Hi Shadowfax! Great to see a long-time Cubase user reply to this. If memory serves, I think I remember you from all the way back from the old Cubase forum. Anyway, not to take this off-topic, but I promise to bring it back on topic –
- In the interim of Steinberg’s poor handling of the video engine situation, I also bought Studio One Pro, and I have to say, it’s extremely impressive. I don’t want to make this a product advertisement, but I think it’s useful and honest to say that Steinberg has a lot to learn from their DAW-developing brethren over in Hamburg. Studio One has been a huge surprise to me – the workflow, elegance and simplicity have convinced me that it’s now a world-class DAW and quite frankly, in some key areas, I feel they’ve moved a full generation beyond Cubase.
HOWEVER, at least for my usage for film projects, I will be the first to admit that Cubase is still ahead of Studio One in two key areas that make it a tough choice for me to switch: a) Cubase still has superior MIDI tools for composers overall, and b) Cubase has other minor but important features that give it overall a stronger toolset for working with film. And I’m well aware that everyone has their own personal set of preferences and needs, so someone else might find even more (or less) to love about Cubase for their project requirements.
Having said that, the advantages of Studio One’s superior interface and overall workflow IMO, plus the fact that in my testing it actually performs better, has been a real eye-opener, and I’m seriously considering moving a major film project over to Studio One, to my utter shock. In my moderately involved testing so far, Cubase feels comparatively bloated, laggy, glitchy, and frankly less intuitive (and this is coming from a long-time Cubase user).
I haven’t decided yet, but I’m working on it.
- I am embarrassed to say I broke my own promise to myself and I bought the Cubase 9 upgrade, in anticipation of Nuendo 8 and the new video engine, and I thought Steinberg was going to release the new video engine simultaneously. Well, I was wrong of course. To my great disappointment, Steinberg has chosen to release the new video engine just for Nuendo 8 so far, while saving the new engine for a future update to Cubase – a product that has an EXISTING security issue by continuing to use the old engine. And to top that off, it looks like Steinberg may not even release the new engine for Cubase 8.5, breaking a promise they made.
Anyway, now that I have Studio One 3.5, Cubase 9 and Cubase 8.5, (among other DAW software) I’ve had the chance to test them back and forth with my kind of work, including on a fresh installation of Win 7 and Win 10. I’m saddened to say that Cubase 9 performance – for me in both cases of Win 7 and Win 10 – has been inferior to both Cubase 8.5 and Studio One 3.5.
I have also experienced crashes with Cubase 9 on both Win 7 and Win 10, along with a number of glitch issues that I almost can’t believe are happening… Cubase 8.5 performs better for me! And Studio One Pro 3.5 performs better still!
While I will admit I like the lower zone, sampler track, and multiple marker tracks inside Cubase 9, overall, at least as of Cubase Pro 9.0.20, I’d have to revert back and use Cubase 8.5 on my system anyway! So I really regret jumping the gun and buying Cubase 9 at this point, except for the benefit of getting a little education about Steinberg’s increasingly poor decisions about release cycles.
In any case, Steinberg’s delay has opened a window for me to consider using Studio One as well. While I will miss certain key features of Cubase that I’m used to if I switch, I have to say the workflow in Studio One might just make up for it. I’m not there yet, but I’m very close to diving in completely with Studio One.
And to bring it all back on topic, it all comes back to Steinberg and their choices lately. I know I’m just one guy – and yes, I’ve spent a lot of money on Steinberg over the years – including on a variety of Steinberg and Yamaha hardware – but Steinberg’s pattern recently reminds me of the OLD Steinberg, back before Yamaha bought them and they were very inconsistent at times – those were some really crappy years on and off for a while. I know I’m not the only person that feels this way… and if I’m right, Steinberg should take notice of what I’m seeing as a growing trend among long-time users that are growing increasingly frustrated.
And this whole video engine thing – while seemingly minor – is just one more little thing that might just tip the scales for me, personally. It’s symptomatic of a Steinberg that, like Cubase, has become bloated, glitchy, and a generation behind in their thinking.
I do wish them well, and I hope they get their act together, but Cubase 9 is basically unusable for me (unless I want to accept the laggy, glitchy and more crash-prone environment, even compared to Cubase 8.5). So I’ve wasted my time and money, and hope the developers and team read this not as a complaint from a grumpy customer, but as a serious reminder of a long-time paying customer that has been there through Steinberg’s ups and downs, that I’m getting tired of this process and I’m losing faith. For the first time in a long time, I regret paying for an upgrade. That’s not a good sign.
I use other DAW software, like many of us do, but when it becomes a CHORE to use a particular tool, or when you can’t trust a developer, you know something is wrong. This isn’t a complaint to Steinberg… this is an appeal to Steinberg to raise the level of their own expectations.
And they can start by releasing the new video engine for Cubase 8.5, as they promised.