Late last year (or was it early this year ?? time, eh!) I switched from Cubase 4.5 to Logic 9 - first Express then full fat version. And in all that time, I've been forcing myself not to switch back. It has been a wrench : transport that didn't work right, dropins are clicky, workflow is different, etc. Now that I've found the right options to sort most things and am feeling a lot more confident with the s/w, I decided to boot my Mac into it's 'old' OS and have a bash at doing some work in Cubase again.

For about 5mins I was happy - my Houston is now useful again, I can navigate quicker and easier, my external synths are setup and generally feel quite at home.

Then I stuck a few plugins here and there.

And it's all going horribly wrong!! The EQ is just plain nasty. The compressors have no guts. It's now hell to assign a track to a group (I always hated Logic's way of doing it - now I realise it's better)

And to make matters worse, a couple of days ago I downloaded Reaper 4 when the recent thread announced it and had a fiddle with some audio files I had knocking about and that went fine as well. Even to the point of considering buying a license for quick and dirty jobs.

Cubase 4 is only a few years old - have things moved on so much since it's release? Or am I just being spoiled by my Liquid Mix (a distinct possibility). The ultimate irony is that the drum track I was working on was salvaged by a free compressor - Audio Damage's Rough Rider restored some bite that had been lost somehow. How is a free compressor better than the ones that come with paid software? Riddle me that and stay fashionable!

Sorry - rant over ... just needed to offload a bit... I'll be better after some sleep...

Guess there really is no going home then!

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Veni, Vidi, Aesculi
(I came, I saw, I conkered)

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. Try the free trial of Cubase 6 & answer your own question.

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Not much in life worth running for. Or from.

Quote Dave B:

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It's now hell to assign a track to a group

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One mouse click?!

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An Eagle for an Emperor, A Kestrel for a Knave.

Quote Dynamic Mike:

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Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

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One of my favourite ensemble casts ever - even better in the second series...

Thanks but no thanks. I was just a little shocked at how much I'd acclimatised to Logic - both in terms of sound and workflow. And I remember C4 benign a good one from Steiny.

Ho hum..

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Veni, Vidi, Aesculi
(I came, I saw, I conkered)

C4 was a big step up from SX3... perhaps that's why you remember it being different. truth is that C5 was a big improvement and C6 is pretty damn great.

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hourglass | random thoughts | doubledotdash!? collective

C6 is very good indeed. There have been several incremental improvements, as with all DAWs, but some of the best of recent-ish changes for me have been...

Control Room - many still don't 'get' CR, but when the penny drops it really is incredibly good. I simply cannot imagine working without it.

Fully flexible routing - no more restrictions on what can be routed where, especially groups to groups.

Side-chaining - opened up all those little tricks we used to do with hardware without even blinking.

Group editing/quantise - literally saved me hours of work at a stroke.

Reverence - at last, a reverb for Cubase to be proud of.

Ah, there are loads more, but I'll put the last in capitals...

STABILITY - for me, at least, C6 has been stoically solid. TBH I've never had much of a problem with Cubase's stability anyway, short of an odd (and easily fixed) driver quirk between the first version of C5 and my Fireface 800. I've had no oddities with C6 and it plays very nicely with my audio and MIDI interfaces.

This is all PC based, however. I can't answer for the Mac version specifically.

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An Eagle for an Emperor, A Kestrel for a Knave.

Quote Dave B:

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Late last year (or was it early this year ?? time, eh!) I switched from Cubase 4.5 to Logic 9 SNIP I decided to boot my Mac into it's 'old' OS and have a bash at doing some work in Cubase again.

For about 5mins I was happy -

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Almost the same story here, but different outcome!
I jumped from Cubase 4 to Logic 8 a couple of years ago, and went through the re-learning thing and enjoyed using Logic.
Last month I wanted to revisit an old song, so opened Cubase for the first time in a couple of years.
I started messing around and thought it was still clunky, esp the mixer, but I loved the edit pages.
Then discovered Steiny do a demo of Cubase 6, so I downloaded it.
It all clicked fairly quickly and even the mixer is much better, and I've now upgraded to C6 and having loads of fun.

