Cubase vs. ProTools?

[Winston TK]

Any opinions?

I'm going to be splurging on one of these fairly soon. Currently, I'm leaning towards Cubase 5.

What are your thoughts?

[jonathanhughes]

Both are pretty functionally equivalent. These days, I don't think any one of the major DAWs is clearly better than any other. They all come with decent effects and instruments.

If you've used one before, that might steer you. The main advantage of protools, is that it's easy to bring unfinished projects to pro studios (since they're probably running it). If you're working with other people on projects, they may very well be rnning PT, as well. The main disadvantage (to me) of Cubase, is that it doesn't seem very popular these days (at least not like it once was), so finding other people or studios that use it may be difficult (of course, if you're just working on your own, it's not an issue).

The BIG disadvantage of PT is that you need to use specific audio interfaces, made by either them, or M-Audio (a division of the same company), ad possibly someone else. With Cubase, Logic, etc., you can use whatever you want.

[bluestarbass]

between those 2 def pro tools. LE has its limitations but its a much better program. It is frustrating spending alot of time on HD then using LE, but LE is just as good if not better than any of the others. If you learn pro tools you'll be able to use all the rest, I wouldnt nessecarily say that about cubase. Ive used Nuendo which is steinberg's flagship DAW and I dont even like that very much. Jonathan's right about having to use their proprietary interface, but you can also use it with any other program if you dont dig pro tools. I have only found the limition of th interface frustrating at about the several grand pricepoint. I was ready to move from my digi002 but not ready to move into a $6 grand hd setup. I think that may change in the coming years anyway though.

[ggunn]

Originally Posted by jonathanhughes

The main advantage of protools, is that it's easy to bring unfinished projects to pro studios (since they're probably running it).

I don't think that is a big deal. The audio files that ProToools works with are stored in standard audio format; I assume that Cubase is the same way. To move your project to a pro studio, all you have to do is import the audio files into whatever program they use; you don't need to be able to open the session file. You just need to make sure that all your tracks are rendered (not stored as virtual tracks in the session), but you'd want to do that anyway before you move.

We produced our CD that way; we recorded the drum tracks and scratch guitar and vocals in a "real" studio (they had the mics and the room) on the full ProTools suite, and we took the tracks back to my studio and recorded vocals, guitars, bass, and keys on PT LE. We then brought it all back to the pro studio for mixdown. I'm pretty sure we could have done our part in Cubase; you just need to make sure that time=0 is the same on all the tracks so that everything is synched in the mixdown session.

[Dirk Diggler]

I use both right now and I write and deal with midi and vsti's in Cubase and mix in protools, but started working with Reaper, for the price it's going to be replacing Cubase in my work flow.
Good luck,
Dirk

[TripleDouble]

In the past, I found Cubase to be a slightly more fluid and inspiring music creation tool, but Pro Tools to be more powerful and detailed in the areas of mixing and very high quality audio production. I used Cubase and Nuendo happily for many years to create and produce my own music, but when i started engineering for groups that I'm in and the occasional freelance stuff, I went to Pro Tools since it's the status quo in "real" studios where I'd do drums or occasionally mix. The virtual instruments and plug ins appear to be greatly improved in PTLE8, and they finally ditched that wretched pastel interface too...so my vote would have to be for The Tools at this point, but it's a win/win really.