Is Studio 1 the only realistic alternative to Cubase ?

[Fornicras]

Yeah Studio One looks like the obvious choice, only thing that worries me with S1 is stability.

I was never able to get it running in demo mode when I tried it, this was a while ago, but Cubase has been rock solid of late.

I don't want to move, but the impending shift from VST2 to 3 only worries me i'll lose a lot of essential plugins.

I see people often talk about how S1 is unstable. Using it for like 7-8 months now, it has never crashed or froze or it didn't slow down at all for me. What do you mean by "stability", because for me at least, it's more stable than FL. I've never used any other DAW so I don't know about the others.

[apoclypse]

Yeah Studio One looks like the obvious choice, only thing that worries me with S1 is stability.

I was never able to get it running in demo mode when I tried it, this was a while ago, but Cubase has been rock solid of late.

I don't want to move, but the impending shift from VST2 to 3 only worries me i'll lose a lot of essential plugins.

I see people often talk about how S1 is unstable. Using it for like 7-8 months now, it has never crashed or froze or it didn't slow down at all for me. What do you mean by "stability", because for me at least, it's more stable than FL. I've never used any other DAW so I don't know about the others.

When S1 is working it’s a stable as anything else out there. Rock solid. However every now and then it starts to act weird. Just recently I had a project where it wouldn’t let delete a tempo change marker. Nothing I did would work, so finally I just created a new project and imported everything over. I’ve had some audio hitches when doing simple things like turning on Cycle mode. That last one could be due to my aging machine.

It can be buggy, there are some issues, but it really depends on what you are doing. I don’t have a lot of experience with S1 on Windows. I’ve heard it’s a bit more stable there than on Macs.

[EnGee]

You'll be at home with S1 coming from Cubase. The shortcuts about 90% the same. Most of the workflow can be replicated as well.

I thought to migrate from Cubase to S1, but for 2 reasons I didn't:
1. Cubase has more detailed tools (more options) especially in midi and composition.
2. S1 sometimes has strange glitches! Like a strange latency with my hardware synth. Playing with the Asio protection (or whatever they call it), resets it to normal latency (change it to maximum then back to minimum solved it!) There was about 100 ms latency!! In Cubase, Live and Bitwig it was the same (about 5 to 10 ms).

So, when I use S1, I find myself always checking with other DAWs when I feel something strange (in the past version, version 4, there was some slight midi timing inaccuracies. So, in the end I return to Cubase.

I recently switched from S1 to Cubase for the same reasons you mentioned (strange glitches and bugs in S1 that go unacknowledged for months/years until the complaints in their forums get loud enough).

I agree the two programs feel very similar. I think there are some ex-Cubase developers working on S1 and it shows. They are organized in a very similar way and most things work the same. I even find myself using learned S1 shortcuts without thinking about it, and most of the time they work.

There are some things that are different - for example the "fold-out" mixer in S1 is fully featured where as in Cubase it's some kind of bastard child that only has part of the features from the "full" mixer (F3), and you have to keep switching tabs to see sends and inserts. It also drives me insane that there's no context-sensitive right click menu for items like audio files or MIDI clips, which means you have to learn the shortcut or use the menus at the top for things like Glue, Separate Shared Copy etc.

Well, if you avoid those glitches with S1, I think it has easier workflow and better windows management. The thing with Cubase is you need more than one monitor to work comfortably while with S1 things are better organized and can fit happily with one monitor.

Recently I'm using Ableton Live and for me it's even faster than the two in recording my ideas and enhancing and edit them. There are no strange glitches and I feel very comfortable with one monitor! Even when splitting the screen between the Session and Arrangement views (I have 4k 27" monitor with 150% scaled Windows). Oh, and the hardware support is second to none!

It seems that hardware and software companies are testing their products first on Ableton Live! As I see it a problem free with all software and hardware I have (except Nektar). This is also a very important factor. It's so refreshing that when you buy a new midi controller and find it support Live the best (all knobs, sliders, pads and buttons work flawlessly

[jamcat]

I think there are some ex-Cubase developers working on S1 and it shows. They are organized in a very similar way and most things work the same.

