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Cubasis vs Beatmaker 2
Now since Beatmaker 2 gets AB support, it's time for me to get a DAW for my precious iPad 
Can someone help me to point out the different features between Cubasis and Beatmaker 2? Pros and cons of the both? I already ruled out Auria because of the cpu hunger. 
Thanks!
Comments
My findings ...
Cubasis, great interface, easy to use, mediocre drum sounds, no sampler, fx bland.
Beatmaker, looks nice, great sampler, not very intuitive, great on board drum machine, built in synth sounds bland, good fx section, too much swapping around the various screens.
Cubasis far better for my requirements.
The main difference between Beatmaker and Cubasis right now is where they're coming from.
Beatmaker was made at a time when there was no virtual MIDI or Audiobus and therefore it's much more of a 'standalone' program. Its MPC like sampler/drum machine is (to my knowledge) the most usable on iOS and one of the main reasons why it's liked by many users.
Cubasis on the other hand is something completely different: it's new, doesn't have all of the features that Beatmaker has. In my personal opinion its interface is cleaner. Being able to transfer your projects to Cubase 6.5 or 7 makes it a no-brainer buy if you own those DAWs ont he Mac or PC.
Both have bugs and are being worked on. Beatmaker's MIDI implementation is not really that great with regards to the way it handles MIDI clock in combination with other apps, but Cubasis can't forward MIDI Clock messages to other apps at all in it's 1.1 version.
Cubasis seems to have a nasty bug with the UNDO button which is hopefully going to get fixed in the next update (http://forum.audiob.us/discussion/comment/3514#Comment_3514).
Beatmaker will be able to run its own effects on live apps connected via Audiobus, whereas Cubasis can only do that after the audio track has already been recorded.
Cubasis can be used in the input slot and output slot in Audiobus. Beatmaker will only be usable in the output slot (but that might change in the update after the next one).
CORRECTION: Beatmaker CAN be used in that slot, but it can't send audio to itself. It will mute itself if that's the case.
Cubasis costs more than twice as much as Beatmaker so that might influence your decision if you're on a tight budget.
Steinberg's guys are German, whereas the Intua team is Swiss/French.
Steinberg invented the VST standard. The Intua guys are snowboarders.
Hopefully that helps.
@Sebastian are you sure Beatmaker will initially support only AB output slot?
The update details state this: "Add Audiobus support! BeatMaker 2 can send or receive audio to/from other apps"
ah..ahh..ah....sebastian, you are the best for me :-)
@SaveAs: I am sure. That update post was written before a cancellation and re-upload of the Beatmaker binary because of a last minute bug that was found. I suggested to the Intua guys to remove that capability so that nobody would encounter that bug.
Fixing it would have taken another few days and considering the "give it to us now" mood on the intua and audiobus forums it's better than postponing the release even more.
Steinberg invented the VST standard. The Intua guys are snowboarders.
Ouch! Lol.
@Sebastian ah! ok, thanks for the clarification!
I think snowboarding is awesome - didn't say that to diss them.
I don't know if the Steinberg team can do that. Also Intua can obviously more than hold their own against a relatively huge music company like Steinberg.
@SaveAs: I've once again talked with Mathieu and it actually CAN be used in the input slot , it's just not able to send to itself.
@Sebatian Lol, ok... Dude.
@Sebastian Cool!
i'm very happy to get the drumsampler back soon....to integrate it in cubasis
Besides this i don't look back.Cubasis is by far more intuitive.Imo it has the best Interface i saw in an app like this.
Cubasis has a slick interface but BM2 offers much more control over your projects. It's true that BM2's interface has its idiosyncrasies, but once you're accustomed to them, you can lay down beats, melodies and automations quite quickly.
BM2 also includes some audio editing features like time stretching and pitch shifting which can be really helpful.
BM2 is universal, so I can work on projects on either my iPad or iPod touch and use Dropbox to keep everything in sync. This is really convenient when I'm out somewhere without my iPad. I always have my iPod in my pocket.
