Impressed with Cubase- am I crazy? What impresses you?

[captain caveman]

I personally prefer Live because it's quicker (and less anal)for me and Cubase seems like bricklaying or playing with Lego for me. But audio editing is heaps better in Cubase....don't even think Live has one.

You can use the Arranger Track in Cubase to get out of the linear recording thing by having different 1, 2, 4, 8/whatever sections you can loop record and stack things up in and use the Arranger to put together different chains into a song. The good thing is that you can have several simultaneous chains of Arranger parts to audition arrangements and can "flatten" one of them into the current project to create a linear sequence or flatten one or all of them into linear sequences in seperate projects.

Together with the Transpose track you can do an awful lot without getting linear.

[koolkeys]

I personally prefer Live because it's quicker (and less anal)for me and Cubase seems like bricklaying or playing with Lego for me. But audio editing is heaps better in Cubase....don't even think Live has one.

You can use the Arranger Track in Cubase to get out of the linear recording thing by having different 1, 2, 4, 8/whatever sections you can loop record and stack things up in and use the Arranger to put together different chains into a song. The good thing is that you can have several simultaneous chains of Arranger parts to audition arrangements and can "flatten" one of them into the current project to create a linear sequence or flatten one or all of them into linear sequences in seperate projects.

Together with the Transpose track you can do an awful lot without getting linear.

I noticed all of this through the videos online that I've been watching, and from reading the pdf manual. I think that track is a HIHGLY underrated feature, and one that takes the linear aspect completely out if you want, lets you perform live if you want, or just rearrange on the fly, create alternate arrangements(maybe for radio, album, extended cut, etc.). It's really super powerful, and IMO it's better in some respects than the way Live works.

Brent

[Fredo Gevaert]

Does Cubase actually do the full body cavity search on plugins on every startup??? (MUST be an option, surely?)

(From a member at Nuendo.com)

Any of Waves version6 plugin stays in memory once loaded. Even if the plugin instance is removed from the host application in use (this applies to any host application), it keeps the same amount of memory as it was running. This was the change Waves made since V6 to cut down the copy protection process that has to be done each time plugin .dll is called. That is where the complaining about waves plugin takes long time for each instance to initialize comes from. They decided not to unload .dll from memory that makes loading time significantly quicker for 2nd instance and so on. They also recently changed their copy protection scheme to protect each plugin from each bundle/shell.

Nuendo and Cubase are the rare applications that actually loads any .dll plugin on launch to check number of i/o, capable sample rate, etc. Its' plugin scan is properly done than any other application. Other hosts don't load .dll, I think they only scan it's own configuration file.
Each time Cubase or Nuendo opens, it loads all the plugins to memory one by one. For all other plugins this can be done quite quickly. But because of the reason above, each waves plugin needs several seconds to initialize, there are over 90 plugins for full set that sums up the whole scan to be 3minutes or more. And as said above, once any waves plugin is loaded to memory, it stays there. Thus 1GB+ is already used when host is launched. This perfectly makes sense and explains inconsistency we seeing between Cubase/Nuendo and others like sonar, live, wavelab, protools, etc.

So the slowness and the memory consumption does happen to any host as well. But this won't happen again on 2nd launch because these applications won't actually load the .dll on 2nd time.


As said, Waves has fixed the problem; you should be able to get an updated version through Waves Support.

HTH
Fredo

[LawrenceF]

The Logical Editor is one thing that I'm intrigued by, but never fully understood it. What can you do with the Project Logical Editor?
Brent

Lots of stuff. Only limited by the available choices and your imagination. Stuff that might otherwise be an FR.

Simple but useful stuff like deleting all the empty tracks in a project to more complicated stuff like editing automation across multiple tracks at once.

Action Target: (things you can use as a criteria)


The available selections depend on the target/filter selection. Here are the available selections for the "Track Operation" target.



These screen shots of factory presets will give you some idea of the possibilities.





Note: The midi logical editor has a "Copy" function along with the transform/delete/select functions. It can automatically cut/copy/paste whatever you setup as the logical filter to a new track. Very handy.

Nobody needs any of this stuff, like nobody needs a lot of stuff we use. But it sure makes life easier.

[buscemi]

Yes, delete empty tracks is great when using templates. It allows for "overdoing it" when you set them up and once you get to a point where you are ready to do so you can clean up the project nicely. Great with the muted tracks too if you want to get rid of the crapola sometimes. I find that with audio tracks that are so obviously never going to make it, this works well.

[mbncp]

One cool thing about the Project Editor is that it lets you access tracks by their names (or partial names) instead by their position when using a remote control.
So even if you insert new tracks before a given one, you can still make that your CS will control that specific track.

Can be also handy to setup complex live routing scenes.

When saved, PE settings can be included in a macro or called by the generic remote.

[dgkenney]

and IMO it's better in some respects than the way Live works.

Brent

If you prefer a meat cleaver to a scalpel

Dan

[bduffy]

You know what I don't like about Cubase? Really, really, really long startup times - even on a modern, fast machine. I mean, seriously: over one full minute for me to get working! Or is that just because I have a Waves bundle?

Yes, that is a problem with the Waves Bundle. Besides the long startup times, you will also notice an increased memory usage.