Don't know why C6 feels "nicer" than L9 to me.
Maybe it's because I used Cubase since Pro24 days, and it's just a nostalgic trip?
I still prefer L9's mixer, but I spend more time composing/editing and for me C6 has advantage here.
Cubase has always had a really good drum edit page which I really missed in Logic.

Somewhere else it was suggested that Cubase is a good composing DAW but Logic is a good mixing tool.

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Cubase, guitars.

Quote Kwackman:

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Somewhere else it was suggested that Cubase is a good composing DAW but Logic is a good mixing tool.

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You sure that wasn't "Cubase is a great composing tool, and Reaper and Pro Tools are great mixing tools"

More seriously, I'd agree that C6 is more stable — on both platforms for me — and a significant improvement on C4. Some great new features (some C5.5, some C6): multi-track comping, side-chaining, Variaudio, better transient detection, VST Expression, much improved handling of automation muting, the Arranger Track (the old Play Order track on steroids) etc. etc.

There are still a few bugs and annoyances. Eg routing limitations for external FX; quality of the bread-and-butter on-board plug-ins (better than they were, but still not up to Logic/PT/Reaper standards for the most part — shame they don't bundle the Steinberg RND Portico FX!); the tendency to crash when loading certain plug-ins during playback that work fine in other VST2 hosts...

On balance, though, there are fewer frustrations there for me than in other DAWs, and Steinberg seem a little bit more responsive to user feedback these days.

What do I think of the competition? (like you really want to know...)

Reaper 4 is looking like my second favourite for an all-round DAW now... could be my first if only they had onboard Variaudio and audio editor. What it does it does really well... it just doesn't do quite enough for me (yet).

PT still wins hands-down for mixing. It's so simple, uncluttered and easy to use. Superb handling of grouping, VCA etc.

SADiE gets my vote for editing. Editing a file while you're still recording it? Genius. Wavelab a close second.

Logic still wins for the bundled instruments and FX. I'd love to have ES1 in Cubase!

And the runners-up...

Sonar's still pretty good... though doesn't win in any category for me. But I still refuse to use a DAW that's tied to a single OS. Studio One I've not tried in anger - looks like Cubase with a few tweaks to me. Zynewave Podium looked interesting but was a pain in the arse to get working. I just don't get on with Ableton. A personal taste thing, I think - I just can't get on with the GUI. Reason looks more interesting now it does audio, but I've not tried it in years. DP I've not really explored.

Hmmm... I really should spend more tie making music than comparing gear and software...

I've recently moved over to Reaper because it is so stable. I see most people complain about the editing of Audio but from what I've seen and used it for it is far more than adequate. It can do variaudio without a problem BTW.

Only thing is that you will have to get your hands dirty to customize Reaper to what your working style is but that is the thing, customize it to what YOU like.

Quote natierau:

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I see most people complain about the editing of Audio but from what I've seen and used it for it is far more than adequate.

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This is something that's puzzled me for a while, because I do all my audio editing in Reaper's main project window and never really have a problem with it. Not sure what it is people are wanting it to do that it can't. I'm sure someone can fill me in, though...

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Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio
A complete mixing method based around the techniques of the world's most famous producers.

i'm a dyed in the wool Cubase user, but the audio editing in REAPER is by far the best thing about it for me.

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hourglass | random thoughts | doubledotdash!? collective

Quote Mike Senior:

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This is something that's puzzled me for a while, because I do all my audio editing in Reaper's main project window and never really have a problem with it. Not sure what it is people are wanting it to do that it can't. I'm sure someone can fill me in, though...

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How about filling in a click? It takes a few seconds to fix it forever in something like Audition but isn't anything like as easy if you have to tweak a restoration plug-in to do it over just a small section of audio. The same goes for removing noises and most other cleaning up where you want the job done once with no danger that some plug-in will forget its settings (or I make an error) at a later stage.

I can understand why the Reaper guys don't want to get into writing an audio editor - there are so many good alternatives already - but then I'm the sort of person that doesn't mind firing up a separate program to do one particular function. Plenty of others expect one program to do everything.

James.

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JRP Music - Audio Mastering and Restoration.
http://www.jrpmusic.net