BM2 isn't for everybody but I think it's quite underrated, especially for $20. It's particularly good for beat driven genres but I've easily composed ambient tracks with it too.
I'm definitely looking forward to this update!
BM2 is probably more powerful at the moment in its features, especially with Audiobus. But i personally don't like the interface that much and find Cubasis by far easier to use. If they can sort out a few bugs, which i hope will happen soon, then my choice would be Cubasis.
I was going to add a very clever fruit/tool metaphor but I thought better of it
We're all very grapeful.
@KALT:i don't think BM2 is underrated.Of course,it's a great app for a very fair price.But sometimes i think the developer are not really thinking as musicians.Example:great they added Sends recently.But made them prefader only (at first)and -even worse- they cutted the Mixer fader to half of their lenghts for it.Might work on an iPhone but it's just a bad joke on ipad.Next are the -sorry- crappy FX.The PEQ is definitely a step forward but theres still so much to improve.Same for the filesystem.Or what about this bullshit if you want to ACP something??SO complicated (but god bless its more or less obsolete with audiobus now).The overall handling feels just too outdated to me (more of an iphone app) now that cubasis arrived.It has it's own flaws (simple effects,automation,midi sync,no midi thru...) but it's just two months old.Imagine where it can be with a version 2.4 ;-) And i'm mixing and arrange my stuff in Auria so currently i don't miss the automation and better Effects in Cubasis (or BM) THAT much.But i still love BM for the drumsampler and yes,it can timestretch (not in the VERY best quality but at least its there),something that Cubasis and Auria still have to deliver.Still not sure if i need to get Wavepad or something similar just for the timestretch thing.I don't want to deal with the Copy/paste function in BM just for this purpose.
@PaulB I SAW that coming.
Why not comparing?If somebody ask ;-)
Both are"Midi Production Center",coming with a sound library (sharing the same negligibly)and audiotracks while BM's fokus is on sampling and cubasis on....uhm....workflow?
@mgmg4871 Saw the opening, took the shot.
And I wouldn't worry about the standard sounds of them. None are as good as Magellan /Animoog etc.. That's what the 'bus is for.
Bizarrely the snowboarding thing influences me towards them!
@Ian:exactly
and i am more traditional and love skiing.Maybe that's a reverse influence now
"Steinberg invented the VST standard. The Intua guys are snowboarders."
That's good to know. This strengthens my position that having them both is a good idea.
Honestly, I don't think it's even productive to compare these two, or even Auria and cubasis at this point. iOS music making is barely out of the womb, and considering the investment one has to make compared to a traditional Daw, there is no reason to get them all if you are serious about it.
BM2 has its drawbacks, yes, but remember that this is a universal app that's basically been ported from the phone version, and many of the UI complaints stem from this.
No better mpc style app out there.
Auria is the first of its kind as far as audio quality on the iPad, and I bought that right away too. I don't have any complaints about no midi, as I've always used BM2 anyway. When they do impliment midi, the app will be even more CPU intensive, and will likely not even run properly on any iPad except the 4. This is the game I've been playing with Protools/reason for years and I'm tired of it. Both added what the other was missing, and now they are both too powerful to even use right on my desktop. Just give me tools that work, and the ability to bridge them somehow if I need to. Not every app has to be the "all in one" solution that everyone seems to want.
Just downloaded cubasis the other night, and damn it feels great! Limitations of course, but like Sebastian said, Steinberg have been around and know what they are doing.
I think it is true that these apps cannot be fairly compared. Despite them both falling under the category of multitrackers, they are two entirely different beasts.
That said, I'm used to the BM2 workflow and when compared with learning how to use something like LogicPro's environment effectively, BM2 feels like it has a learning curve of a stylophone. But not everybody wants to delve very deep into software for powerful features.
