Cubase Pro

Ive been using Cubase since 1999, as well as many other plugins, processors, tools, FX, instruments, hardware synths, etc. I have built and supported live production environments at large Sports & Entertainment venues, as well as built networks, servers, desktops, and embedded systems throughout my 30+ year tech career. I've also used Reason, Fruity Loops, and Live, but very little.

That being said, I have had a 20+ year love/hate relationship with Cubase and Steinberg that has finally ended, and it ended on the hate side of things today. I've built and rebuilt 6 workstations for use with Cubase starting in roughly 2000 (when the Core2Duo first released and Steinberg began its long history of being unable to manage multithreaded/HT DSP), ending in 2022 with the final workstation. I've also used 2 laptops for Cubase. Ive used version sx2 through professional 12.0.60.

Cubase Pro offers a very robust set of features and tools out of the box and represents a DAW that was once king of the industry - and still could be with proper QA, development, and customer support. Cubase's UI/UX is top notch, with MIDI and audio routing systems that set the standard for other DAWs that came after, not to mention the high quality of the internal signal path, native DSP plugins, MIDI timing, etc etc. Cubase really has so much under the hood, it is mind boggling.

Here is the reason I give this DAW (And Steinberg) 2 stars, despite everything that is positive about their software, and despite the 20+ years I spent with it: Steinberg QA and Steinberg customer service, as well as the inherent instability of Cubase.

If you've used Cubase much at all in the last 20 years, you know what I mean about multithreading/hyperthreading issues, and you also know what I mean about customer service. (2 months+ for email replies, public denial of major issues on their forums, shifting the blame to customers).

I spent YEARS trying to work with Steinberg to determine WHAT HARDWARE PLATFORM they recommend for a stable Cubase workstation host, and yet they never offered a "supported hardware" list and let users figure out which platforms (MB chipset + CPU combination + power management features like speedstep) the hard way. So I spent *years* tweaking systems, removing all of their CPU power management features (resulting in higher power use), altering, disabling, and reenabling hyperthreading, rebuilding machines to make sure I did my diligent testing and troubleshooting FOR Steinberg, all the while dealing with projects that always crashed on exit, projects that randomly crashed, and the occasional file corruption that would result in a rebuild.

I spent HUNDREDS of hours of my own time trying to find the magic combination of hardware that would remove the dreaded "ASIO internal overload" issue caused by Cubase's inability to manage multithreaded audio, and what did Steinberg do for me, the paying customer, that entire time?

Steinberg FOUGHT me, they denied my issue on the forum despite 1000s of others reporting the same issue, they claimed "you are all alone - the only one really reporting this issue" back in 2018, and then their moderator "Steve" disabled my account when I became extremely angry about the way they were handling this. I went from being a die-hard Cubase user and proponent, to a bitter, angry, unproductive musician and I spent the next few years... not making much music and feeling extremely frustrated because Cubase was my only DAW.

Then I built a new machine in 2022, and found that Cubase 12 now finally performed perfectly, despite that machine having many of the same features that caused cubase to overload and pop/glitch the audio stream on earlier machines. Then Cubase 12 crashed during one of my projects and corrupted its licensing process, leading to high CPU every time Cubase was ran.... and....

I rebuilt the machine again, installed Bitwig 4, spent the next month using ALL my spare time learning Bitwig, and you know something? After a decade or more of frustration, YEARS worth of back-and-forth in email and on their forums, abuse from their moderators, etc?? Forgive my French but FUCK Cubase! More importantly, FUCK Steinberg for the years of stress and frustrating music production. I became connected to Cubase emotionally (it was my instrument) and so I kept dealing with stress I normally would not have, but now I have a new DAW and I'll never look back. Bitwig is 100% more stable than Cubase already, in my identical environment, with my identical hard and software libraries. Its more stable on any PC or laptop we own, where we have to carefully pick and choose to see if Cubase will work or not.

Steinberg customer service is THE WORST, and their inability to manage modern, multi-threaded audio is the reason for the CLAP protocol being developed, which may replace VST some day. The frustration with Cubase being unable to handle multithreading led to CLAP, and this should inform any new digital musician seeking a DAW -- Cubase/Steinberg are a dead-end today, and the level of dishonesty Ive seen from them about the issues in their platform is the icing on the cake.

I'm an old school Cubase user going back about 25 years. Even though it was my favorite DAW, its instability caused me to look elsewhere (Studio One). Version 12, however, appears to have been cut from a different cloth. Extremely full-featured, it nevertheless has been as steady as a rock - mostly. There's been the occasional lockups when trying out new plugins, but generally, I'm able to get a lot of work done without pulling out my hair because of crashes.

Cubase 12 has everything I need - scoring, snap to scale, alternative scales, impressive effects, VariAudio, sampler, ASIO-Guard, etc. I can go on and on. I'm glad that, with Cubase 12's new complexity, its workflow is still silk-smooth. There's nothing worse than having a workflow stymied by extra hoops you have to jump through.

I've been Cubase from the beginning with an Atari1040ST and later on I switched to PC.

Till today!I tried also other DAW's but Cubase is the one that siuts best for me.

It is easy to use, offers a nice workflow and has so many features that makes me save time.

Best DAW ever. I switched from Logic some years ago I never regretted.

Very good MIDI handling, Media bay is very well implemented and a decent set of out of the box plugins.

And now Steinberg seems to listen tu its userbase too. Well done.

Review updated as of 2020: I bought the upgrade to 10.5 Pro but I'm still using Cubase 10 Pro. Both and particularly 10.5 have many issues (random errors) or at least they are not easy to use (if I'm the one to blame when they freeze or mute the output without any error messages). It is frustrating to work with Cubase. I can only use it if I limit myself to some of its features (e.g. I have stopped using MIDI Sends). After reading that many problems of 10.5 haven't been fixed in Cubase 11 (https://forums.steinberg.net/t/official-unofficial-thread-was-it-fixed-ask-answer-community-group-thread-updated-11-24-2020/158454), I don't feel encouraged to upgrade anymore.