sliders without any GUI for treating an EQ???

You mean the way every hardware console for the last 60 years has worked? In any event, you get the graph view for ProEQ and you can edit it directly from the mixer, so your point is invalid anyway.

And the way S1´s native EQ is shown, is imho a gimmick and far from being really useful compared to the Cubase internal one.

I use it all the time, from the thumbnail view in the mixer. It's easy. OTOH, I don't think I ever used the one in Cubase because it was hidden away inside another dialogue window where it was too much trouble. I also use the spectrum analyser window in the Mixer, so I get two views of what's going on in the channel, without having to do anything to bring it up.

it´s nothing else than a different way of seeing what you see in the inspector and in the mixer anyway... absolutely pointless and imho not worth to even consider...

That's a laugh. I can't think of anything more pointless than the Inspector itself. What a waste of screen space that f**king thing is. An admission from Steinberg that their mixer is a waste of time.

Do it correctly or leave it...

Presonus did it correctly which is why I ditched Cubase's kludges for a more integrated, hassle-free workflow that can be tailored precisely to my needs.

What is essential for me, stability and optimal operation for external instruments and reference cpu management for large hybrid projects (Hardware and Vst).

Good luck! Because unless they have made great strides since v10.5, Cubase is way less stable or reliable than Studio One.

It is true that Cubase is a gas plant and is certainly more complex because it is more complete than Studio One.

No, it's more complex because it's ancient and has to carry around all this legacy bullshit, like the Inspector and the instrument rack, that make it much less straighforward than it should be.

I'm new to Studio One Pro, so switching to Cubase really isn't a problem.

So what you are saying here is that you have absolutely no f**king idea what you are talking about. Good to know.

Nothing sluggish about Cubase. Load times aren't bad. Studio One often takes 40+ seconds to load cause it likes to rescan plug-ins and whatnot (still the case in v6). On average, Cubase is faster to load.

Who cares how long the application takes to start? Maybe it matters in Cubase, because you'll be restarting it after every crash, but in Studio One you only need to start it once a day. And if the plug-in scanning annoys you, you can turn it off.

What matters is how long it takes to load a project and, in my experience, Cubase takes two to three times longer than Studio One. That is the one and only reason I ever even looked at Studio One, because I realised that we could never use Cubase on stage because of the long load times. When I bought it, my intention was that it would be strictly for live work but it only took me a few weeks to realise that it was so much better for my needs and workflow and that I never wanted to have to use Cubase again.