There's a reason why it's called BeatMaker and not SongMaker. If you're looking for a smooth interface for recording audio tracks and mixing on the iPad, Cubasis is likely the way to go. But we've still yet to see BM2 in practice with AudioBus, so it might be worth waiting a few more days to make the decision.
@Dubhousedisco:Calculating midi really means nothing for a cpu.The best Midi Sequencer to date is still the Atari ST with 8 Mhz and 512kb (or 1 MB) Ram
So,having Midi in Auria will NOT blow any devices into small peaces.But Audiobus can do of course.And regarding the great support of Fabfilter i'm pretty sure we will see the Twin Synth as one of the first IAP synth in Auria.And i can imagine that this synth can blow up an iPad as well (looking at the other Fab plugs right now...).But Midi alone won't hurt anybody's iPad more then before.
I agree with Dubhausdisco . I have all three of those apps (Auria, BM2, and Cubasis) and I love all of them...for different reasons. As others have mentioned, the interface in Cubasis is the most evolved of the three in my opinion. It's totally sped up my creation of backbones for songs due to the midi saving/arranging. It's also fairly lightweight for my iPad 2 so that's nice. The audiobus integration is also one of the best I've worked with. I assume the undo bog will be squashed quickly, of course. Auria. There's just nothing like it as far as the sound you'll get out is concerned. Pro Q and Pro C and Saturn are all crazy fun to play with (oh yeah, and they're incredible sounding too). I don't think either of these apps are even remotely close to providing me the chop/sampling functionality I love in BM2. Before audibus had come along I was working almost exclusively in BM2. I hear what everyone is saying about the interface, but for me, I've spent enough time with it I barely notice any clunkiness. The ACP process is painful though and the file browser could certainly take some cues from Cubasis. I use all three frequently (admittedly the BM2 use has fallen ahead of their integration with audiobus, but I assume that's about to change with the new pending update).
@crabman,
I understand that midi itself is not very intensive,(but apparently proper clock is, as demonstrated by typically poor performance by any non-hardware clock source), but it's the adding of virtual instruments within Auria that will tax the CPU.
In light of audiobus, I can't say I know what the dev's for Auria plan on doing with virtual instruments. A setup of Magellan thru audiobus to Auria is already pretty heavy on the iPad 3, so I just can't say what the future holds....
Using the BM2 beta with these heavy synth apps via audio bus is very CPU intensive, but its not a problem if you print your tracks as you go. You won't have the luxury of having 10 soft synths running at once while you tweak the midi endlessly,(like on a laptop), but maybe that's a good thing! :-)
@dubhousedisco:yes,a proper and tight midi clock might be a different story.It seems not cpu intensive but much harder to develop then just a Midi editor.But in Auria it's really just up to you if you want to use the IAP synth then.My guess is that it makes sense if they would be lighter on the cpu then external synths via audiobus.It's one app vs. three different (at least!) apps ;-) And Magellan is quite heavy on"older"devices but has a shitload of functions,FX and the dual engine.Even compared to VST's still quite a big synth.But something like (Drum)sampler seems very light on the cpu.never run out of power (not nearly) when i worked with BM2 and 6-7 drumsampler (plus sampler,lot of audiotracks,fx...)on an ipad 2.
By the way, wanna spread some love for the iPhone app of Magellan am using on my iPad now.It still looks quite good on a retina screen (even better then some ipad only apps i know) and is a joy to use because of the BIG knobs and faders.First time i had fun programming the sequencer.And it's not that confusing,just one engine.I never used the two synths at once so i prefer this solution.
@crabman - yeah, but wtf is up with the red text on the red background in Magellan. Maybe that's only in the Jr. version, but good lord it's frustrating. Awesome app otherwise. (If I knew how to add images to a post I'd add one here)
you mean in the menus etc?that's in the big magellan as well.But what's wrong with it?I don't have problems to read it nor does it annoy me too much.some things are even better in the small version like popup menus for Waveforms and Sequencer target (instead of tapping these button multiple times to select wave etc...)
sorry for going"slightly OT"now...