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Cubasis 3 and Why It’s My iOS DAW of Choice
Within the past year, I have been a pretty staunch supporter of Cubasis 3. I’ve been asked a number of times what I like about it and why I prefer it over other options. If I were a vlogger, I’d make a vlog about it. But I don’t, so here I am.
Some caveats before I start. I do most of my music production on my iPhone. I have an iPad Pro that I use from time to time, but I primarily use my iPhone 11. I may also be biased toward Steinberg products as Steinberg Sequel was the first software I ever used to make music. I also don’t use any hardware so I cannot speak to how it compares in that respect.
Now to the good stuff.
To put it simply, CB3 feels the most like a desktop DAW to me. It has all of the key components. It supports MIDI and audio tracks. Tracks can be cloned and grouped. There’s a piano roll, virtual keyboard, and mixer panel. It has a simple, user-friendly interface that promotes a fluid workflow. Key controls are very easily accessed without being buried in menus. The recent addition of keyboard support makes the workflow even smoother. You can export audio and MIDI. It comes with some solid native instruments and effects (some of which are IAP). Internal and external plugin parameters can be automated. These are the basics that any DAW should provide, and CB3 provides them all in a nice package.
Let’s look at the competitors. BM3 and Auria Pro are out of the running because they’re not Universal which is a key requirement for me. Gadget is self-contained so no AUs. AUM and AudioBus workflows are modular and have workflows that more closely mirror hardware setups. NS2 doesn’t have audio tracks which is immediately a deal breaker. It also has some problems when it comes to AU scaling, can’t record AU effect automation or instrument input (ie EG Pulse sequencer and Ruismaker Noir), and buries key controls in menus. Zenbeats also has had issues for me with scaling AUs. If I remember correctly, it also does not allow you to have an AU and the virtual keyboard on the screen at the same time. AEM felt a bit clunky and less user friendly when it came to overall workflow. I didn’t use it enough to really see what other features it might be lacking.
Compare all of that to CB3. You can buy it and it alone and get quite a lot of mileage. You can expand its functionality by connecting AUs and IAAs without it feeling cumbersome to do so. Using an AU feels no different than using one of the native plugins. It is developed by one of the biggest and oldest names in music production, who is also owned by Yamaha.
It did have quite a few issues when it first came out. And it’s still not perfect. It can’t do everything a desktop DAW can do. But I have yet to use an iOS DAW that does everything that CB3 can do as well as it does. If you haven’t tried it in the last 10 months, I highly recommend you do so.
Comments
This text probably could have been written by all of us. Replace cubase with some other app(s). Yeah, you cannot do what you can do on the desktop. But honestly it’s the shortcomings that makes iOS music making different, creates a unique sound. The rich kids got all the stuff... All these workarounds and infinite combinations of apps that each of us is using to craft our very own setup actually sparks so much creativity. All the iOS devs here in the forum, the community, warm and cozy - it’s so unique. The journey is the reward. Steinberg please never create the perfect iOS DAW.
AUM - three letters, a dream and in the beginning there was the mixer....
Great post . Only thing that bugs me about Cubasis 3 is that once I begin recording in 4/4 I have to STAY in 4/4. You can’t mix time signatures as in throwing in a bar of 5/4 here and there.
Cubasis 3 is my DAW of choice too. It took some time though.. because in the first few months after its release it was inferior to NanoStudio2 and GarageBand. In its current form it is definitely better.
Still missing some features that NanoStudio2 has like pattern cloning (or is ghosting? where a change in a pattern also applies to all of its copies), midi routing between tracks, mid-song time sig and tempo change, and multiple lanes for a single instrument. But overall it’s better. Mostly I love the AUfx automation.
Good post.
Easy enough to just drop some 5/4 into a 4/4 project though? I never even use the time sig options in DAWs.
Ghost patterns which in Cubase 3 certainly, maybe earlier, on the Atari ST... that’s 30 years of progress right there!
I used to love CB2 but, and I’m sure you’ve all seen me beat this drum before, CB3 even now is not release ready. I honestly have no idea how any of you get anything done on it. Seeing this thread made me give it another chance this morning, I got 8 bars into something I was starting to really like and all of a sudden one of my instruments was no longer playing - turned out cykle had just disappeared, and with it the baseline that I’d spent an hour carefully constructing. https://streamable.com/caiy30
I’m using the highest spec iPad it’s possible to buy right now and using a midi plugin that has never once disappeared when I use it in any other DAW, and I use it in almost everything I make. Every single bug I find in Cubasis is what any other software company would consider a showstopper but Steinberg consider release worthy. These are P1 critical bugs that cause the user to lose their work. I just don’t get why they keep adding features when the core is so buggy, or how anyone can write a whole track in it without one of the million showstoppers popping up to destroy your work.
I like Cubasis 3 for what it is but I'd be spending most of my time with Cubasis if/when it gets a better sampler.
Something Like the Cubase Sampler Track would be just about the perfect addition to it.
(Ie. drag'n'drop and audio event to the sample-track to crate a sampler-instrument, chop it, stretch it, filter it up etc.).
Cheers!
Some AUv3 plugins just constantly crash on me in Cubasis 3 (and with their crashes would I lose my progress). These include Zeeon, Bleass Alpha and Model D (which doesn’t crash but just won’t produce any sound). I usually just e mail crash reports to the devs, I think you should the same with Cykle.
