CUBASE SE - any experiences ?

[mr swim]

Hello,

Being quite broke and needing a new sequencer I've been looking into Cubase SE.

Basically, I've never relied too heavily on my sequencer - most things are done in scope - so really just use it for basic audio sequencing and midi sequencing / editing (i.e. I'll be wanting as much MIDI function as possible). Is there anything I'll miss in this version ?

It is SO much cheaper, and also to be honest I reckon the simpler these programs are the less chance they have of going wrong ! (they all seem to do a lot of that)

Did a search of this site but couldn't find anything about it (actually I find it pretty hard to find anything with the search engine here, so sorry if this has already been covered ... )

Thanks very much for any advice / experiences,

Will.


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<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: mr swim on 2005-02-02 18:45 ]</font>

[Zer]

well, most are peratin on Cubase XXL or Logic Pro...probably you`ll find better information if you look into a related forum like http://www.cubase.net/phpbb2/

[samplaire]

Hi,
I don't know the differences between SX and SE exactly but having an experiece with Logic Express and knowing the differences between them I can say that probably the SE would be enough for you. Logic Express differs from Logic Pro with a smaller amount of plugs/instruments and has a smaller available amount of audiotrackes. Looking at the MIDI it has rather the same funcionality. I used to work with Cubase (the last was 4 Score) and I remember that it was different from the more expensive one also with max bit/kHz depth.

[mr swim]

thanks for the comments.

SE does apparently support up to 96khz - but to be honest with you I am very comfortable with using bog-standard 24bit 44.1khz ... what's the point of higher if you're just going to have to knock them into shape at the mixdown stage anyway ?

What I have found out though (although i don't really know what it means !) is that 'SE transmits MIDI Clock but not MTC' (according to a nice honest ebay seller).

As I say though, I don't know what this really means, so can't tell whether it is of any importance to me as a creamware user. I take it that our midi clock comes from creamware anyway, so that this wouldn't make any difference ?

W

[symbiote]

2 points to recording (and optionally mixing) in 96khz:

1) Some recordings are pretty hard to duplicate, if it's something you think you might want to go back to eventually in a few years when 96khz might be standard, for sacd/dvda/5.1/whatever, it might be a good idea to do 96khz;

2) If it's electronic stuff and might get played on a big (clean) sound system, mixing in 96khz might make some sense.

All in all, depends what you do with the music =P.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: symbiote on 2005-02-08 17:36 ]</font>

[mr swim]

thanks, interesting points.

To be honest with you what I do with the music at the moment is think about it when I'm going to sleep, and spend all day either working (REAL work) or trying to get the bloody computer to turn into a DAW !

But yeah, if I was actually managing to write any music, and thought anyone would buy it, you've got a good point

Cheers

Will.

[braincell]

Wait a minute. I'm under the impression that if your samples are recorded at 44.1 khz then mixing at 96 khz won't make a difference. My computer certainly can't handle many tracks at that sample rate.

[symbiote]

Yeah, I meant mixing 96khz recordings at 96khz =P Mixing 44.1khz recordings at 96khz isn't going to be terribly useful.

I was just offering an alternate perspective, like I said, it depends on how you work. You can always record the "worthy" stuff at 96khz, and downsample with a quality resampler (voxengo r8brain w0o) for mixing to CD, archiving the 96khz for the future.

Obviously, it's not a very pratical thing to do with all you recordings since resampling is pretty time-demanding.

[Liquid Len]

It depends on what you're doing, how much processing you need, but if you have a Creamware card, your sequencer package doesn't really need to do complicated mixing and processing. I just ship everything on a separate ASIO channel to the SCOPE platform and mix there. It's a matter of taste, but I like SCOPE's mixes much better. I find stock VST effects sound crappy and just add distortion and mud, but some 3rd party VST effects may be useful to apply from within Cubase.

Cubase SX may have a bazillion features to edit audio with, but it's very unstable (in my experience) for all that. If you do invest in SE, let us know how it works, I might downgrade. (Does Steinberg have a downgrade path, where they send you money or extra dongles or something? Rhetorical question)

[mr swim]

I can get it pretty cheap on eBay, so may well get it, and if I do, will let you know what I think.

Anyone know anything about the midi clock / MTC issue ?

W

[garyb]

cubase products only output midi clock(sx is the same way). that hasn't been a problem here.....