Cubasis 2 - many users? How do you find it?

hazardtears

this is somewhat OT, but hope you can forgive me for musing around the topic.

i think music-making tools can't be judged solely by their specs, but also by what they nudge you towards doing. These can be named as the features on the foreground of an app/hardware. For sure, with time, you'll dig into the background features and start putting together more advanced stuff. But from my experience, most music-makers and sound designers tend to do somewhat basic things day in, day out, like editing audio files on a timeline, or creating 4/4 loops, for example. So what matters is what's on the foreground; where are the menus, what are the features that pop out at first, what's easy to do and what's harder, etc. With time, this foreground and background difference might well fade out once you learn to master a tool.

Of course, there are features that (I feel like) I need, such as, say, AU support on ios apps, or logical keyboard shortcuts on a desktop DAW, which means I'll buy the things that do what I want. But you'll never learn anything new if you just look for what you already know.

More importantly, you can't really know in advance whether a software or a piece of hardware will inspire you and feel right in general. You just need to live with it, in my opinion. As an example, I keep going back to Patterning and Figure, because their UI is inspiring and smooth, whereas I dread to open MIDI designer and pile together a huge AUM session although I know I could do what I want more precisely and in detail with that setup.

A friend of mine, long-time electronic musician, once said to me: "people usually choose to spend their time either making music or creating an instrument", and I think that's pretty much how it is.

Of course you can refine stuff ad infinitum, and surely there are things lacking in every software, and most likely you'll find something to nag about sooner or later. But perhaps it might be easier to just accept that I have this tool now in front of me and it makes sounds and that's something to work with, so let's just see what we can do with it. For example, if Cubase doesn't have bus channels, maybe it's a good moment for me to learn to work without them.

(although I referred to things said in this thread, I by no means meant them as "this is what YOU should do", merely talking about myself here all along)

EDIT: my point was that I can't imagine anything could replace Ableton fulfillingly, because it has a unique interface and a work flow, just like any other app, so even if you can mimick most if its key features, it's still not the same thing at all imho, and i srsly think saying this is not just about splitting hairs.

JohnnyGoodyear

Toast.

hightunnels

@ALB said:
I like Cubasis just fine, but have noticed in the short two weeks that I've used it that it appears to have difficulty recording midi from an instrument and audio at the same time. I know there are workarounds, but I sorely miss being able to bus the audio from a midi generating instrument. It's frustrating because as the midi track is playing, I can hear the instrument play, but I can't route that same audio to a track. Hoping that an update might provide this.

And, not to hijack the thread, but if someone has a really elegant solution to the above, I would be most grateful.

Not sure if this is what you're after but in AB3, choose a midi sender app, say fugue machine (or use the midiflow adapter), then choose cubasis as your midi output. Switch to the audio section-- Cubasis will automatically be inserted as an audio source. On that pipeline, choose cubasis as your audio destination. You'll have a midi and an audio track created in cubasis. Put an instrument on the midi track, start fugue and record--you'll have midi and audio recorded simultaneously on the two tracks in cubasis.

ALB

@hightunnels said:

@ALB said:
I like Cubasis just fine, but have noticed in the short two weeks that I've used it that it appears to have difficulty recording midi from an instrument and audio at the same time. I know there are workarounds, but I sorely miss being able to bus the audio from a midi generating instrument. It's frustrating because as the midi track is playing, I can hear the instrument play, but I can't route that same audio to a track. Hoping that an update might provide this.

And, not to hijack the thread, but if someone has a really elegant solution to the above, I would be most grateful.

Not sure if this is what you're after but in AB3, choose a midi sender app, say fugue machine (or use the midiflow adapter), then choose cubasis as your midi output. Switch to the audio section-- Cubasis will automatically be inserted as an audio source. On that pipeline, choose cubasis as your audio destination. You'll have a midi and an audio track created in cubasis. Put an instrument on the midi track, start fugue and record--you'll have midi and audio recorded simultaneously on the two tracks in cubasis.

Thanks hightunnels - I tried doing this with Troublemaker in full sequencer mode about a week ago and made a hash of it. Part of the problem was (I think) using Midi LFOs to modify Troublemaker and then somehow ending up with confused routing. Getting TM to function correctly into Cubase through AB3 worked, but it somehow could no longer hear Midi LFOs (which was a huge part of the sound and was really fantastic). Will try again - I'm not beaten yet!

hightunnels

@ALB said:

@hightunnels said:

@ALB said:
I like Cubasis just fine, but have noticed in the short two weeks that I've used it that it appears to have difficulty recording midi from an instrument and audio at the same time. I know there are workarounds, but I sorely miss being able to bus the audio from a midi generating instrument. It's frustrating because as the midi track is playing, I can hear the instrument play, but I can't route that same audio to a track. Hoping that an update might provide this.

And, not to hijack the thread, but if someone has a really elegant solution to the above, I would be most grateful.

Not sure if this is what you're after but in AB3, choose a midi sender app, say fugue machine (or use the midiflow adapter), then choose cubasis as your midi output. Switch to the audio section-- Cubasis will automatically be inserted as an audio source. On that pipeline, choose cubasis as your audio destination. You'll have a midi and an audio track created in cubasis. Put an instrument on the midi track, start fugue and record--you'll have midi and audio recorded simultaneously on the two tracks in cubasis.

Thanks hightunnels - I tried doing this with Troublemaker in full sequencer mode about a week ago and made a hash of it. Part of the problem was (I think) using Midi LFOs to modify Troublemaker and then somehow ending up with confused routing. Getting TM to function correctly into Cubase through AB3 worked, but it somehow could no longer hear Midi LFOs (which was a huge part of the sound and was really fantastic). Will try again - I'm not beaten yet!

Ok got it. Don't have Midi LFO's (but has been on my list for a long while) Would be interested to see if you get it working!

Rich303

I love Cubasis. But it needs MIDI Learn.

AlterEgo_UK

Cubasis is my go to iOS DAW but triplet editing grid and a tempo track would make it even better!

stormbeats

Cubasis needs Aux and Bus channels