I sank dozens of precious hours into CB3 and found it unreliable, buggy and frustrating. That was September last year, have recent updates improved things?
The biggest issues were AUv3 states not being saved or recalled, AUv3s crashing and the whole program glitching when playing a project that other hosts would handle easily.
Very interesting. No idea what Cykle is. I have used Zeeon without issue and I use BLEASS Alpha on almost every track nowadays with no issues. I tend to avoid Model D since it is notoriously heavy.
CB3 is definitely a serious piece of iOS software and under a constant development.
Hopefully UI will get some tweaks in the future because I feel it still did not reach it's 100% potential in terms of ergonomics. (Dreaming of NS2 piano roll in cubasis).
Huge Fan of CB3, for mostly the same reasons as the original post. I have years of experience using desktop DAWs and this is the closest experience. For the first year that I owned an iPad. I tried to use GarageBand but was constantly frustrated by the consumer based workflow. I could go on and on, but it all has been said very well here.
I like CB3. It's easy. In other news, I'm pretty certain my next collection of poems/album is going to be called Consumer Based Workflow.
I’d listen to that.
Okay, that's good news I guess. I'm actually experiencing a lot of issues with pretty much any AUv3 software since I've upgraded to iOS 14 - the biggest problem is the disappearing AUv3 bug that only a soft reset can (temporarily) fix. I don't know why I'm experiencing so many issues with the software in this iOS release but it is extremely frustrating.
@BroCoast : You can’t do that unless you record everything to audio first amd then edit . There’s no way to do it in MIDI
Odd. I admittedly haven’t used my iPad Pro much since iOS 14, but my iPhone 11 is on 14.3 and hasn’t had any issues with CB3. It does have the issue where newly downloaded AUs don’t show up sometimes until I restart. But that happened in AUM too.
I think all will agree that CB3 will not suit everyone’s needs. But probably most will agree that it will improve over time, just as CB2 did.
I would not use any other iOS DAW as I have pretty simplistic needs and CB3 is very easy to use. For a long time I put too much blame, I think, on Steinberg for not being able to handle every audio plugin. Then I started thinking... isn’t it the devs responsibility as well to make sure their app functions in the top DAWs?
It’s interesting, I think, that we expect more from an iOS DAW than we do from the person we might marry. If we had the same expectations for a mate as we do for a $50 piece of software there would be a surfeit of wedding bands for sale. I realize many of us look for perfection in the not so real world of music production, and, fortunately, it is much more likely we will eventually find what we each need in that world to make “perfect” tracks.
Apple is to blame too for limiting memory to AUs that crash internally or crackle or produce no sound at times. What’s the point of having 6GB RAM but barely a fraction of that available for AUs?
It’s well over a year old now and still destroys the user’s work at random.
@DukeWonder This is Cykle. It’s a really nifty midi sequencer that’s excellent for baselines. I use it a lot in NS2 and love it.
I wonder why there is such a "variety" with some people having huge, constant issues and other people having close to none, while everybody is on the same OS* and a very narrow selection of devices...
*even for each individual iOS version there seem to be many people having lots of issues and many people having close to none...?
Six months ago I was having a ton of crashes and lost work, until I realized what it was: if I left an AU UI open and put CB3 in the background for more than 10 seconds (say, to check something in Safari), it crashed. Up to that point, in my experience, this was a “random” crash that made the app mostly unusable to me. Once I knew how to work around it (not necessary anymore since the last update fixed the issue) the experience was great.
I wonder if this disparity of experiences has to do with other seemingly random bugs that just don’t affect some of us because of our different workflows, more than OS versions, plugins of choice or device differences.
Baffling isn’t it. The bitterness in my earlier post is mostly jealousy and surprise that others are able to use the app at all.
I switched to NS2 and occasionally BM3 a year ago because CB3 is guaranteed to ruin all my work at some point, usually within an hour of sitting down with it, often within mere minutes. BM3 also has a showstopper bug in its fx automation, but at least I know where that one is. The CB3 bugs pop up everywhere with no rhyme or reason. NS2 has some serious limitations, but has never crashed on me and never deleted my work. I’ve ended up just embracing its limitations as a way of forcing me to get creative in working around them. I rarely even think about the missing audio tracks or fx automation any more, and the UX of NS2 is so far ahead of anything else on a touch interface that going back to Cubasis is always an exercise in frustration for me.
I’m glad it works for others though and should probably stop sticking my oar in on these threads.
What are NS2’s limitations for you as compared to Cubasis 3? (Besides lack of audio tracks?)
Different approaches. I seem to have the ability to make an app crash/bug out very easily.
I will say that I keep my device very “clean”. I delete unused stuff and keep nothing running except the app(s) I’m actively using. If I’m using CB3, that and the AUs are the only thing running. Not sure how much of a difference that makes, but after 3 years of troubleshooting iOS devices for a living, I’ve learned minimal is better.
My expectations for CB3 were simply set by CB2.
The biggest one is being unable to automate FX other than the built in ones. I’d pay full price for an NS2.5 upgrade with just that added.
I’m totally with you, @drcongo. NS2 is mostly a joy to use in comparison to anything else. And everything it does have just works. I, too, would love the FX automation but I manage without it.
As I’ve said elsewhere, CB3 is just a cracklefest for me on iOS 13.7 and a 10.5” Pro whereas the same instruments are absolutely fine in every other daw I have.