Waves has released a patch to solve these problems, though they do not advertise it. You should get in contant with Waves Support and they will supply instructions to download a new version of the 6.0.7 Waveshell-VST file from their FTP site. Then have to trash the "Vst2xBlacklist, Vst2xPlugins, VstPlugInfo" in the Nuendo/Cubase App Data folder along with the Waves prefs located at "C:\Documents&Settings\your user\Application Data\Waves Audio\Preferences"


HTH
Fredo

Hey Fredo, I just got off the horn with Waves, and the guy told me that my loading times are "normal", and they only have a fix specifically addressing Waveshell 6.0.7 and Cubase (PC) 5.0.1. I take it you're running PC, then?

Basically, he was like Jeff Probst on Survivor: "I got nothin' for ya". Actually, he was quite nice and said that they're fully aware of customer dissatisfaction with the Waveshell paradigm, and indicated they're doing something about it. I hope so. This "loading the everything into memory" has got to stop. Not that I've noticed said memory hit, but it's disturbing, nonetheless.

Sorry Brent! Derailed again!

[LawrenceF]

It seems we (as a society) have gotten very impatient.

I'm not the kind of person who'll get irritated at a 60-90 second start up delay in a daw or any other software that I'll probably spend the next 4-8-10 hours working in nonstop. It's a tool. Start the tool, when it's ready to use I use it.

It's like ironing clothes. It takes a minute for the iron to get hot. It's not gonna change how I iron my pants.

Anyway, Cubase 5 boots in about 15 seconds on my laptop. Vegas 8 takes much longer than that... about one minute. Part of that (for both) is the initialization of large SQL media databases I'm sure?

Short of a daw taking 5-10 minutes to boot, it's pretty irrelevant to me, start times measured in seconds.

[proletkult]

It seems we (as a society) have gotten very impatient.

I'm not the kind of person who'll get irritated at a 60-90 second start up delay in a daw or any other software that I'll probably spend the next 4-8-10 hours working in nonstop. It's a tool. Start the tool, when it's ready to use I use it.

It's like ironing clothes. It takes a minute for the iron to get hot. It's not gonna change how I iron my pants.

Anyway, Cubase 5 boots in about 15 seconds on my laptop. Vegas 8 takes much longer than that... about one minute. Part of that (for both) is the initialization of large SQL media databases I'm sure?

+1(except I don't do ironing)

[D.Wako]

VST expression is going to be a life saver for me. I'll finally be able fill Kontakt instrument banks with all VSL articulations and easily access them in different ways if i want to. For me, this is the one most exiting development this year.

I'm very happy to see the new tempo track added in the project window. Probably should have been there before.

And it's cool to know my daw is very deep. It'll probably take me years to learn all this.

I should be getting my copy early next week.

[Oxytoxine]

i also have cubase 5, but do not find the time to use it because of the many reaper 3 betas that i have to test..

no, seriously: there is much to LOVE in cubase, much has been mentioned.

what i HATE most is the irritating windows behaviour. opening windows (always) most of the time causes strange things like closing or resizing of other windows etc. this drives me crazy. in cubase studio 4, there were nice commands to stack windows horizontally or vertically etc., i wonder why they have been removed? if i open the mediabay to import files to the project i first have to resize the mediabay window, then drag/place it properly so that stuff can be easily dragged to the project, but then half of the mediabay window content is out of sight, so it is necessary to scroll just to be able to push the play button, then i have to scroll in the explorer on the left to bring the desired folders with other files into the window, etc. - that's the pure horror to me. maybe i should make more use of screensets, but e.g. a docker would be soooo nice.

furthermore i truly hate the mediabay/loopbrowser attitude of always closing after importing a file, and why does pressing "play" play the files both in the project and mediabay context (so that you hear it doubled and have to reopen and close mediabay to avoid this)?

maybe there are some prefs settings i couldn't find to change these behaviours (fingers crossed)? these things are so irritating for me that i always come back to reaper, although in many other respects i would prefer cubase, at least for composing.

but i think if you have grown up with the cubase way of thinking/working, cubase 5 is a killer daw and will give you many hours of joy and nice songs.

[hibidy]

Na, I don't think there are preferences for the window problems. "always on top" is dreadful, uggg, I hate it. Having two screens helps a little but it is also pretty lame in cubase.

All in all, I can work in cubase but as has been pointed out, there is still much to improve and much to like at the same time.

At reaper 3 testings: I'll keep repeating myself......I want it to work out.....there is something seductive about 3 I can't put my finger on......

[LawrenceF]

This (two posts above ^) is a good example being unnecessarily frustrated.

Long story short, this is very easy to do and the frustrations listed above are in some cases unnecessary and at least 2 others just plain incorrect. Here is my "loop browser" screen set. Took all of 15 seconds to setup. None of the things in that post above apply here.



And yes, Reaper 3 is a very nice daw that I like a lot. I think the 3.0 release will be a good thing for everyone.

[captain caveman]

furthermore i truly hate the mediabay/loopbrowser attitude of always closing after importing a file, and why does pressing "play" play the files both in the project and mediabay context (so that you hear it doubled and have to reopen and close mediabay to avoid this)?

maybe there are some prefs settings i couldn't find to change these behaviours (fingers crossed)? these things are so irritating for me that i always come back to reaper, although in many other respects i would prefer cubase, at least for composing.

That'll be the "Sync to Transport" button in MB/LB - just unhighlight it and it'll only play when you click on a new loop (if Autoplay is highlighted) or when you press the MB/LB Play button (if Autoplay isn't highlighted).