Wolfgang Kundrus and Matthias Juwan created Studio One. Kundrus previously created Nuendo/Cubase SX for Steinberg, which is why Studio One is like a more refined Nuendo that learned from its mistakes.

Matthias Juwan designed the VST3 spec, which is why Studio One handles VST3 plugins better and more completely than any other DAW, perhaps even Cubase itself.

[jamcat]

What good is articulating anything, if the response is going to be a predictable "I've never needed that to write and record and engineer music, but I don't use much in the way of crutches either.

I'm not going to type up two pages to deal with that

So type up a bullet list of what you see as the most important items.
I'm not your target audience here, obviously. It's not for me. I'm not in the market for a new DAW. But clearly you are trying to convince someone with your vague and unsupported claims. Show your work. If you have anything of actual substance, that will be easy enough to do.

I'm not saying that Cubase doesn't have anything that Studio One doesn't have. I'm just questioning their significance. Provide some perspective on what is important to you.

[Effectsworks]

Studio One is like a better Cubase.

And Nuendo is a better everything.

[jamcat]

Studio One is like a better Cubase.

And Nuendo is a better everything.

I think there are some ex-Cubase developers working on S1 and it shows. They are organized in a very similar way and most things work the same.

Wolfgang Kundrus and Matthias Juwan created Studio One. Kundrus previously created Nuendo/Cubase SX for Steinberg, which is why Studio One is like a more refined Nuendo that learned from its mistakes.

[jens]

I think it totally depends on what you need and how you work. E.g. do you need integrated notation? That would rule out several alternatives. Every DAW is unique and has a few things no other has - it also lacks a few things each other has.

[jamcat]

pop a willy or two

[chk071]

I think it totally depends on what you need and how you work. E.g. do you need integrated notation? That would rule out several alternatives. Every DAW is unique and has a few things no other has - it also lacks a few things each other has.

Yep.

Notation is one of the few things which would really limit your DAW choice. Other stuff is mainly for comfort. Cubase has a gazillion comfort features. Which is fine, of course, and will be a valid reason to use it. It's just that they're comfort feature which you could surely live without. Cubase wasn't "born" with all those features (and people could make music with it anyway).

[jamcat]

This brings up cryophonik's previous post:

As a long-time user of both (but neither are my main DAW), I'd say Studio One is a good move. It's less advanced in some areas than Cubase, but you'd just have to take into consideration how important those features are (e.g., notation).

For the record, Studio One has integrated notation as of version 5.

[Effectsworks]

Studio One is like a better Cubase.

And Nuendo is a better everything.

I think there are some ex-Cubase developers working on S1 and it shows. They are organized in a very similar way and most things work the same.

Wolfgang Kundrus and Matthias Juwan created Studio One. Kundrus previously created Nuendo/Cubase SX for Steinberg, which is why Studio One is like a more refined Nuendo that learned from its mistakes.

As I said. Nuendo is better than S1. Try using S1 for post-production.

I left S1 for Nuendo. In fact, I'm still trying to flog my S1 license.

[jamcat]

As I said. Nuendo is better than S1. Try using S1 for post-production.

KVR is a music forum, and I am a musician. I don't do post-production, and I doubt it is relevant to the vast majority here. Studio One's workflow is a significant improvement over Nuendo's for recording musicians.

Does Nuendo still have the limitation where you can only route signals to channels to the right in the mixer?

[Effectsworks]

As I said. Nuendo is better than S1. Try using S1 for post-production.

Studio One's workflow is a significant improvement over Nuendo's for recording musicians.

You see, what I'm doing is just using your own 'logic'. Originally you state, "X is best."
I'm saying "Y", I'm merely pointing out that one's opinion is not a fact.

And when I make music I still prefer Nuendo.

[trusampler]

Those are big shoes to fill. Cubase supports real midi and sysex, S1 does not. Mediabay is also a rather huge reason S1 isn't in the ballpark. I love S1,but hate it's development lately. They need to get back to the workflow enhancements that made it great from the start, plus that kid that does all those videos on youtube is running out of features to talk about.